The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Timothy Keller’s Deathbed Strategy For Evangelicals

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00:00:25 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:33 I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:36 In this episode, I'm privileged to have as a special guest, Aaron Wren.

00:00:40 The title for this episode is Timothy Keller's Deathbed Strategy for Evangelicals.

00:00:47 What we're discussing in this episode is one of the final pieces of work that Timothy Keller

00:00:52 completed about six months before his passing. And unfortunately, one of the main things that

00:01:00 Timothy Keller presents in this final work is a strategy for complementarians to bridge the gap

00:01:08 with egalitarians through compromise. That's what we'll be discussing in this episode. And I hope

00:01:15 that you enjoy. Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:22 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:01:29 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries.

00:01:32 And in this episode, I'm very privileged to welcome back,

00:01:35 it's been a long time, almost two years,

00:01:37 but welcoming back a second time now, Aaron Wren to the show.

00:01:40 Aaron, thanks for coming.

00:01:42 Thanks for having me.

00:01:43 Wow, it's been two years.

00:01:44 Yes, sir.

00:01:45 Time flies.

00:01:45 Time flies when you're having fun.

00:01:47 Well, let's go ahead right here from the outset.

00:01:49 Let people know how they can keep up with your work and follow you.

00:01:52 Sure. Just go to my website, AaronRenn.com, A-A-R-O-N, R-E-N-N.com, and sign up for my newsletter. There's lots of great free stuff on there, including a lot of what we're going to talk about. So you'll want to be in on that.

00:02:06 Okay. So it's just AaronRenn.com. That's right?

00:02:09 That's right.

00:02:10 Two A's, two N's. 0.60

00:02:10 And I try to give people—exactly. I try to give people deep insight that you can't get anywhere else about what's going on in the world and the church today.

00:02:19 Great. Well, what I wanted to talk about was part of your content that came out recently. It's probably been about a week or two at this point, but you wrote an article and sometimes you'll read your articles and record them on your podcast as well. That's where I typically follow you.

00:02:35 but you did one on complementarianism. Basically, the gist that I got was that this middle ground

00:02:43 between egalitarianism and biblical patriarchy, this middle ground is starting to kind of shift

00:02:51 and really just like a sink pit, it's starting to disappear. And some of the guys with the new

00:02:57 Calvinism, young, reformed, restless leaders, including Tim Keller before he passed,

00:03:03 um we're making a push it seems like an explicit push for the complementarian new calvinist type

00:03:10 of folks to uh to link arms with uh the egalitarians who are at least still within the realm of

00:03:17 orthodoxy they haven't you know they haven't embraced uh lgbt those kinds of things so

00:03:23 can you kind of sum up a little bit of what you were writing what you're getting at what

00:03:28 what are some of the problems that you perceive i like to take the things that you're seeing and

00:03:35 observing in the world and put a framework around them that helps you to understand what's going on

00:03:42 to see the bigger picture so the thing i'm best known for is my three worlds of evangelicalism

00:03:48 framework which i wrote in first things magazine which talks about how we went from a world that

00:03:53 was positive towards christianity to one that was neutral towards christianity to one that's

00:03:57 negative towards Christianity. This is an attempt to do something like that at a smaller scale.

00:04:03 It has been said that conservatism is merely liberalism 20 years too late. And that might be

00:04:10 a little bit unfair, but it does get at a reality is that there is a tendency for people who are

00:04:19 conservative to get dragged left as the left continues to make further moves, ever further

00:04:27 left. And several years ago, I came to the conclusion that complementarianism was really

00:04:33 going to run into some challenges because of that. As society moved left, it was going to put

00:04:39 enormous pressure on complementarianism to move to the left. And especially as the baby boomers 0.99

00:04:48 who created and sustained complementarian theology, largely in the 1980s, started moving

00:04:55 on from leadership, this was really going to expose complementarianism to new kinds of pressure

00:05:01 that would particularly lead people on the thinner end of complementarianism,

00:05:08 the ones who try to have the most egalitarian view of gender relations possible. It was going

00:05:15 of caused them to probably flip egalitarian at some point. Not that the older generation

00:05:21 themselves would, but that the younger generations might do that. So that's kind of the background

00:05:27 hypothesis that I had in mind. I said, let's test that by seeing what is coming along with

00:05:33 various things we see in the world. And one of the things I noticed was a strategy document that

00:05:40 Tim Keller put out November of last year. It had actually been mostly developed in the previous

00:05:46 year or two, and he brought it all together, added some new stuff, and published it then

00:05:51 about six months before he died, which was a series and a strategy about the decline and renewal of

00:05:57 the American church. It was basically his diagnostic for what's gone wrong in the American

00:06:01 church combined with his view of where the church ought to go. This is essentially the last thing he

00:06:08 published before he died, along with his new book, Forgive. So it was obviously something that he

00:06:12 thought was really, really important. And one of the central features of his new strategy

00:06:20 is essentially rethinking differences on the matter of gender. Keller was and remained his

00:06:28 whole life in a complementarian, excuse me, complementarian. So he didn't flip to egalitarian,

00:06:34 but he essentially posits that conservative christians should take a different approach

00:06:43 to their partnerships one that says we're going to add to our coalition egalitarians who are on

00:06:51 the more conservative side say those who want to affirm a gender binary they claim men and women

00:06:57 could both be pastors for example but they still affirm that there are only two genders

00:07:01 add those kind of conservative egalitarians to the coalition and subtract from the coalition

00:07:10 fundamentalists so people on the ultra right of the spectrum if you will it's this new

00:07:17 alliance if you will this new movement would be structured around a sort of a centrist vision of

00:07:26 kind of more left-leaning complementarians and more right-leaning egalitarians that would come

00:07:34 together in the center to create this new movement and there's a lot more to it than that

00:07:40 by the way he talks about the christian mind project there's there's many great things and

00:07:43 they're actually i suggest that people people read it and so that i said he's really again

00:07:49 suggesting two things one is to dissolve this notion that gender your theology of gender is

00:07:56 sort of a barrier to working together and uh or to make it a much less of a barrier to working

00:08:04 together than it previously would have been and then also kind of getting rid of the more

00:08:10 conservative people again fundamentalist etc so i saw that that's actually that's actually a

00:08:18 strategy. That's actually an explicitly stated strategy that he lays out. You don't need to

00:08:22 interpret anything. And I'm like, that is very much the kind of move I would have anticipated

00:08:27 in this sort of complementarianism coming under pressure world.

00:08:33 Yeah, that's helpful. With that, I want to define some terms, but before I do, let me ask one

00:08:39 follow-up question. In Tim Keller's paradigm and everything that he was publishing towards

00:08:45 the end of his life on this subject, how does his definition of who is a fundamentalist differ,

00:08:53 if at all, with the traditional view of what it means to be a fundamentalist?

00:09:00 He has an extensive section on fundamentalism in that document. And there's basically originally

00:09:07 four chapters, one of which was on the decline of evangelicalism, which he centers very much

00:09:14 in the fundamentalist tradition and he sort of draws on george marsden the historian for his

00:09:19 definitions and i don't remember all of the marks that he associated with fundamentalism

00:09:24 uh but certainly uh sectarianism would be among them a rejection of things like social justice

00:09:32 would be among them it's sort of a highly combative attitude uh would be one so he does

00:09:38 have a definition of fundamentalism that's in there. Elevating of secondary and tertiary

00:09:47 doctrines above where they should be, that would be another one of it. So I don't think he has a

00:09:54 particularly bespoke definition of fundamentalism. He draws on other people, and I think the way

00:10:02 that he describes it is, you know, more or less accurate. I'm sure there's experts who would

00:10:08 probably quibble on it, but I don't think it's a lie to say there's something of a kind of

00:10:14 fundamentalist style, if you will. Okay. To me, it seems as though one of the shifts with

00:10:20 fundamentalism, that last point that you mentioned in terms of elevating secondary and tertiary

00:10:27 doctrines as though they were primary, giving them perhaps too much emphasis as dividing lines

00:10:32 between different camps. It seems as though that is true. The posture, the principle behind that

00:10:38 remains true, but it seems as though the secondary doctrines in specific that are being elevated

00:10:45 are not the same ones of the past. When I think of even just 20 years ago, it seems as though

00:10:50 mode of baptism between paedo or credo was a bigger issue than it is for kind of this new

00:10:58 fundamentalism. Um, or another example would be, uh, your view on the sign gifts of the spirit

00:11:04 continuationism as articulated, a third wave charismatic position is articulated by Sam

00:11:10 storms, Wayne Grudem, John Piper, uh, versus cessationism. Um, you know, the cessationism

00:11:16 that we would, uh, connect with someone like Sproul or MacArthur. These seem to be, uh,

00:11:21 larger issues and not just 50 years ago, but even just 10 years ago, perhaps even,

00:11:26 even just five years ago it seems like uh you would uh draw clear lines in separating tribes

00:11:34 and camps around uh a person's or ministry or a church's view of the gifts of the spirit

00:11:41 and baptism whereas now it seems like um the fundamentalist the new fundamentalist and i would

00:11:49 you know i probably not the term that i would choose for myself but i know that i probably

00:11:53 would fall into that category. For me, I'm finding as a credo-baptist far more commonality

00:11:59 with pedo-baptists and my fellow Presbyterians, guys like Doug Wilson and the Moscow Tried.

00:12:05 We're partnering on lots of different things there, but we're drawing harder lines on issues

00:12:12 of roles between men and women. So patriarchy versus a soft complementarianism seems to be

00:12:20 a starker uh divide than you know paedo versus credo baptism have you noticed that as well and

00:12:28 and what do you think uh what do you think might be going on there if that's true

00:12:31 i would put a little bit of a different spin on it when it comes to gender specifically

00:12:37 i do believe you're correct that the issues have changed around what the controversies are

00:12:43 part of what i saw going back a few years ago looking at the pressure complementarianism was

00:12:50 going to come under is it's very clear that complementarianism itself was originally designed

00:12:57 as a sort of third way doctrine it's a halfway house this is very clear from the works of

00:13:05 sociologist james davison hunter who wrote a book in 1987 the year the danvers statement came out

00:13:12 called Evangelicalism, The Coming Generation. And he talked about the three strands of thought

00:13:17 on gender roles, sort of the traditionalist position, which sort of unapologetically look

00:13:23 back to sort of pre-sexual revolution, 1950s style gender roles as the way it should be.

00:13:30 There were the feminists, and then there were the strand that he doesn't call them complementarian,

00:13:37 but it's clearly the strand that's evolving into complementarianism at that time,

00:13:41 where they say, we are not going to affirm 1950s gender roles, which I agree, we're more culturally

00:13:48 bound than per se a product of scripture. But we need to hold, also need to hold firm on the

00:13:55 things that the Bible specifically says around husbands as the head of the home and a male-only

00:14:02 pastorate. And they left a lot of wiggle room in there, I would say, as to terms of how much

00:14:09 differences there are between men and women but those were essentially the two kind of main focus

00:14:15 points of it and they also did try to acknowledge certain feminist critiques uh in the danver

00:14:24 station uh danver statement talks about an upsurge and abuse for example it essentially began the

00:14:32 movement began to redefine being the head of the home as servant leadership, essentially

00:14:39 undermining the way it was traditionally understood. And ultimately, it came together

00:14:46 into a sort of third way position, you might call it. And just as it's now kind of the thin

00:14:54 complementarianism is sort of collapsing on, you know, kind of the left flank, we also see people

00:15:02 on the right who are very dissatisfied with the same approach, and they are moving in a more

00:15:08 neopatriarchy direction. So we see that there's pressures coming to bear on complementarianism

00:15:16 from a variety of perspectives. What I would say on neopatriarchy, though, is that it is

00:15:23 kind of a niche, largely online movement. You know, Doug Wilson sort of has some of that,

00:15:29 Although Doug himself, I sort of classify as a little bit of, you know, he's a boomer figure himself.

00:15:36 And, you know, much of his writing, you know, from the past, I think would be some stuff that certainly some of the Christian Manosphere guys criticized him as being too feminist friendly.

00:15:49 So he's he's maybe not as full throated a patriarchalist as some would like.

00:15:56 But that's certainly another piece of pressure that's hitting the complementarian position and complementarianism, in my view, congealed at a particular point in time in response to a particular set of social pressures and a particular set of people that were involved.

00:16:17 and it created something that sort of held for a while but as time has moved on it's a little bit

00:16:23 coming apart and what we see is you know i think if you talk to some of the complementarian

00:16:31 biggest complementarian promoters they would simply say look what's wrong with you know a

00:16:37 male only pastor i mean that's what we believe in we believe in the bible uh and i think they're

00:16:42 they're sort of true on that they're true on that point but it's really sort of this broader vision

00:16:48 that extends beyond um sort of the you know narrow definitions of who could be a pastor who's the

00:16:55 head of the home into a much broader conception of substantive complementarity of the genders

00:17:01 and what does that actually mean and how substantive is it and interestingly uh although

00:17:09 So the main complementarian book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, was written to be co-edited by John Piper, and it really doesn't go into any detail on substantive complementarity.

00:17:22 It talks about complementarity, but it really doesn't focus on it.

00:17:26 Piper himself is really probably the foremost advocate of a sort of thick or broad complementarian vision in which the differences between the sexes have pervasive effects on what they should and shouldn't be doing in his life.

00:17:40 I believe he says things like women shouldn't be police officers, for example, and has gotten criticized over that.

00:17:47 And so, you know, I don't want to suggest that all of these people thought exactly the same.

00:17:53 I mean, part of it is with complementarianism, there are people who had kind of different perspectives and they had to create something that everybody could agree with.

00:18:01 It's like any sort of statement.

00:18:03 uh you know once you try to actually create an institution in create a movement create

00:18:10 a document you can all sign on to that causes uh you know it's a lot harder because you're

00:18:17 dealing in the real world you're not just dealing in intellectual abstractions or

00:18:20 you know aaron wren putting out what he thinks in a newsletter now you're dealing with oh wait a

00:18:26 minute i have people that i have to actually work with and that you know kind of strains what we

00:18:31 can do right yep um you're right to say that there's a sliding scale a spectrum uh within

00:18:38 the complementarian world from you know i've articulated in the past as um kind of narrow

00:18:45 and soft versus broad and hard the the hard and soft piece i use those to describe um you know

00:18:53 you could hold to a woman can't be an elder but she could still preach underneath the authority 1.00

00:18:59 of the elders. I would say that that's a soft complementarian view, whereas hard would be,

00:19:04 you know, she cannot exercise authority or teach, seeing it as not one prohibition in 1 Timothy

00:19:10 chapter 2, but as one prohibition, meaning she can't teach with authority, but as two separate

00:19:18 prohibitions, she cannot teach or exercise authority. So that's the soft and hard. That's 1.00

00:19:23 an example of that piece. And then the narrow and broad would be, do these differences, these

00:19:28 distinctions only have application in the home of the church, or is there a broader application?

00:19:34 You brought up the example of John Piper, who would be what I would describe as both hard and

00:19:40 broad complementarian. Just for our listeners, let me, in my assessment, show a little bit of

00:19:48 the distinction between egalitarian and complementarian and then complementarian and

00:19:51 patriarch. And I'd love to get your feedback if you would agree with these definitional

00:19:57 distinctions for the record um i would place myself into the patriarchy category uh for the

00:20:03 view that i hold but the differences as i see it is that um some of these egalitarians that the

00:20:09 softer complementarians are being encouraged to link arms with um that would be the more

00:20:13 conservative egalitarians they would still see a gender binary still see male and female

00:20:18 um but at the level both the home and the church um it's not that uh the husband is the head of

00:20:24 his house, but it would be this mutual submission under Christ. And the emphasis would be placed

00:20:29 there. So there's not a male headship in the home and there's not a male headship in the church

00:20:35 within complementarianism. In my assessment, 1988 is when Wayne Grudem and John Piper coined

00:20:42 the phrase, I think it's always meant to be a halfway house, a third way option. And it seems

00:20:49 as though they said there are distinctions and roles that do actually stem from a distinction

00:20:54 and nature so it's not just male and female roles he assigned them but male and female natures he

00:20:59 designed them he made them but the only difference in nature is in the physical realm that women have

00:21:06 hips and men you know can can bench press and so even in the broad iteration of complementarianism

00:21:13 You know, it would extend beyond that, like certain roles like police officers or combat roles in the military, those kinds of things.

00:21:21 But it would it would limit the distinction of nature to the physical, whereas patriarchy, by comparison, most of the patriarchal guys that I'm familiar with, there would be, you know, a spectrum of iterations and applications.

00:21:35 but most would agree that the distinction in roles is not just relegated to the home of the church

00:21:42 but the whole of society and those distinction of roles are not arbitrary or capricious. They

00:21:48 stem from a distinction in design nature but that distinction in design is not merely physical

00:21:54 in our physical anatomy but they would also cite passages. I would be one to cite passages like

00:22:01 first corinthians or i'm sorry like a first timothy chapter two that where paul doesn't just

00:22:06 rely on the order of creation but he also relies on the order of the fall and so going back to

00:22:12 some older theologians that would put some emphasis on the fact that the woman was the

00:22:17 one who was deceived and became a sinner so it's not just her physical anatomy being different than

00:22:23 a man that she's not physically built to lead but emotionally psychologically that there are other

00:22:29 components of the whole person of men and women that are distinct at the level of nature not

00:22:35 merely role and that the role stems from that difference not just a physical difference in

00:22:39 nature but a psychological emotional that all the way down god made us different and that that

00:22:45 applies not just in the home of the church but in society as a whole that's my understanding of

00:22:50 biblical patriarchy and there are other iterations is there anything that you feel like i missed or

00:22:55 anything that you would add to some of those definitions? Well, I think you kind of covered

00:23:02 up some of the differences between these camps within the evangelical world. One thing that I

00:23:10 would say is when it comes to patriarchy, you know, patriarchy is not just a set of interpretations

00:23:16 about scriptures. I would have said that historically we would have thought of patriarchy

00:23:20 as an actual cultural legal system in which, you know, the father held genuine rules.

00:23:28 So the Roman paterfamilias really did hold legal, social, cultural power over his household.

00:23:38 Whereas, you know, in our society, we live in a legally and culturally egalitarian society.

00:23:44 So that is the background.

00:23:46 And I do think if I were to put one challenge to the patriarchal position here is,

00:23:50 to me, it's a little bit like, I believe in the divine right of kings.

00:23:55 Well, we don't have a king.

00:23:57 You know, so that's, I think that is a huge issue for practically speaking,

00:24:02 what does it mean to believe in patriarchy?

00:24:05 I think that that has not been fully kind of teased out in terms of,

00:24:11 in light of this belief system, how does one live in a society like today

00:24:16 where fathers are actually disadvantaged by the cultural and legal systems creates a really kind

00:24:24 of an interesting uh conundrum i think but i do think that basically with what the proviso that

00:24:29 i think patriarchy is actually essentially a legal and cultural system in addition to being

00:24:35 an interpretation of the scripture that would be the only thing the only twist i would put on there

00:24:38 okay yeah that's helpful um but yeah you're right it's difficult um to actually practically carry it

00:24:44 out when we are so far from that system in the West today that really, and part of that is not

00:24:53 just our views of men and women, but it's also views of households and individuals that we're

00:24:58 an atomistic society, that the basic building block for many is considered to be the individual

00:25:05 person and not the household. And so this idea that- I don't want to get too far afield from our

00:25:11 from our discussion here but you know there's a lot of things like that just the fact that we live

00:25:15 in a uh you know mass urbanized highly technological society uh compared to the

00:25:22 pre-industrial household based society of the bible it really creates a radically different

00:25:29 environment you know today versus the past that makes things quite complex in terms of thinking

00:25:37 about how to live uh you know what does it mean to live in any kind of biblical manner in that

00:25:43 environment which is radically different uh from the past kind of unprecedented in many ways

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00:28:51 All right, well, go ahead and share any other thoughts

00:28:54 that you might have in regards to,

00:28:57 well, I'd love to hear,

00:28:58 not that you have a crystal ball

00:29:00 and so we're not going to hold you to it,

00:29:02 but if you could indulge in some speculation,

00:29:05 what are some of your predictions

00:29:07 for the evangelical church on this particular issue,

00:29:10 men and women, what do you think's going to happen?

00:29:16 That's a good question.

00:29:17 I do see evidence that people are putting the Keller strategy into practice, which is – we saw it with some writing columns that Russell Moore has recently done.

00:29:31 Russell Moore, former Southern Baptist entity chief, now editor of Christianity Today, wrote a column where he essentially repented of being the old patriarchal Russell Moore.

00:29:42 In fact, Russell Moore used to be an overt patriarchalist, and he now says, I want to partner with these conservative egalitarians, and I want to be less associated with people like the old Russell Moore.

00:29:58 So like Keller, he sort of divides the world into sort of good and bad egalitarians and good and bad complementarians, and he's like, well, the good complementarians and the good egalitarians need to work together.

00:30:08 We also see a lot of debates over gender roles in the Southern Baptist Convention.

00:30:15 There's a proposed amendment that would clarify constitutionally that churches can't be part of the SBC unless they have exclusively male pastors.

00:30:29 So I do believe there is going to be kind of an elite movement more in an egalitarian direction.

00:30:37 The first step is to essentially downgrade egalitarianism as constituting one of these barriers that would have defined tribes and say, well, rather than we have the complementarians over here and the egalitarians over there, why don't we just work and partner more with these egalitarians?

00:30:56 Why don't we just embrace them as more authentic?

00:31:00 So we just essentially downgrade the gender roles to a sort of lower status, maybe from – this is illustrative here – from a second-order issue to a third-order issue.

00:31:10 So let's start downgrading that and sort of treat it as a matter of conscience.

00:31:14 That seems to be the move that's going now.

00:31:18 i believe that's going to be something that's going to have a lot of appeal

00:31:23 to a lot of people who are highly educated and it kind of leads off in a direction towards

00:31:30 ultimately egalitarianism um i think it's going to be very difficult to sustain any sort of

00:31:40 complementarian vision that has a very narrow and thin view of the differences between men and women

00:31:47 and essentially treats the difference between men and women

00:31:53 as coming down to two arbitrary rules God made. 1.00

00:31:55 You know, women can't preach. 0.99

00:31:57 Only men can preach and be pastors and men are the head of the hum. 0.63

00:32:01 There's a lot of people who believe that.

00:32:02 That is essentially the Keller position.

00:32:05 You know, it's summed up in the Kathy Keller line. 0.90

00:32:07 You know, a woman can do anything an ordained man can do. 0.99

00:32:11 And I think that's going to prove to be unsustainable in the long term 0.99

00:32:16 because it's it's really weird you know if you think about it it kind of is a weird position

00:32:22 uh the uh you know so i think that that that sort of is going to go in one direction

00:32:28 i think the uh you know we're also going to have this sort of neo-patriarchal split

00:32:33 off the other side and i think for the people who want to remain complementarian and or

00:32:41 patriarch kind of patriarchalist they're going to have to find some way to make that viable

00:32:50 to actually live out in modern industrial society in which the official culture of society and the

00:32:59 legal system you know are deeply hostile to it you really can't you really can't say well the

00:33:04 husband is the head of the home but if the wife decides she doesn't like him anymore for no reason

00:33:09 at all she can divorce him and it's going to go pretty much in her favor or certainly not against

00:33:15 her in the divorce court and oh by the way then she can show up at a church and they're going to 0.92

00:33:20 treat her as this victim of emotional abuse when she claims that you know her ex-husband is no good 1.00

00:33:26 and that she's a poor single mother who needs help and the church is going to actively underwrite

00:33:31 that divorce right and it happens all the time and so when you're in that environment uh

00:33:37 Now, you have to come up with some sort of a vision that's actually functional in that environment, and that's going to be a very big challenge.

00:33:50 Now, having said that, when you look at the votes at the recent SBC, which came down, you know, 80, 90 percent on some issues in favor of complementarianism, it does not look like essentially, you know, evangelicals, certainly conservative evangelicals are planning to abandon complementarianism anytime soon, although we see things moving in certain particular directions.

00:34:15 Right. Yeah, no, I think you're right.

00:34:17 at a societal level um you don't have some of those safeguards um but that's you know i mean

00:34:25 that's in some sense it feels like saying it's going to be really hard to practice integrity

00:34:30 and not lie uh because of social media and ai um you know like there are always going to be

00:34:37 certain cultural and technological advancements um that are going to force people if they want

00:34:43 to live in accordance with their conscience, and what they believe the Bible teaches, that they

00:34:49 won't have the social constructs to keep them in that lane, that it'll have to be a conscience

00:34:54 choice, that it'll have to be, you know, they'll actually have to be willing to do that, and so 0.77

00:35:00 right now, you're absolutely right, at any point, the trad wife can decide, that's it, I'm done,

00:35:06 you know, I've been LARPing as a 1950s, you know, housewife for the last decade, and, you know, I

00:35:12 had my fun and I ran my social media accounts and I, you know, did these kinds of things. Um,

00:35:18 but I'm kind of done with that. I don't like my husband anymore. And she could tap out in a way

00:35:24 that a woman actually in the 1950s could not tap out. She could say, I don't like this, but she

00:35:30 wouldn't really have anywhere socially to go. Um, so all that being said, I think you're absolutely

00:35:35 right. Uh, that does make it more challenging, but in my assessment, it doesn't make it impossible.

00:35:41 you still have you know your will your ability to choose to abide by a certain set of principles

00:35:48 that you believe in regardless of what the law happens to be in that particular place in time

00:35:55 so any any other thoughts on on that i don't think so okay um for the patriarchy guys last

00:36:05 question um you do your best or also feel free to decline to answer it's up to you but for the

00:36:11 patriarchal guys the theo bros whatever you want to call them um it seems like we don't really have

00:36:18 any institutions um you know it's it's going to be a really uphill climb uh certainly seems um

00:36:25 disheartening and uh all but impossible the one thing i think that we have on our side

00:36:32 um aside from i believe the word of god and because i hold to that position so obviously

00:36:37 i'm convicted that that the word of god speaks to it in addition to that we also have nature

00:36:42 and nature usually tends to be a force to be reckoned with so we don't have the social and

00:36:47 legal system um but uh but we do have um some just some natural things that it's just hard to

00:36:54 go against the way that god designed the world no matter how technologically advanced you may

00:37:00 become. They're just certain things that, uh, that God has built into the fabric of the world,

00:37:04 uh, that will eternally ring true. Um, all that being said, again, uh, despite those advantages,

00:37:11 there are lots of disadvantages. Uh, what do you think the, the patriarchal guys, that side of the

00:37:17 aisle, do you think there's any hope for them with this, you know, this shift you're saying,

00:37:21 I already see institutionally this shift of what Keller was advocating for towards the end of his 0.53

00:37:26 life that you know the arms are being linked the the allegiances are being made with the egalitarians

00:37:32 i see that happening um do what do you see with the patriarchal side of the aisle do you think

00:37:38 it's just just um these guys are just going to be larping around all 14 of them you know on twitter

00:37:45 or do you think that do you think there's actually a chance i always say that you know the first

00:37:52 thing we have to do is discern and align ourselves with the truth and so we need to make sure that

00:37:59 we are not just regurgitating things and that we actually know what the truth is or we at least

00:38:06 know where we don't know you know because a lot of my work kind of came out of the fact that i

00:38:13 thought i believed one thing when i came to church and i was taught all these things i just took it

00:38:18 I said, well, this is what they're teaching me. These are the good guys. And so I'm going to

00:38:23 follow this. And then all of a sudden I realized some of the stuff they're telling me actually

00:38:26 wasn't accurate. And so I think we need to have the courage to admit that we ourselves could be

00:38:32 wrong. And so I think that willingness to do it ourselves is important and to know where we don't

00:38:39 have all the answers. How should we live today? That is a hard question without an obvious answer

00:38:48 maybe an answer that can't be boiled down to a set of rules i think a lot of times people want to 1.00

00:38:54 have this biblical rule very bright line that's one of the reasons i think that you know women

00:39:02 can't be pastors things appeals to people because it's it's a rule we can apply a rule whereas a lot

00:39:08 of the things that we have to do today involve wisdom where should i live what kind of career

00:39:13 should I go into? How do I find a spouse in this environment? How do I actually stay married?

00:39:21 How do I raise my kids in ways that they will not abandon their faith when they're older and

00:39:27 they'll stand on the truth? These are hard questions that we have to equip people with

00:39:32 tools to answer. That's one of them. The other thing I say is, again, I think a lot of this

00:39:39 stuff tends to be an online movement and i think some of the online interactions are very

00:39:44 counterproductive uh you know when tim keller died people are trashing him on twitter i mean

00:39:52 that's just not going to win many admirers from people we have these social rules like don't speak

00:39:59 ill of the dead and you know you do that you're in trouble and the other thing i'd say is you know

00:40:04 you see some of these people this is not necessarily all of them picking fights with

00:40:08 women online if you believe when men and women are different then you would go back to that old

00:40:14 rule from the playground you can't hit a girl and basically i would say you know the odds are very

00:40:22 low that anything good is going to come out of getting in a fight with a woman if you're a man

00:40:26 it typically doesn't go well for you and so uh how do you operate in that environment is not always

00:40:34 is is not always key uh but i think it goes almost like the political idea of owning the libs

00:40:40 becomes like the the motivator uh a little bit and i would dial back some of that and think more

00:40:49 about some of these other issues substantively um and you know what does it mean to live out

00:40:56 you know the bible's um calling in this world today practically speaking right and that is a

00:41:04 very difficult question dude i do not plan you know profess to have all the answers to myself

00:41:10 you know and you know i i do believe certain things i do believe you know it's good to be

00:41:16 married for the most for most people i think that's the normative call people's lives there's

00:41:20 things i i do think but i think we need to focus a lot more on kind of the the practical uh the

00:41:27 practical side of some of these things uh as well that's what i would say and again that's not like

00:41:34 how do the how do these people win or get traction i don't know but those are the things that i i see

00:41:40 in the movement that i might uh suggest focusing on yeah no i agree uh definitely in terms of the

00:41:48 getting into arguments online with women it's a ironic posture to take for somebody you know i

00:41:55 would say patriarchy you know one of the things that i would say that differentiates the work

00:42:01 that i did and my newsletter was originally called the masculinist and it very much focused

00:42:05 on men's issues and i still write about men's issues but it is not rooted in anti-feminism

00:42:12 and i was thinking about this it wasn't something i self-consciously thought of when i started it

00:42:17 But as I was thinking about people who get in arguments with all these women, I said to myself, you know, nothing that I'm doing is a response to something women are doing or saying.

00:42:31 It's just, you know, I've got an agenda that I'm pushing.

00:42:34 If anything, it's other men that I'm interested in pushing back on.

00:42:39 And I do think there's a sense, if you went back to this sort of pre-feminist era, you know, men were not obsessed with what women were doing and saying, it wasn't like, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't something that was like, you know, men kind of had their own world, you know, men had their own social world.

00:42:57 And that's sort of been destroyed.

00:42:59 In fact, that'd be one thing I'd do is recreating sort of a men's social world in an era where there are no more all-male clubs, no more all-male spaces, or very few of them.

00:43:07 uh you know men operated largely in the world of men they didn't really spend a lot of time

00:43:12 concerning themselves with the affairs of women i think a lot of the kind of conservative

00:43:16 people i see seem to have a very explicitly anti-feminist posture and it's always

00:43:22 a bad idea i shouldn't say always but it's a general rule it's a bad idea to define yourself

00:43:30 in opposition to something instead of being in favor of something yeah we can make some

00:43:35 exceptions there it's probably good to be anti-slavery but for the most part being anti-something

00:43:41 creates an identity that is simply a reflection of that thing that you're against instead of

00:43:46 being something you're for yeah that makes sense uh the last thing that i'll say is this um i think

00:43:52 part of the difficulty on this particular issue really any issue but i always say that um as a

00:43:57 pastor i always say that faithful preaching is comprised of uh three primary components it's

00:44:04 revelation, interpretation, and application. Revelation being I have a text, not a dream or

00:44:09 a strategy, but a text. The interpretation being a faithful exegesis of that text. And as the late

00:44:15 great R.C. Sproul once said, there's only one accurate interpretation. You can have a thousand

00:44:21 different faithful applications of a singular text, but God means what he means by that text.

00:44:28 so it's god's meaning god's interpretation the exegesis so revelation the text uh interpretation

00:44:34 the exegesis god's meaning of the text but then application and one of the things that i've

00:44:39 noticed is um that a lot of the reformed guys i think were light uh with the new calvinist movement

00:44:46 over the last 20 years a lot of them were light on that third piece application whereas the old

00:44:52 calvinist if you think of the reformers and especially the puritans um the puritans i mean

00:44:57 they would they would go a whole extra hour sometimes in their preaching of just giving

00:45:02 practical applications and that's really in many ways that's where you know the the term you know

00:45:07 the pejorative puritanical comes from is that they you know that they were constantly being accused

00:45:14 of being legalist because they were taking the word of god and saying in this particular practical

00:45:20 instance it means you need to do this there were commands actually being issued and so all that

00:45:27 being said i think that a lot of the more modern reformed new calvinist preacher types

00:45:33 i would say are the equivalent of an audible commentary an hour-long audible commentary on

00:45:41 lord's day it's it's revelation and interpretation but very little if any at all application that

00:45:47 third piece and i think part of the reason why is because that third piece is the most controversial

00:45:52 piece um you can read the text and and just read the text and sit down and offend you know somebody

00:46:00 who's maybe deeply progressive and lgbt affirming um but with your fellow brothers in christ across

00:46:07 the aisle and different tribes if you just read the text and even go further from revelation to

00:46:12 interpretation and give a reformed exegesis, conservative interpretation of a particular

00:46:17 text, you still won't have a lot of enemies on your right. Um, but the moment that you give an

00:46:23 application and you say, um, you know, so like for instance, you know, I've asked people, uh,

00:46:28 not theoretically, not in theory, but in practice function, um, what kind of authority does a man

00:46:35 have in his home? If you are a complementarian or patriarchal, if that is your position and you

00:46:40 believe that the husband is the head of his wife what does that mean because on the church side

00:46:45 complementarianism is a lot more practical we all have at least this working definition of what

00:46:52 that means is that a woman can't preach and she can't be an elder and so we we have a real clear

00:46:58 we don't have that on the home side on the home front when we come to the home with the same 0.92

00:47:04 doctrine of complementarianism or even biblical patriarchy in both views when it comes to the

00:47:10 home, practically, what does this mean? And essentially, what it usually boils down to,

00:47:14 and I think I've heard this from a lot of guys, including you talking about Mark Driscoll, that

00:47:18 when you really get down to the nuts and bolts, the application, practically, that Driscoll was

00:47:24 kind of a little bit egalitarian. For as macho as he sounded and those kinds of things, what does

00:47:29 it mean for the husband to be the head of his home? It means you exercise that authority to

00:47:33 do what your wife wants. Exactly. And that's it. And so really at the end of the day, you know, 0.87

00:47:40 I I'm actually running a poll on Twitter right now, which is probably something that you want

00:47:44 to do. Um, I'm being a little facetious, but I'm trying to make a point and I'm not trying to be

00:47:48 overly, uh, offensive. Uh, but I said, uh, practically speaking, aside from theory,

00:47:54 practically speaking, how much authority does a husband have in his home? And then I gave two

00:47:58 options none i'm an egalitarian and none i'm a complementarian so i wanted to see you know you

00:48:05 know which option people would pick and so i think part of what the patriarchal guys are trying to do

00:48:10 and and i'm not saying that everybody's doing it well but i think uh what they'll have to do if

00:48:15 it's going to be a viable position is they're going to have to get into the realm of application

00:48:20 not just revelation interpreted but the realm of application and you cannot get in that realm

00:48:25 without creating enemies in my experience not just me and the complementarian the soft

00:48:32 complementarian and the hard patriarchal we're both going to share enemies on the left for the

00:48:37 for the the person who doesn't even identify as being a follower of christ who's you know has the

00:48:42 rainbow flag and they're on the front porch we're both going to have that person as an enemy um but

00:48:47 but the person who begins to talk about not just revelation and interpretation but application is

00:48:52 going to quickly, uh, find enemies amongst, uh, genuine brothers in Christ. Um, and so,

00:48:58 but I don't see any other way, uh, to outline a position like the roles between men and women,

00:49:05 uh, without getting into the practical piece. Well, any, any final thoughts on that? And then

00:49:11 we'll go ahead and wrap up the episode. Yeah. I would say in many of the areas that I highlighted

00:49:19 about how we need to be creating applications and tools to help people live in the world,

00:49:25 that it's not all up to the pastor of the church to come up with that.

00:49:30 Pastors of churches have become a little reticent to give life applications

00:49:35 as a result of some things like purity culture.

00:49:39 You know, I Kissed Dating Goodbye really wasn't a biblical application.

00:49:43 and so i think certainly it's within the role of the pastor to give applications of scriptures

00:49:53 in people's lives and help them do that and make it tangible and practical but today evangelicals

00:50:00 essentially assume the pastor's got to have the answer for everything the pastor isn't going to

00:50:04 have the answer to everything we need people who are lay experts in various things who can step up

00:50:11 and show the way on certain things like, oh, how do you find a spouse today in this world?

00:50:19 Maybe the pastor's going to know something about that.

00:50:22 Maybe there are going to be a lot of other people in the pews that are going to know

00:50:24 things about that too and could share the wisdom that they've learned.

00:50:28 So the application one is one that goes beyond just the pastor.

00:50:34 It's unfair to put that much pressure on a pastor to come up with all of the answers

00:50:40 for how to live now it has to be a more full spectrum uh approach agreed um okay final

00:50:47 question so how do you feel about the puritans i don't know that much about the puritans

00:50:56 uh to to be honest i'm and i'm not a puritan scholar uh so i'm afraid i really can't say

00:51:04 too much about that okay fair enough all right um anything if you could ask another question

00:51:08 And if that wasn't sufficient, you could take a mulligan on that.

00:51:11 Well, then I'll ask you this question.

00:51:13 It'll be serving for you.

00:51:15 How can anything else that you want our listeners?

00:51:17 We already talked about your website.

00:51:19 We can plug it one more time here at the end.

00:51:20 But anything else that you would like our listeners to know about that you're working on?

00:51:25 Yes, I do have a book coming out in January called Life in the Negative World.

00:51:31 You can preorder it on Amazon and looking forward to that.

00:51:34 And it does come up with a few ideas.

00:51:38 for how we ought to be responding.

00:51:40 So coming up with application is not just something I'm saying you need to do,

00:51:43 but I'm trying to take some of that too.

00:51:44 So you could go pre-order that on Amazon.

00:51:47 And then don't forget to sign up for my website at AaronWren.com.

00:51:50 Cool. Great. Well, I'll be looking forward to your book.

00:51:52 And once it comes out, we'd be honored to have you back on the show.

00:51:56 Great.

00:51:57 All right. Thanks, Aaron. Appreciate it.

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The NXR Podcast - August 22, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Timothy Keller’s Deathbed Strategy For Evangelicals

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