258 WHERE IS EVANGELICAL FEMINISM TAKING US?
it seems to me that having a woman teach the Bible to men is doing just
what Paul said not to do in 1 Timothy 2:12. And I don’t think such a
position will remain stable for very long, but will lead to further move-
ment in an egalitarian direction. This is because it will be very difficult
to explain why a woman can teach the Bible to men in a seminary on
Monday but cannot teach the same passage to the same men in a church
on Sunday—on the surface it seems inconsistent. And it will be difficult
to answer the argument, “If a woman can train hundreds of pastors to
preach, surely she herself should be able to preach!” I think most
Christians will reason that, if we allow the one, surely we can allow the
other. So I personally expect that seminaries who hire women as Bible
professors will move in a more egalitarian direction in a few years. I
hope I am wrong.^3
Among book publishers, the largest number of evangelical femi-
nist books are being published by InterVarsity Press^4 and Baker
Books.
Among popular journals, both Charisma magazine under the edi-
torship of J. Lee Grady and Christianity Today under the leadership of
David Neff clearly favor an evangelical feminist position (though
Christianity Today has made some attempts to represent both sides
fairly).
Among parachurch ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is
strongly committed to an evangelical feminist position, as is Youth
With A Mission. The Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization is
apparently now dominated by a thoroughgoing evangelical feminist
(^3) As I explained more fully elsewhere, I think it is consistent to distinguish between teaching
skills and teaching Bible. I can agree that teaching beginning language courses (such as Greek
or Hebrew) is more teaching a skill than teaching Bible, and I think it is possible to understand
the teaching of missions or counseling in this way as well (it is primarily teaching a skill, not
primarily teaching Bible in the sense that Paul had in mind in 1 Tim. 2:12). See Wayne Grudem,
Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, 84-101, 384-392.
(^4) Sadly, InterVarsity Press (USA, not UK) has published other books that move in a more lib-
eral direction, such as Authentic Human Sexuality, by Judith and Jack Balswick, which says
that “Accept homosexuality in committed relationships” is a “centrist” position, and it is
the position they give much more support for in their discussion (see pages 247-249 above).
IVP-USA has also published Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, by Joel Green (Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), which argues against the penal substitutionary view of
the atonement (see pages 30-32, 91-97, and 132-133), a doctrine at the heart of the gospel.
And it has published books advocating “open theism,” the view that God does not know
the future choices of human beings: see The Openness of God, edited by Clark Pinnock
et al. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), and The God Who Risks, by John
Sanders (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998).