90 FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE SCRIPTURE
that most directly speak to the question of women teaching and gov-
erning in the church are silenced and excluded from discussion on that
very question. In essence, this approach guarantees that a decision
about women teaching and governing in the church will be made with-
out reference to the passages in the Bible that speak most directly to the
topic. It is hard to think of an approach more likely to lead to a wrong
decision.
A. WHY IS THE ISSUE OF WOMEN’S ROLES IN CHURCH AND HOME
DIFFERENT FROM QUESTIONS ABOUT THE END TIMES OR BAPTISM
OR PREDESTINATION?
At this point someone may object as follows: “But we all do this with
hard questions! Many people decide they can’t figure out the differences
between premillennial, postmillennial, and amillennial views of Christ’s
return, or between pre-tribulation and post-tribulation views of the end
times. And many people can’t figure out how to reconcile predestination
and our individual choices, or how to understand the doctrine of the
Trinity. In addition, many Christian organizations have said they sim-
ply will not take a stand regarding different views of baptism or
Calvinism and Arminianism. None of these decisions is a concession to
liberalism! How is this issue different?”
My response is that this issue is different from those questions in
several important ways. Here are the factors to consider:
(1) Hidden things. I agree that there are some things that God has
not told us in Scripture. He has not told us how he can be three persons
and yet one God. He has not told us exactly how predestination fits
together with the reality of our individual choices.^10 Regarding myster-
ies like these, we have to remember Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret
things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed
belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words
of this law.”
But the role of women in the church is not like this. It is not a “secret
(^10) However, God has told us quite a lot about those topics, while still not answering all our
questions. See Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan,
1994), chapters 14 (on the Trinity), 16 (on providence), and 32 (on predestination).