Further reflections on egalitarianism and heresy

A week and a half or so ago, I put up a post offering a few thoughts on the right use of the word “heresy,” riffing on a comment of Mark Driscoll’s at GCNC and interacting with an editorial by S. M. Hutchens in the latest Touchstone.  As I expected, it met with no particular response—initially.  It appears, however, that someone (who disagreed with me) started e-mailing it around, and a few days ago, comments started popping up—including, interestingly, a response from Dr. Hutchens himself.  I’m rather surprised he took the time to answer a no-name blogger like me, but it’s always gratifying to be taken seriously.

Nevertheless, I still don’t agree with his position; and I must confess myself somewhat underwhelmed by the arguments raised against mine.  For one thing, with regard to the question of whether it’s appropriate to label egalitarianism a heresy, I’m struck by the complete absence of any biblical or biblical-theological arguments on the point at all.  The argumentation is purely at the level of systematic theology, and essentially consists of assertions as to the inevitable negative consequences in other areas of an egalitarian position.  This is problematic, at best.  I agree that there is value in arguing at this level, for certain purposes; I do not, however, consider such arguments sufficient in and of themselves for proving the correctness or falsity of a given doctrine.  They may serve a useful purpose as part of such a proof, but our doctrines should not be grounded in our theological systems.  They should, rather, be grounded in Scripture.  Biblical theology is necessarily prior to any truly Christian systematic theology (and exegesis and hermeneutics are necessarily prior to biblical theology).

The truth of the matter is, of course, that neither Dr. Hutchens nor any other of my interlocutors feels any need at all to actually defend their view on this point; they simply take it as a given and assert it.  Then, as noted, they proceed to offer arguments as to why, given that egalitarianism is false (which I do not grant, but which they assume), it is necessary to label it as a heresy.  Should any of them cycle back to offer any actual argument for their assumption that this position is in fact false, we can discuss that; for now, since they have opted to argue not with Scripture but with logic-chopping, I will seek to answer them in their chosen terms.

The nub of my response to Dr. Hutchens’ editorial was that error in one’s view of male and female roles is not necessarily serious enough to merit a charge of heresy (and specifically, that the egalitarian position as such does not merit that charge).  At one point, I wrote,

Heretical doctrine is not merely doctrine which is in error, but doctrine which is in error on the core matters of the Christian faith, in such a way that the doctrine fundamentally threatens the integrity of the gospel message.

An individual who’s chosen the handle “Truth Unites… and Divides” (henceforth TUD, if only so I can avoid retyping that poor crippled excuse for an elipsis) had four comments.

#1. The argument assumes a hierarchy of doctrines.

Yes, it does.  There’s nothing terribly non-standard about that.  As I noted, the very idea of “mere Christianity” requires at the least the idea that some doctrines are essential and some are non-essential.  Another example of this would be the line (which I’ve seen attributed to many people, so I won’t credit it to anyone until I can see the primary source) “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

#2. Assuming a hierarchy, there is no consensus as to what are the “1st-order” doctrines which merit what you say deserves the rightful label of heresy.

True, but not on point.  There is no consensus on national economic policy either, but that doesn’t mean that all national economic policies are equally likely to produce prosperity.  Similarly, the absence of complete consensus on what doctrines are first-order (notice, I say complete consensus; I think there is consensus on many if not most of them) doesn’t invalidate the argument that some are and some are not.

#3. What Scriptural support do you offer for your argument that only aberrant teaching which negatively impacts salvation rightfully deserves the label of heresy?

For starters, look at St. Paul.  In 1 Corinthians 7, he clearly sees the views of some in the Corinthian church with regard to sexual abstinence as errant, and so he corrects them.  He just as clearly does not see those errors as equal in significance to those of the Judaizers who were leading the Galatian church astray.  It’s only in Galatians 1 that he says of anyone teaching a contrary position, “Let him be accursed”; he doesn’t feel the need to do so in 1 Corinthians 7.

#4. What support from Church history do you offer for your argument that only aberrant teaching which negatively impacts salvation rightfully deserves the label of heresy?

I draw on the wisdom of Christians of all ages, but as a Protestant, I don’t feel the need for support from church history (and yes, the small “c” is intentional).

Turning to Dr. Hutchens’ first comment, he wrote,

I have been thinking and writing on this subject for years now, and it was clear to me early on that the “anthropological heresy” of egalitarianism necessitated alterations in trinitarian doctrine—that one could not misconstrue the relation between the sexes created in the divine image without also attacking its theological root in the doctrine of God.

It’s clear to me that he’s wrong.  That is of course an utterly unfounded assertion; but then, so is yours, since the following actually doesn’t qualify as support:

If one will examine the current literature on the subject, he will see that now, indeed, that is just the place where the debate has moved.

Correlation does not equal causation, as anyone who shares my long-suffering fate as a Seattle Mariners fan can tell you; if it did, the expensive free agents currently mucking up our rotation would have pitched much better for us.  It seems to me this says more about the way that complementarians have argued this issue since George W. Knight III’s book (since if you frame an argument in a given set of terms long enough, people will tend to fall into responding to you in those terms) than it does about the actual logical necessity of such arguments.

As for subordinationism, it seems to me that it depends what is meant by the term.  Clearly, any position that holds that the Son and the Spirit are ontologically subordinate, are lesser in being than the Father, is heretical; just as clearly, there is logical subordination, as the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds (with some dispute as to from whom).  As well, Christ repeatedly asserts his functional subordination to the Father during his time on earth.  Thus we have two poles marking off the range of positions that can be called biblical; between those poles, there have been various positions held throughout church history, some of which have been labeled or have claimed the label “subordinationism.”

It’s important to note that there has not been one fixed position on this point throughout church history.  Dr. Hutchens, in complaining that “Egalitarian theologians are now insisting that the doctrine of the Church is, and always has been, that there is perfect equality in the Trinity, not just in regard to the divine essence, but the relations between the persons,” is disingenuously implying that this position was invented for the sole and sneaky purpose of finding a way to counter those virtuous complementarians’ arguments.  This simply isn’t true.  On my read, this is the position held by Athanasius and laid out in the Athanasian Creed, for starters.  For a more recent example, take Louis Berkhof, who might be considered the exemplary theologian of the last century of the Dutch Reformed tradition in America.  In his 1938 Systematic Theology (reprinted by Eerdmans in a single volume with his 1932 Introductory Volume to Systematic Theology), the ascription “to the Father [of] a certain pre-eminence over the other persons, in order, dignity, and power” is referenced as an “erroneous construction” associated with the Arminians.  Need it be said that Dr. Berkhof, writing in 1938 as a professor at an institution which isn’t exactly friendly to egalitarian thinking 70 years later, wasn’t arguing on behalf of the feminist agenda?

The irony of Dr. Hutchens’ argument here is that he labels egalitarians as people who “like Arius, [have] attacked Christian doctrine at its root”—on what grounds?  On the grounds that they have taken the same position on the relationships within the Trinity as Athanasius.  After all, it was Arius who was defending the subordinationist side in that argument, though of course he took it well beyond mere subordinationism; and it was Athanasius who held the position that the assertion of relational inequality among the persons of the Trinity must ultimately lead to Arianism.

In any event, one may argue for an eternal relational hierarchy among the persons of the Trinity and appeal both to the Church Fathers and (more fundamentally) to Scripture in support of this position; one may also argue for eternal relational equality among the persons of the Trinity (marked of course by functional subordination—as for instance the subordination of the Son to the Father during his time on earth) and appeal both to the Church Fathers and (more fundamentally) to Scripture in support of this position.  Both positions, it seems to me, are at least defensible.  One of them is of course wrong, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument that either one destroys our doctrine of God and thus “attacks Christian doctrine at its root.”

And even if I did—and I’m willing to listen—I don’t buy the argument that this applies to the disagreement between gender complementarians and gender egalitarians.  (Note:  I’m not using the term “gender” here because I believe it’s a social construct, but rather because I agree with C. S. Lewis that it is in fact the fundamental reality of which biological sex is the physical expression.)  I know Dr. Knight argues the connection between a belief in a relational hierarchy in the Trinity and a complementarian view of gender roles, and I know he’s not the only one, but I just don’t find it convincing, either as an interpretation of Scripture or as a claimed logical necessity.  I think the root of this is a misconstrued and overdetermined interpretation of Genesis 1:27 and what it means to be created in the image of God—an interpretation which is tone-deaf to what that phrase actually meant in the ancient world as opposed to what we can define it to mean.

At this point, given the length of this post already and the fact that I inadvertently hit “publish” not too long ago, I’m publishing it as the first part of my response.  The comments of other folks in that thread will be addressed in a follow-on post.