Book Review

In The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, Beth Allison Barr shares her personal story of rejecting complementarian views on male headship and female submission. Growing up, Barr had internalized the complementarian notions of “biblical” womanhood from the teaching of evangelical influencers such as Bill Gothard, James Dobson, Pat Roberston, the LaHayes, and others. A variety of disturbing and hurtful interactions faced by Barr and her husband prompted a deep examination of the topic.

Book Review

In well over thirty years in debate with scholarly complementarians on the status and ministry of women and on the Trinity, I have been accused of rejecting the authority of the Bible, denying what the Bible clearly teaches on the man-woman and the divine Father-Son relationships, of being an “evangelical-feminist,” and even an Arian. While some theologians have been terribly uncharitable, I am delighted by the dignity of Matthew Barrett.

Book Review

One cannot ignore the impact of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology upon conservative evangelicalism, especially as it relates to the evangelical gender debate. As co-founder of The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood¹ and a significant face behind the complementarian-leaning English Standard Version, Grudem’s second edition (ST2 hereafter) merits a review in Priscilla Papers.

Book Review

Essay collections have been important to the thriving of evangelical egalitarianism over the last few decades. A key example is Women, Authority, and the Bible (IVP, 1986), edited by Alvera Mickelsen, the first board chair of CBE International. This volume assembled the voices of more than twenty evangelical scholars and was instrumental in articulating the theological and biblical case for egalitarianism.

Book Review

The saying goes that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Kevin Giles, a retired Australian Anglican minister of over forty years and long-time champion of the egalitarian movement, believes this is certainly true of male-headship teachings. Answering his title question in the affirmative, Giles forcefully argues that “headship teaching can encourage and legitimate domestic abuse and it must be abandoned if domestic abuse is to be effectively countered in our churches” (2).

Reframing the Debate over Figurative Meaning

In the spring of 2015, I listened to my NT Greek professor explain different interpretive approaches to “For the husband is the head [kephalē] of the wife as Christ is the head [kephalē] of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior” (Eph 5:23 NIV). He explained that some people think kephalē means “authority” and some people think it means “source.” His comments echoed what I had heard in almost every treatment of Eph 5:23 I had read.

The cover of this issue of Priscilla Papers shows Rembrandt’s depiction of the Apostle Paul poring over a book. In 2 Timothy 4:13, the verse that provides this issue’s theme, Paul asks Timothy, “. . . and bring the books.”

I just looked at a recent issue of a theological journal, sitting on my shelf within arm’s reach, to see how many book reviews it contains: forty-six. This is several more than the thirty published in Priscilla Papers since I became editor in the autumn of 2014.

Dear non-POC¹ friends of CBE International,

If you are reading this message, congratulations. You’ve survived a year of global pandemic, economic recession, social distancing, wildfires, floods, an ammonium nitrate explosion, murder hornets, and likely the most acrimonious US presidential election in living memory. If you’re looking at this list thinking, “feels like something’s missing,” it’s because some of us didn’t survive the racial disharmony that was also a hallmark of 2020.

Imagine waiting to be born inside a small, warm, and dark home. You feel safe and protected, and every need is provided. You are aware of a faraway pulsing and gentle voice. Eventually, the walls begin to squeeze in on you. At first, gently, then with greater force. You are ejected not so much out, but into a new home. You are born. You experience the gentle voice hinted at inside the womb as a person. You recognize her as Mother.

Women today have proven themselves successful in medicine, law, and virtually all other professions. Why, then, do certain churches refuse to ordain them? Some churches claim that ordaining women would be contrary to tradition and Scripture. Men, they say, have led the church for centuries, but female clergy are a relatively new phenomenon, one that reflects the influence of secular humanism and modernism, not orthodox teaching. However, this argument ignores the facts.