PP Autumn 08.Indd
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
“PRISCILLA AND AQUILA” VOLUME 22, NUMBER 4 INSTRUCTED APOLLOS MORE” AUTUMN 2008 PERFECTLY IN THE WAY OF THE LORD” (ACTS 18)” 4 The Trinity and Gender: Theological Reflections on the Differences of Divine and Human Persons Gary W. Deddo 14 Women Sharing in the Ministry of God: A Trinitarian Framework for the Priority of Spirit Gifting as a Solution to the Gender Debate Patrick S. Franklin 21 The Holy Spirit, Neglected Person of the Trinity, and Women’s Leadership Pam Morrison 25 The Logic of Equality Adam Omelianchuk 29 Book Review: Aída Besançon Spencer, William David Spencer, and Mimi Haddad’s Global Voices on Biblical Equality KeumJu Jewel Hyun 30 Book Review: Kristina LaCelle-Peterson’s Liberating Tradition Mark Mathis 30 Poem: Anoint Me The Council of Nicaea Teresa Two Feathers Flowers Christians for Biblical Equality | www.cbeinternational.org Editor’s Reflections � The Book of Genesis opens with the words: God does not choose to tell us much about pre-creation, eternity “In the beginning, God created the heav- before there was time. Our knowledge is finite. Nearly everything ens and the earth” (my trans.). Since God we know for certain is post-creational. This includes nearly all is eternal, what “beginning” can the text our information about Jesus. We meet the persons of the Trinity be discussing? Certainly not God’s. God is at creation and specifically learn about the One whom we call the always existing, which is a concept abso- Second Person of the Trinity in the incarnation, when God takes lutely inconceivable to us finite creatures on human flesh and becomes God-Among-Us. who know only beginnings and endings, The incarnation implements the plan of the Trinity to redeem breakings down and startings up, all of humanity from the death row of its sins. Jesus takes our place on which are limited by time. Obviously, then, the execution scaffold and pays our penalty. the “beginning” Genesis describes is ours—the book commences Those who lose the truth of the substitutionary atonement, as I with the creation of our world. Its opening tells us nothing about wrote elsewhere,1 lose a central aspect of Christianity and open a pre-creation other than to affirm the fact that God was already door to all sorts of horrors, since, as the great Nigerian theologian there. If it did tell us more, it would have begun in an entirely Tokunboh Adeyemo explained, “There can be revelation without different way, say, “Long ago, before anything was created, the salvation but not salvation without revelation.”2 The sacrifice of Great Triune God forever lived in perfect love, peace, and unity Jesus means for us that no one needs to give sacrifice or to be in an eternal day without morning or evening, constantly com- sacrificed for salvation. When that fact is lost, a swarm of often municating that perfect love among the persons of the Godhead. lethally competing systems of religion converge on those seeking Verily, this is what the Trinity was like before there was creation atonement. And the degree of sacrifice each system demands for and incarnation . .” and then a lot of details. that atonement appears to me to depend on how much of the Bi- Jesus once commented to Nicodemus, “If I spoke to you about ble’s true knowledge of Christ’s sacrifice the system has adopted.3 earthly things and you do not believe, in what way can I tell you The fact is, since the vast majority of what we know about Jesus about heavenly ones that you will believe?” (John 3:1, my trans.). is in the Bible,4 as well as the direct and specific revelation about John seems to adapt and echo this statement in his first letter God of which we can be certain (supplemented with the general 4:19, when he asks how someone can presume to love God, acting revelation of nature [Rom. 1:19–0]), we must be content with commensurately with the heavenly realm, when that person does what God has revealed to us, and God has limited our knowledge not act in a holy manner within the earthly sphere. We fallen to our post-creational experience of God dealing with humanity. humans have not acted responsibly with the information we have Extrapolating information about relationships within the Trin- about our own world and, therefore, are not made privy to much ity from the temporary subordination of God to Godself in the information about the heavenly world. Specifically, we are on a incarnation and casting that back into pre-time, pre-creational need-to-know basis. We need to know what saves us from eter- history is purely speculative. What we might call a neo-Platonic nal and temporal destruction and helps us live lives pleasing to infection within the thought processes of some gentile theologians God which are helpful, not lethal, to those who share this planet in the early church posited an eternal stratification within the Trin- with us. As for information beyond the salvific and practical, ity. That is to say, the three divine faces or personalities or per- Board of Reference: Miriam Adeney, Carl E. Armerding, Myron S. Editor • William David Spencer Augsburger, Raymond J. Bakke, Anthony Campolo, Lois McKinney Associate Editor / Graphic Designer • Deb Beatty Mel Douglas, Gordon D. Fee, Richard Foster, John R. Franke, W. Ward Editorial Consultant • Aída Besançon Spencer Gasque, J. Lee Grady, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, Vernon Grounds, David Joel Hamilton, Roberta Hestenes, Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, President / Publisher • Mimi Haddad Donald Joy, Robbie Joy, Craig S. Keener, John R. Kohlenberger III, President Emerita • Catherine Clark Kroeger David Mains, Kari Torjesen Malcolm, Brenda Salter McNeil, Alvera Editors Emerita • Carol Thiessen† & Gretchen Gaebelein Hull Mickelsen, Roger Nicole, Virgil Olson, LaDonna Osborn, T. L. Osborn, On the Cover • The Council of Nicaea, unknown artist, available at John E. Phelan, Kay F. Rader, Paul A. Rader, Ronald J. Sider, Aída http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nicaea_icon.jpg Besançon Spencer, William David Spencer, Ruth A. Tucker, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Timothy Weber, Jeanette S. G. Yep Board of Directors: Gwen Dewey, Mary Duncan, Martine Extermann, Vince Huffaker, KeumJu Jewel Hyun, John Kohlenberger III, Ruby Lindblad, Tom McCarthy, Virginia Patterson, Nancy Graf Peters, Sara Robertson, Arbutus Sider, Rhonda Walton Priscilla Papers (issn 0898-753x) is published quarterly by Christians for Biblical Equality, © 2008. 1 West Franklin Avenue, Suite 218, Minneapolis, MN 55404-451. For address changes and other information, phone: 61-87-6898; fax: 61-87-6891; or e-mail: [email protected]. CBE is on the Web at www.cbeinternational.org. Priscilla Papers is indexed by Christians for Biblical Equality, the Christian Periodical Index (CPI), American Theological Library Association’s (ATLA) New Testament Abstracts (NTA), and Religious & Theological Abstracts (R&TA). In addition, Priscilla Papers is licensed with EBSCO Publishing’s full-text informational library products. • Priscilla Papers ◆ Vol. , No. 4 ◆ Autumn 008 sons (prosōpon) were imagined to be relating in a kind of totem we understand about the Trinity to our lives together as humans pole structure within the Godhead. But such a conclusion is the who have become joint heirs with Christ. product of purely human reasoning and does not in any way tell us Dr. Gary Deddo begins with an enlightening discussion on anything necessarily revelatory or reliable about the eternal nature why the Triune God made us gendered beings in the first place of God. In fact, since such a structure posits an eternally superior and what we can learn about our relationship with one another or inferior place of each divine person, it appears, then, to describe from the example of the divine love in the Trinity. Pastor Patrick an immutable part of each’s essence, leading some to suppose each Franklin expands on this theme, exploring the topic of gifting must contain primary and secondary deity (or be primary and sec- in a “Trinitarian framework” as it resolves conflict between the ondary deities). Origen fell into this error, describing Jesus Christ genders, helping all Christians minister cooperatively in a reflec- as “God,” but not “the God,” and therefore deserving a secondary tion of the perfect cooperation in the Trinity. Then, Reveremd degree of honor below that of the Father (see his Homily in Isaiah Pam Morrison focuses in on the Holy Spirit’s movements in his- 4.1).5 One begins to lose one’s understanding of the monotheistic tory, showing how gifts of ministry have been given continually nature of One God with three co-substantial and co-equal person- by God both to men and women. Next, Adam Omelianchuk in- alities for a three-Gods-in-tandem triumvirate. cludes us in a lively Internet debate over the nature of the Trinity But, in point of fact, we know so little about God in what God and the light that sheds on the question of equality or inequality has chosen to reveal to us that we do not even know God’s real among humans. While one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist name—what God calls Godself. God refuses to answer Moses’ to write for Priscilla Papers, our first book reviewer, Dr. Jewel direct question about God’s name, simply self-identifying as “I Hyun, a nuclear physicist who is now engaged full-time in min- Am or Will Be Existing that I Am or Will Be Existing” (Exod. istry, examines an exciting new book: Global Voices on Biblical 3:14) (the form in Hebrew is the qal imperfect [sometimes called Equality, which explores the international impact of egalitarian “future”], which indicates incomplete action).