In this episode of Theology Applied, we re-re-air an old episode of the podcast "It's Good to Be a Man" with co-hosts Nontenant and Michael Foster from the podcast, It's Good To Be A Man. In this episode, they talk about how the biblical patriarchy falls short of Scripture, and how to overcome it.
00:03:33.340It's funny to hear you describe us as a podcast because it's always interesting hearing how
00:03:36.700people think of us. Like I don't think of us as a podcast. I think of a, the podcast is one thing
00:03:40.880that we do and it's actually kind of a minor thing in some ways. What we're working on really
00:03:45.320hard at the moment is actually a book. So that's, that's where I see all of our efforts at the
00:03:49.680moment. Go Michael. Sure. I'm Michael Foster. I am a pastor. I live here in Cincinnati, Ohio.
00:03:58.800I'm prepping to move where my church is, which is in Batavia, Ohio, which is about 30 minutes
00:04:04.480from where i'm currently at just outside of cincinnati cool and i tweet and talk and speak and
00:04:14.540write with none so and we both have lovely wives and children best anyone forget that's right
00:04:21.460praise god for that your ministry in general so apparently you guys do more than just a podcast
00:04:27.240which i assumed you did because i hear you talk about it on the podcast but that's been my main
00:04:31.360exposure to your ministry and to your teaching, which I've appreciated. So could you tell us just
00:04:36.940about the podcast or your ministry in general, or a little bit about the book and really what's the
00:04:41.640big idea, what's the big mission, the big purpose behind your ministry to men? Sure. So I
00:04:50.080started with this idea that we needed a podcast that was reaching groups of men that seemed like
00:05:00.040the church, uh, they were falling through the cracks of the church or they were being neglected
00:05:04.400or their issues weren't being, uh, spoken to. And that came through just a lot of study on my own,
00:05:12.480uh, just trying to be helpful as an, as a pastor in a church. And a lot of the questions that were
00:05:17.560coming my way weren't questions that I even really dealt with. Uh, I I'm 40 years old,
00:05:22.760you know, so I, I grew up right before the internet took over. Right. So I experienced
00:05:29.380Some of it are in high school, but not in any way that most millennials did.
00:05:34.480I'm a really old millennial or really young Gen X, whatever you want to call it.
00:05:38.200So as those questions were coming up, I went to YouTube and looked where these young men
00:05:43.460were going besides the church because they weren't finding answers in the church.
00:05:47.060And to be frank, I wasn't able to give them a lot of good answers at times.
00:05:50.600So I discovered Jordan Peterson and the Red Pill movement, which is Red Pill is just a
00:05:57.260metaphor that comes from the movie the matrix it's having your eyes open so it's having your
00:06:02.320eyes open to the real nature of sexuality and that's a movement uh largely uh dominated by
00:06:08.600pagan uh men who apply uh evolutionary psychology to intersexual relationships but with a lot of
00:06:18.180times what they're identifying is really this god's design for the world right the the way
00:06:23.200creation works. And so there's some truth there. Plus, they don't deny the goodness of the human
00:06:27.820body. They actually probably go the opposite direction, where in a lot of churches, it tends
00:06:34.300towards a Gnostic take on things. So as I started to play around with the idea, seriously, like
00:06:42.320within several weeks, I realized Nan, who we had been, you know, online friends and read and
00:06:49.040interacted here and there. I somehow figured out that non, I don't even remember how, was reading
00:06:54.120and thinking through a lot of the same things, which if you were to talk about that, about those
00:06:58.640books and topics and blog posts and polite, you know, mixed company, people would really raise
00:07:03.520their eyebrows. So I was, didn't really know who to work through these issues with. And so I was
00:07:08.680blessed to find non. And we started on a project to create a practical theology for men. And it1.00
00:07:15.620turned into a podcast and a website and that's kind of my side to it I don't know what do you
00:07:22.140want to add non well I came at it my story is my perspective is quite different to Michael's I came
00:07:28.120at it from a study perspective I stumbled onto red pill in the process of studying the relationship
00:07:35.100between kingdom theology and well a number of things were going on in my head that made me
00:07:41.720think you know how does how did gender roles fit into everything that i'm currently doing in
00:07:45.580theology which was mostly unrelated to gender roles and stumbled onto the l rock and uh rational
00:07:53.560mail and spent a lot of time reading those and then went through a cage stage from which i would
00:07:57.460say michael rescued me but it's nice that he sees things in such a rosy light and we started he
00:08:03.440started it's good to be a man and i kind of joined him is how i see it but what particularly attracted
00:08:08.360me to it was the desire to have a positive doctrine of manhood what is it that men are
00:08:14.260supposed to do because so much of the red pill like one of the things that really bothered me
00:08:17.740even in my cage stage i was like i know that these things are wrong and i want everyone to
00:08:20.660know about them and ranting and raving about everything that's wrong with the world and not
00:08:25.540having any actual answers or solutions except to just kind of yell at men that they need to do
00:08:29.920better you know that's not helpful so the idea of having a practical doctrine of masculinity that we
00:08:36.060could actually flesh out what does it mean to be a man and what are the key principles that
00:08:40.080scripture talks about and the virtues and the duties and all that kind of thing that was very
00:08:43.900helpful to me and i believe it's been very helpful to lots of other men as well yeah yeah i'm one of
00:08:49.880them cool um well uh one word that people are bothered by of course uh especially in our culture
00:08:56.440today and sadly in the church as well is the word patriarchy and so you guys use that word a lot and
00:09:02.160So I wanted to give you an opportunity to define biblical patriarchy and perhaps flesh out maybe some of the distinctions between patriarchy and what often we would refer to as complementarianism that we find in the average evangelical church today.
00:09:18.960What would you see as being the primary differences between what the Bible describes and what you might find in your average Calvinistic complementarian evangelical church today?
00:09:29.320do we use the word patriarchy a lot michael i don't think we use the patriarchy word patriarchy
00:09:35.340that much i think we're associated with people that use it a lot i think i i i've i've done some
00:09:39.760uh some speeches or lectures and i use the word a bunch that might be yeah i mean what it means is
00:09:47.860uh it means father rule right right and so what we mean by it is that god so uh when we use the
00:09:56.000word cosmos we're talking about the structure of existence right so it's not just the Carl Sagan
00:10:02.880cosmos where it's like you know the orc cloud and rings around Saturn but it's the the whole way
00:10:09.560everything is made and God has built the cosmos in such a way that men are um are rulers so and
00:10:19.260so that's called patriarchy so men are the rulers in the home and they're the rulers in the church
00:10:24.480But they're also the rulers of society because society is a collection of households, right?
00:10:29.680So it would make no sense to have men be the heads of their household and not be the heads of society.
00:10:37.160The problem with patriarchy is that there are virtuous manifestations of it and wicked manifestations of it.
00:10:47.520And the easiest example of that would be the devil is called a father, right?0.68
00:10:52.900Jesus says, you're, you're, uh, your sons of the devil. Right. So that's clearly patriarchy can be0.69
00:10:58.540evil. Um, just like heterosexuality is natural. Um, but it can also have evil manifestations.
00:11:06.200So it is with patriarchy. Right. Um, so a lot of people get, uh, triggered by it because they first
00:11:12.200want to say sexuality or, or the sexual nature that God's given us masculinity is evil. Those
00:11:17.260people are wrong. Those people are being evil. Okay. Uh, but then some people that are trying
00:11:21.340to compensate for that make a mistake where they act like uh all forms of patriarchy are somehow
00:11:26.800good or unquestioned you know which is just silly uh clearly they're not so uh that that's what
00:11:32.740patriarchy is i think non can explain to you the difference between patriarchy and complementarian
00:11:38.120at least broadly speaking yeah well the reason that i asked about how often we use the word
00:11:43.620patriarchy is because we don't actually try to shy away from it but we do recognize that it triggers
00:11:48.260a lot of people and to receive a wide audience we tend to speak rather of gendered piety we see
00:11:54.600patriarchy is very much the idea that men represent god's rule which is not really all there is to
00:12:01.940being a man or to being a woman for that matter so we're quite concerned not just to affirm that
00:12:07.440men represent god's rule which is true but also to say what are the other aspects of being a man
00:12:12.040what are the duties of being a man what do men have to do what do women have to do so we call
00:12:15.800that gendered piety but in terms of the distinction between that and what complementarianism teaches
00:12:20.900it fundamentally comes down to whether or not there is actually a purpose to the design for
00:12:27.900the sexes so complementarians are eager to affirm things like men need to be pastors you can't have
00:12:35.320female pastors depending on how soft they are they get pretty close to that line they'll have0.80
00:12:40.680women acting in pastoral ways without technically having the name but they want to say that men0.99
00:12:46.140should be heads of the church and heads of the family but they don't want to say that men should0.55
00:12:49.320be heads of the society because that's obviously terrible and that would exclude women from being
00:12:54.640presidents they also don't want to say things like women shouldn't vote and they don't want to say0.80
00:12:58.420things like women shouldn't be police officers or work in the military and the reason for that is
00:13:04.640that they don't actually have an ordering principle around which gender duties are designed they don't0.90
00:13:09.000have some kind of fundamental baseline that says the reason that men exist is for this and the
00:13:14.180reason that women exist is for this they just have isolated verses they've taken from scripture
00:13:18.800and they can say they can see clearly the scripture says this so you have to believe this
00:13:23.260but it's almost like it's just an arbitrary command that god gave there's no particular
00:13:27.160reason he said that women can't be pastors it's just that he said that um it's not it's not rooted
00:13:32.280in their nature you know so it's a question of what is the nature of man and the nature of woman
00:13:36.120And complementarianism, I think, because it has lost, it started as a response to feminism, and it was always highly conditioned by feminism. It's kind of a shame theology.
00:13:52.120It's a theology that is ashamed of scripture and tries to retrieve as much of scripture as is impossible to deny exegetically, while eliminating all of the other things that could be called shame by the culture, such as the idea that women actually have different natures to men.0.57
00:14:10.860Right. And that's the history of complementarianism, which is helpful to understand is that that Wayne Grudem and the guys that are working on it during the Evangelical Theological Society and the creation of the Danvers Statement was working towards a coalition, working towards a compromise consensus statement.
00:14:29.240And so the idea was to try to pull people together and then work towards greater reform on the topic. And that's why some complementarians, we would not really differ from them in our understanding of sexuality, where other complementarians like are really, they treat sexuality based on roles as opposed to nature, right?
00:14:52.220And that's why I will say that complementarianism, modern, the broadly accepted stuff that you see at this moment on like a Gospel Coalition website or preached by like Matt Chandler or kind of these well-known evangelicals, it presupposes a sort of androgyny where more or less men and women are human, right?
00:15:14.740they're just humans and and the roles are interchangeable right so androgyny has kind of
00:15:23.020two understandings one is there's a mixing of the sexes right so you think of like david bowie back
00:15:30.620in the 80s he was kind of pushing that idea where is it a guy is it a girl you know michael jackson
00:15:36.680yeah yeah michael jackson a lot of a lot of those pop stars especially in the 70s and 80s were doing
00:15:42.340that but the other aspect of it is just simply to say that maleness and femaleness is somehow
00:15:49.760interchangeable between the sexes which is really a logical insanity so and that's and that's what
00:15:57.960we're trying to push back and say like look if there's a female nature and there's a male nature
00:16:02.620that nature extends to all of life and you got to work it out and that's why complementarianism
00:16:07.620was doomed it was doomed the moment they didn't root it in nature not because those guys all were
00:16:13.300bad people they didn't have um good intentions they weren't working towards things like many
00:16:19.400of them were when i listened to a lot of the things that john piper says i think he's one of
00:16:25.260the better complementarians now as he gets old he should probably maybe stop talking but um right
00:16:30.920but uh right so that's where we fall at least about politics uh john piper god bless him forever
00:16:37.260But with politics, he needs to just go ahead and sit a play out or two.
00:16:41.080He's shown a good way to be a pastor, but maybe stay in your lane.
00:17:02.340But when I was pastoring there in San Diego, we preached through Genesis.
00:17:05.320And I remember when I was in chapter one, chapter two, my big, you know, preacher line was that it's not male and female roles, he assigned them, but male and female natures, he designed them.
00:17:20.380And so, but anyways, but just helping people see that, you know, it's not just that, you know, God calls birds to fly and calls fish to swim.
00:17:28.240Well, he also gives fish gills and fens, and he gives birds wings and a hollow bone structure.
00:17:33.880it's not just that hey they're exactly the same and they just have two different roles it's no
00:17:38.320they're ontologically two distinct creatures designed for their roles and they're and they're
00:17:44.640differently designed for those different roles and i think male and female you guys are absolutely
00:17:49.600right it's really become like just this uh duty and role on the surface that's interchangeable
00:17:54.820um and uh and it's it's like um i don't know it's almost like a ice cream you know like you have a
00:18:01.140like a chocolate shell around the vanilla ice cream. And, and one is, you know,
00:18:05.280it's a dark chocolate and another one's like, maybe it's a strawberry, you know,
00:18:09.060but, but on the center, it's both just that creamy vanilla goodness, you know?
00:18:13.020And, and we think of men and women in those terms, like it's,
00:18:15.520it's just on the surface and it doesn't go all the way down.
00:18:18.660It relates back to what Michael mentioned about the Gnosticism that we have in
00:18:22.780evangelicalism, where the body is downplayed.
00:18:25.540And there's a kind of general consensus that everyone has that really we're all
00:18:30.360kind of androgynous spirits and the bodies are just incidental god happens to give us a male or
00:18:35.300a female body but deep down inside the soul the spirit is androgynous and when we die we won't
00:18:41.040really be male or female that's like that's not necessarily how they think about it but that's
00:18:45.580kind of how it works out if you actually take it to its logical extreme yeah i used to i used to
00:18:50.340think that i mean you're describing the view that i i mean i can't remember how long ago it was but
00:18:54.840there was a time where i thought and part of the reason was because you know it's good to be a man
00:18:58.300well, it's also good to be a woman, if you're a woman, a biological woman. And, and part of me
00:19:03.660just didn't think it was good to be a woman. And so I literally thought, like, you know, if you're
00:19:07.760a Christian, faithfully serving Jesus, then you'll be rewarded as a Christian woman at the end of
00:19:12.480your life, that you'll no longer have to be a woman, you know, that men and women, you know,
00:19:15.980just gender will cease to exist. And, you know, and I still thought, you know, I knew we would
00:19:19.640have a physical body, because I believe in a bodily resurrection. But I remember thinking,
00:19:23.840like we'll have a physical body but gender won't be a part of it on that note just a kind of a
00:19:28.820side question for you guys um until the resurrection a day of a resurrection to be absent from the
00:19:35.120bodies to be present with the lord uh so i know that that both of you as orthodox believers believe
00:19:40.380that you know if if we died tonight you know that we would be with the lord jesus um but there's a
00:19:46.360physical bodily resurrection that we're awaiting uh so what about that intermediate um period i
00:19:52.040have some thoughts but i'm curious what what what do you see is that intermediate period where we're
00:19:56.260present with the lord but we're awaiting this bodily resurrection what what is that like
00:20:00.880and how does gender work into that what weird thoughts do you have on that what trouble will
00:20:07.460you get us into it's so interesting that you ask that question i don't have much in the way of
00:20:13.120thoughts i i don't have um a very strongly held opinion on what kind of dualism is correct so i
00:20:22.000can't give you any ideas there but i do think that you will still be a male when you are in
00:20:27.460the spirit with the lord you will have a male spirit that will be in some way identifiable as
00:20:32.040a male spirit in the spirit realm you'll be able to tell men from women and you'll be able to tell
00:20:36.740angels from humans i like that that's great you i guess what i would say is that the intermediate
00:20:43.160state is is not a denial of your human nature right whatever it is like we will be reunited
00:20:51.700to our body so we'll be fully glorified in the sense that the the fullness of resurrection
00:20:56.900has been consummated right but um my spirit isn't like i to be human is to be spirit
00:21:07.020and body it's a spirit body composite right and so i'm not something other i'm just without my
00:21:14.120body and the fact that that existence can happen is very strange right yeah but the reality is is
00:21:21.680that heaven is not going to be a rejection to the goodness of God's design or the intermediate
00:21:27.640it's not whatever it is and uh in sexuality binary sexuality is part of the goodness of
00:21:33.640God's design and this is the idea of an androgynous spirit world is rooted in Greek mythology um and
00:21:40.900and and pagan paganism which is almost always androgynous right right um and so if someone
00:21:49.160hold to that and we've we hear that in some of our critics they even claim to be complementarian
00:21:53.580especially the female ones um that there is a real sense i think that they believe
00:22:01.280in the afterlife that we're just going to be androgynous spirits and that that is actually
00:22:08.260on the verge of rank heresy right it's like that's uh because it attacks the nature of man0.65
00:22:14.560but more importantly, the nature, as you said, the beginning of this segment of Jesus, right?
00:22:21.140That's right. Yep. So for me, because of that, I tend to think, and I don't know, I don't have a
00:22:30.300lot of strong biblical support, but I just tend to think that because I'm not Gnostic, I just can't
00:22:36.460even comprehend the existence of a human being apart from the body. It's just that body-spirit
00:22:42.920connection um is just so strong so i i tend to think that uh that we will have a physical body
00:22:48.500it just won't be the one here from earth this one will be waiting in a tomb like a loader still0.99
00:22:53.120have a fleshly male body for the three of us and and women will have spirit and a female body just0.99
00:22:59.780a intermediate so not just an intermediate state where you're solely spirit but an intermediate
00:23:05.320state with an intermediate fleshly body because there is no human existence apart from spirit and
00:23:10.280body and then you'll be reunited with a better body namely your previous body but now glorified
00:23:15.340i don't know if that holds up theologically but that's that's kind of where i'm at so
00:23:19.120well i'm not sure it holds up theologically either but i would i would say that i i can
00:23:25.620meet you halfway i think that we will seem to have bodies we god will accommodate our fleshly
00:23:31.300nature in the spiritual world by making it by um essentially i i see the spirit world as kind of
00:23:38.640a shared dream and in a dream you still have a body even though it's not your you know it's not
00:23:43.500really your body because it's a dream okay even the nature of the angelic is weird because they're
00:23:49.020non-corporeal non-corporeal entities that can interact with the physical realm right and so
00:23:55.960a lot of our problems is it comes from how we conceive of spirit a lot of times like so many
00:24:02.460of our theological issues is that what we have to realize is how much we've absorbed from non-christian
00:24:09.000sources right and even cartoons and stuff and movies or whatever but the spirit is like um
00:24:15.980it's like a white shadow that you can put your hand through like these are how people imagine
00:24:20.600or you know like and is that even correct well we know that um that god is a spirit he doesn't
00:24:27.420have a body um at all and yet he can interact with the physical realm so how this all uh shakes
00:24:34.380out will be an interesting experience you know cool well let me bring you guys back to something
00:24:41.280you said earlier because i know some of our listeners are going to be like whoa non non said
00:24:45.340that very non said it in a non-chalant manner but did he say women shouldn't vote so so let me let
00:24:52.540me bring us back there real quick and and let me kind of frame it for a moment real quick so
00:24:57.200and people are going to want to know so um so for me because i i agree with you guys and uh and and
00:25:06.100it's the same kind of thing it's not just male and female roles he assigned them but male and
00:25:09.580female natures he designed them and i love what you said michael just because it's so basic and
00:25:14.100so logical i think it's easier for people to to you know um to grab on to but this idea that if
00:25:19.220if husband is head of head of wife and and and society is made up of of households and families
00:25:28.440then i mean you just do the basic logic math and uh and you wind up with men being not just heads
00:25:33.740of households but heads of society and and we i think all three of us would agree that there's
00:25:38.320you know three primary spheres i like schaefer and i like his seven mountains and media you know
00:25:42.760and the marketplace and stuff but three primary divine divinely instituted spheres of human society
00:25:48.120the home, the church, and the state. And a lot of the complementarian guys, it seems like they're
00:25:53.100always addressing the home and the church and the home and the church and the home and the church.
00:25:57.380But I completely agree with you guys. I think that with the state, certainly military and combat,
00:26:04.540I think, should be men because the husband lays down his life for his wife. But we know it's
00:26:10.160beyond that, right? So I think that's part of the problem is that men have zero authority
00:26:13.540outside of just a husband with his wife, but what's chivalry then? Chivalry is that even that
00:26:19.480woman that I'm not married to, if we're on the Titanic and it's going down, women and children
00:26:23.100first, that I have this male obligation that's beyond merely my household, that there's a
00:26:29.500priority to my household, but there's just something about being a man, even with a woman0.96
00:26:34.240that I'm not wed to, that my life is expendable, that men can be replaced and that I should die
00:26:42.600for her as christ dies uh for the church and so even you know with military and combat but even
00:26:48.280with you know the president united states and things like that i i completely agree i think
00:26:52.340that that's commander in chief is is very clearly a male headship leadership role but in terms of
00:26:59.860voting because you you said that and i just i thought it was interesting and i i just kind of
00:27:04.800wanted to press a little bit and hear some more thoughts what what what do you think about uh0.99
00:27:08.840women voting i would let lydia vote okay all right and could you explain why sure she's ahead1.00
00:27:17.880of a household i think the church meeting in her home yeah yeah so well she appears to be a wealthy0.79
00:27:25.620widow is how a lot of commentators think and that's suggested what i would say with the voting
00:27:30.760issues so these are litmus tests and um everyone like i had a young guy reach out to me and asked
00:27:37.160me if I was post-millennial or theonomic and I said I don't know what do you mean by post-millennial
00:27:41.620or theonomic right and that's not me being a smart aleck that's the fact that people grab these little
00:27:47.700they grab these labels and throw them around they they have no understanding of it right and I was
00:27:52.040like asked him what books he had read he hadn't read any books and I was like well maybe start
00:27:55.960with three views on the millennium right just like start wrapping your head around these topics and
00:28:00.780you know because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do it so voting is a lot like that suffrage
00:28:06.260is where the feminist movement really took off in our country, you know, and therefore it's like0.99
00:28:14.380this untouchable thing and a litmus test on whether you're just a monster. Now, what I would0.99
00:28:24.760say, though, is that I don't think, I probably don't think that landowners or non-landowners
00:28:31.640should be voting so i don't i'm not i'm not a big believer in universal suffrage for men or women but
00:28:38.820to me like this is one of those things kind of like why are we talking about this like where0.85
00:28:45.000are we at in culture like we're gonna we're gonna stop women from voting is that what is that what's
00:28:49.800on the um the agenda right now and are we and so the when people have these conversations you have
00:28:56.880to recognize it for what it is. One, if it's happening out among friends, that's fine. But
00:29:01.960if it's happening in a public space, yeah, public forum like space, and I take you, obviously I take
00:29:10.840you to be a friend, but it's usually us just like trying to decide who's broken the rules of
00:29:18.480orthodoxy and who's a terrible person and not actually getting work done. And that's why I
00:29:22.940personally shy away from it because i'm like i don't care and i don't care if you care um right
00:29:27.960but i will tell you in our church uh to the shame of all my patriarchal listeners like we we do allow
00:29:33.900female members to vote um i assume it gives two votes are you baptist yeah right no that's a good
00:29:42.300point are you baptist presbyterian i'm pauline so presbyterian okay nice okay non what are you
00:29:49.700presbyterian i am unclear i'm unclear more more presbyterian in my polity and i'm presbyterian
00:29:59.080in my covenant theology but i am not presbyterian in terms of baptizing infants so that's another
00:30:04.680rabbit hole that we could go down but it's yeah yeah so i'm i'm 1689 and so i'm reformed baptist
00:30:11.500but not a calvinistic baptist a reformed baptist so i'm confessional and sabbatarian and covenantal
00:30:17.300in terms of a 1689 federalism so not truly covenantal to the presbyterian you guys wouldn't
00:30:22.980recognize that but uh but anyways so yeah i'm as close as you can get uh to being truly reformed
00:30:29.660without being presbyterian so that being said um a lot of my friends you know most of my friends i
00:30:35.160tend to have more in common with my presbyterian pastor friends than the baptist guys because
00:30:39.020baptist is just you who knows what you're going to get it's just so broad um i mean the southern
00:30:43.860baptist you know convention and you just have no clue but uh but with that you know a decent amount
00:30:49.200of my friends and some of my reformed baptist friends they have you know when it comes to
00:30:52.860voting so i'm congregational that's one of the big differences as you guys know between westminster
00:30:57.060and 1689 is uh that you know the chapter on the church we have 16 paragraphs in the 1689 all about
00:31:02.780the church and then you got synods and councils and it's just blank because we're baptists so
00:31:07.200we're going to rebel and uh protest everything and and you know there's we believe in local
00:31:12.700church autonomy, no ecclesiastical authority outside of the local church. Um, so that being
00:31:17.380said, you know, uh, I'm congregational and we believe the highest, uh, the highest authority,
00:31:22.660earthly authority, the highest authority is the Bible, but the question is, uh, who gets to say
00:31:26.640what the Bible says? So the highest earthly authority, uh, we believe is the congregation.
00:31:30.720So the congregation would have a vote, um, over primary matters, like our, our statement of faith,
00:31:35.680um, when it comes to ordaining elders and deacons or church discipline, uh, removing someone from
00:31:41.280the lord's table that would be a congregational matter uh secondary and tertiary matters would
00:31:45.980go to the the elders and deacons and we do hold to a male diaconate we believe that deacons are
00:31:50.700not male and female but just like elders and men a guy that's going to be i'm just curious as we're
00:31:55.540talking yeah yeah so a guy that's like going to be um excommunicated or removed from the table
00:32:00.780for a time does that go to a vote like people get to vote whether or not he's going to be removed
00:32:04.980from the team that's the baptist way uh 51 or what like how did you arrive at the percentage
00:32:11.020right um that's a great question um so you know we have our bylaws um but i know what you're
00:32:17.160asking you don't care about my bylaws you want to know like no no no no what bible first you know
00:32:21.500tells you a percentage no no majority super majority yeah so for us it is a simple majority
00:32:26.780um with elders 49% of the people can like be like that dude that dude should not be communing with
00:32:34.940the lord jesus through the lord's table in a baptist church at least theoretically and he
00:32:39.580could do it yeah and he could keep michael you're such a troublemaker well i'm just thinking about
00:32:44.440doesn't this sound miserable it does it sounds intense and that's and that's why so but think
00:32:50.740of it like this in a nutshell i would say that's why baptists local baptist churches split is
00:32:56.080because of our polity and that's why you presbyterians your denomination split because
00:33:00.660a whole denomination goes liberal and the only way you can have guys who are faithful with the bible
00:33:04.840is you get, you know, PCUSA, and then it's PCA, and then it's got to be PC, and then it's got to
00:33:09.740be P. Split P's is what they call it, man. That's right. So it's basically, you know, you have
00:33:14.880Presbyterian splitting at a denominational level, and then you have Baptists kind of splitting at
00:33:18.720local. So either way you slice it, I think both polities have their strengths and their
00:33:24.760weaknesses. But anyways, all that being said, when it comes to a congregational vote, we have,
00:33:29.760you know, they would have to be a baptized believer, and we believe, you know, we're
00:33:33.320credo-baptists, and so they would have to be baptized. But that's where it gets wacky, you
00:33:38.160know, and I'll at least say difficult for Reformed Baptists is, you know, if I'm going to baptize,0.98
00:33:43.540for instance, a 12-year-old, because they've made a credible profession of faith before the church,
00:33:49.600and it's not just on the basis of mom and dad and their testimony, but he's met with the elders and
00:33:53.320sat before them, and we're saying, yeah, we can't withhold the Lord's Supper from him any longer,
00:33:58.460but we're not going to give him the Lord's Supper without what we believe is the initiating
00:34:02.020oath sign, which is baptism. And then the renewing oath sign is the renewal of the covenant when we
00:34:06.980come together and take the Lord's Supper is the way that we would view that. So we've got to
00:34:10.420baptize this guy. Now he's a baptized believer. And for me, in trying to be consistent in my
00:34:15.500polity, I don't believe in what I think many Baptists do believe in, which I would call
00:34:20.100partial membership, where they're ministering baptism and the supper, but they're technically
00:34:26.640a congregational church, but they're not giving him voting rights. So he's a partial member of
00:34:30.320the church, right? He can take the supper, he can get baptized, but he doesn't have, so anyway, so
00:34:35.660that being said, we would see the child, the wife, right? So the female, so it's not just men and0.77
00:34:40.460women, but it's also children. If we're going to baptize them, all of a sudden, you know, that 120.98
00:34:45.720year old could be voting to remove me as his pastor, if things go really, really bad in a
00:34:50.200members meeting. And so all that being said, I don't know how to get away from, and the big one
00:34:56.240is, and maybe you guys can help me, but Galatians, I think with Galatians 3, you know, there is
00:35:00.300neither male nor female, and I know that gets taken out of context, but I feel like at the
00:35:05.300Lord's table, male and female, slave or free, you know, Jew or Greek, and so the way I see it is like
00:35:14.920the one area, so that doesn't mean, because we still have Ephesians 5, right, so there's neither0.82
00:35:19.840male nor female, husband, head of the wife, wife submit in everything to her husband, and so
00:35:25.980we know that doesn't just whitewash everything when paul's you know writing in galatians but i
00:35:31.640feel like the one area where where women have that equal voice is um through their vote as a
00:35:38.780regenerate church member and so for me i would really have a hard time ecclesiastical i would0.94
00:35:44.060have an easier time not allowing women to vote in a presidential election than not allowing
00:35:49.160christian women baptized christian women to vote in my baptist church does that does that make
00:35:54.620sense and i think it's i just love to hear your thoughts i mean i think people's ecclesiology
00:35:59.420is um i think people's political understanding almost always reflects your ecclesiology
00:36:04.720so you're not surprised that the church of england right is modeled on a monarchy and america is was
00:36:12.740at least originally largely modeled on presbyterianism with a healthy dose of very reform
00:36:20.400leaning congregationalism, right? So you go back to what's happening in Virginia and South Carolina
00:36:26.740in the 1700s leading up to that. The fact is the only guy that signed was a presbytery minister,
00:36:33.100right? Witherspoon. But so I think I don't know how you get around it. I believe in representative
00:36:41.920of government and i think uh that uh but i i then again i allow women to i will we will allow women
00:36:51.780to vote in our church and um and that's more of just because uh we're working towards reform
00:36:59.380i think of it as a long line of dominoes just imagine yeah that a lot of the things people
00:37:07.740want to talk about is the domino at the very end of the line. And when they're like that,
00:37:13.020I take them not to be serious people. Um, because, uh, because it, like, I want to get there
00:37:19.480friend, we'll talk about it, but we, there's all these things towards the front. Like we've got to
00:37:24.560get, we got to flip those dominoes first to get down there. And so for me, I, that might not be
00:37:31.400a reform that happens underneath me. Someone could say that you could just do it right away.
00:37:35.100and i would say well yeah but you limit the the number of people you can reach and then they would
00:37:40.860say that's pragmatism and i'd say haha true it is we're all pragmatists right like let me into
00:37:46.500your life for five seconds and i'll dissect you right you dissect me and then we'll all like
00:37:50.940realize like it's very difficult to work these things out right now right i think the theonomy
00:37:55.640question goes the same direction it's like how do you work out the particulars of these is very0.99
00:37:59.300difficult like i think a 12 year old voting whether someone should be a pastor is asinine0.96
00:38:05.020and insane um but then again what you do as a baptist yeah right what you do as a baptist is0.92
00:38:11.900you just you don't baptize a 12 year old and but it gets difficult because then you have to have
00:38:16.760some legitimate reason besides just the fact that he's 12 right i think that's more consistent if
00:38:22.480you're a baptist i don't think you should baptize him if you're a baptist until like they're 20 or
00:38:25.860something when they truly individuated from the parents and then you know that their faith is
00:38:30.840their own or not just doing it because daddy's a christian that would make more sense to me i think
00:38:35.080but no what's your thoughts brother i think the question is very simple democracy is the
00:38:42.260rulership of the people so who is allowed to rule in the people democracy the only people
00:38:48.220who should vote in a democracy are people who are qualified to rule yeah i get you i think that's
00:38:55.620good i like the household vote i so i'm theologically i'm not there but i i like it
00:39:02.020because what you kind of described earlier um michael i i see actually the the harm being on
00:39:07.920the on the other end of the aisle other side of the aisle that if um in the in the baptist world
00:39:14.080congregational vote every you know baptized believer is a member of that church and has
00:39:19.340one vote i see it as like that guy who's a super faithful church member and him and his wife and
00:39:25.400has six kids and let's say his youngest at this point and it's this multi-generational still in
00:39:31.000the church and let's say he's in his 60s his oldest is you know 35 and his youngest is 18
00:39:36.480and uh well that wouldn't work let's say they're still in the home i'm ruining my analogy but let's
00:39:41.020say they're all in the home there's six children from 12 to 18 years old that doesn't work but
00:39:45.080the math but you get lots of twins you know 10 yeah 10 10 to 18 six children all baptized him
00:39:51.460and his wife baptized a household of eight if it's a household vote then those eight regenerate church
00:39:56.520members and my baptist framework they get one vote and that single woman who's 23 years old1.00
00:40:02.660and a liberal who is getting close to being put underneath church discipline because she's0.71
00:40:08.580she's just she's her views are horrible and she's outspoken and being divisive and we've already0.99
00:40:14.320So what you need is an electoral college.1.00
00:40:18.600And so now this 23-year-old single woman is getting an equal amount of voting power, if with the household vote, to my rock star lay elder, you know, for instance, and his wife and six baptized children.
00:40:36.140And the first step in that process is returning to the idea of having a free and transparent election.
00:40:41.260until we can do that there's not much point having any further discussion about who should
00:40:45.400be ruling free free and transparent election we nailed that i thought we just nailed that
00:40:49.600i think we got that down okay all right i'll i'll move us along so um what what's i'll just
00:40:58.360ask these two together and then we'll start to wrap up and we've got a bonus question for for
00:41:02.340our listeners who are club members so these two questions i'll ask together what's one of your
00:41:07.040biggest concerns for christian men today so men in the church not the pagan but but the one who
00:41:11.240professes christ and also uh what do you think is one of the most severe harmful effects of feminism
00:41:19.240on um on the church today i think michael should take that first question because he's a pastor
00:41:26.080and i'm not okay great i mean my biggest concern is that men don't fear god i mean
00:41:36.320i don't have any special answer that men don't fear god and that they don't live a life to
00:41:44.340glorify him and if if i want to tie that into feminism i would say that we live in a culture
00:41:51.200where men have been conditioned to be validated by women and those particular men will live their
00:41:59.240life to get feminine approval and, or they'll kind of react against that. And then they'll tend
00:42:07.500to look for some sort of like guru, like guy, like an expert, a father figure that might not
00:42:15.880be a good father figure. So I think men that have, that haven't had good godly men as fathers,
00:42:22.180whether they're biological or men that have discipled them and mentored them in some way,
00:42:27.280those guys are very vulnerable and easy to manipulate and control. So I think we live in
00:42:32.180a society that is full of men that are fearful, seeking validation, and easy to manipulate. And
00:42:39.340that's true of the church. And that's why we can't call a spade a spade nowadays. That's why pastors
00:42:46.620have to look over their shoulder if they preach something, because they know that in their
00:42:51.260congregation and often on their elders board or sessions, that there's men that if their wife
00:42:56.240or daughter get offended that those men are going to throw you under the bus to keep the peace at1.00
00:43:01.260home so now you could say that that's a concern about feminism right but ultimately it's a concern0.57
00:43:09.100about fearing god right like like back off woman like i i believe god's word i think that what the
00:43:16.880pastor said was right and and sometimes that hurts our feelings that are it's good that our pride is
00:43:22.080hurt that's what that really usually means right it is like which feeling was hurt is a lot of
00:43:27.540times what i like to ask people like what was the categorized the feeling for me because i think
00:43:32.280it's your pride um so i think that's the the biggest problem we have right now is men that
00:43:37.740aren't masculine and the masculinity non and i are working on a chapter right now that's all around
00:43:43.120this is that no for no fraternity no masculinity and that fraternity starts with the fatherhood of
00:43:48.460God. And if guys don't fear God, um, as, as a father and see, identify themselves as a son of
00:43:55.260God, they are going to be manipulated by the ton of grifters out there. You know, I see some of
00:44:02.040these guys selling masculinity courses in the church and I'm like, dude, you, there's nothing
00:44:07.000masculine about you. You, you look at a dirty, worthless hipster trying to take advantage of1.00
00:44:14.040these young men out here that are hungry. These men, we don't do a course. We thought about it.1.00
00:44:19.140Everyone does like these manhood courses. We got bills to pay too. We thought maybe that's
00:44:22.920the way to monetize it. We couldn't do it. We could bring ourself to do it. And so I see a lot
00:44:27.720of guys taking advantage of these men. And then these men are fools to often marry brassy, loud0.99
00:44:34.360mouth, ungodly women who have went out there and ran around and got themselves in all sorts of0.98
00:44:40.620trouble, the very women, and I'm using words and concepts directly from Proverbs chapter seven.0.99
00:44:47.640And these guys are getting these terrible marriages and then we have to counsel them.0.98
00:44:51.720Right. And so this is, this is not a good scenario for those men, but, but especially for the
00:44:59.220children, right. For the covenant children, for the future of the church. And so those are probably
00:45:04.860the issues that I see practically played out. So I'm trying to get men to fear God. I'm not
00:45:10.020trying to get them to make their wife submit more right like i want that i want there to be
00:45:15.420a healthy relationship you know but again the first domino to drop there is a proper understanding
00:45:22.880of the nature of our god who's a father right and we relate to him through the son and the spirit
00:45:30.220empowers us to live bold lives that's good non any thoughts i think that in terms of
00:45:39.960the effect that feminism has had both on society and the church the effect is the same for both
00:45:44.700and that is primarily that it has kind of through conditioning and kind of through men
00:45:52.140just not wanting to fight with women it has resulted in a way of thinking that is a default0.60
00:46:00.460female way of thinking now a female way of thinking is a great thing in the right place0.84
00:46:05.200But when you put it into the wrong place, it becomes essentially a conduit for ensuring that orthodoxy is gradually undermined and any kind of heterodoxy that can be smuggled in under a certain sentiment is raised up and lionized.
00:46:27.680and the reason that that happens is because people who defend orthodoxy tend to be somewhat abrasive
00:46:34.980and will ruffle people's feathers because they tell them that they're wrong whereas heterodoxy
00:46:39.820tends to be brought in by false teachers who are by nature flatterers and they use smooth speech
00:46:44.760and women are their entire mode of existence is based around establishing social bonds it's based
00:46:55.960around ensuring that there is kind of this conciliation between people no one's left out1.00
00:47:01.260and what that results in practically is that women aren't able to fight without splitting there has
00:47:07.320to be ostracization going on if there's some kind of a threat it needs to be put out in order to1.00
00:47:13.780protect the harmony of the whole and that means that anyone who brings in any kind of masculine
00:47:20.620even it doesn't even have the ideas it can just be someone who thinks that there ought to be a
00:47:25.080debate about something if you're willing to debate something and you think that it's important to
00:47:28.660debate something that makes you threatening it's scary and so you get put out and the people that
00:47:32.660are willing to tow the line and not rock the boat they're the ones that are kind of the order there
00:47:37.640is preserved and so they are raised up as being models of how to live in society and this happens
00:47:42.640i've seen this happen both in the church and in society at large it's very difficult we we always
00:47:48.120walk on eggshells these days because we don't want to offend people this is where cancel culture
00:47:51.600comes from and this is the idea that you can um you essentially it's a sin to offend people now
00:47:59.400the 11th commandment thou shalt be nice is where this idea comes from as well so it's all a result1.00
00:48:05.040of feminine conditioning and not placing feminine ways of thinking underneath the rulership of
00:48:11.100masculine ways of thinking which is how god designed it that's really good maybe one way
00:48:16.160to tie that back to our subject that we had earlier take subjects like suffrage because it's
00:48:22.680so inflammatory to some people and i don't want to deal with the emails and i don't want to deal
00:48:28.380with the argument and i want to deal with the tweets and all that stuff i i don't want to talk
00:48:32.560about it right to some degree and uh that's not a good place to be in a society where we can't
00:48:40.020there needs to be a space where people can talk about ideas and think out loud and work through
00:48:45.880them and not be punished for it or like us guys we can we can sit around in a non-recorded place
00:48:53.580and talk about whatever we want uh like a good group of guys that know each other and we'll
00:48:58.340throw out crazy ideas and um i've got a lot of like crazy ideas in genesis you know in particular
00:49:05.160that i've worked through with friends and some of them are like no that that's a little too wild
00:49:10.020but at least i could i could uh put them out there and think through it with people when you're in
00:49:15.480environment like that, everything gets reduced down more and more and more. And so it's mere
00:49:20.400Christianity, mere sexuality, mere everything. And even what's mere is shrinking. And so I think0.83
00:49:27.440people are in churches that can't have these conversations. And we're now at a time where
00:49:33.180it all is starting to matter in dire ways. And they weren't allowed to have those conversations
00:49:39.120and the people aren't prepared. And they're looking at their pastor saying, why didn't you
00:49:42.640prepare me right and that's like the moment we live in right now yep i completely agree all right
00:49:50.140well that's been very interesting very helpful uh i think our listeners are gonna really enjoy
00:49:55.720this episode um before we go let me go ahead and just kind of whet the appetite for our club members
00:50:02.440and those who are not yet a club member if you're not please become a responder and support right
00:50:06.880response ministries if you do you get access to the bonus portion of each of our interviews on
00:50:11.460theology applied. And the bonus question for Michael and Nan that they're going to stay on
00:50:16.820and answer here in just a moment is this. What do you see as one of the clearest sins with Christian0.98
00:50:21.500women today that pastors should be willing to address from the pulpit? So if you're not a club1.00
00:50:26.700member, if you're not a responder, we encourage you to join our team, help support us, and check
00:50:32.960out some of the bonus footage with Michael and Nan. The question again, what do you see as one of the
00:50:38.380clear of sins with Christian women today that pastors should be willing to address from the1.00
00:50:43.160pulpit. So as we go ahead and conclude the episode, Michael and Non, could you just let1.00
00:50:47.320our listeners know how they could follow you, keep up with what you're doing, and be praying for you?
00:50:54.940I can be found on Gab. It's kind of exclusively where I am at Non Tenant, and the Non has a
00:51:03.620silent B, B, N, O, and N. I also have a website, non.com, but the main thing to look for is
00:51:08.100website it's good to be man.com and you can find our podcasts you can find our content a fair amount
00:51:13.920of our content is on the website some of the best content we have is on there and especially at the
00:51:19.480website you can sign up for a newsletter which is probably the better the best way of getting
00:51:24.880content from us is the newsletter because it's high quality notes every saturday and a lot of
00:51:30.740that stuff is what we create all of our other content from so you get to see it early cool