Thanks for this post! It’s a solid and gracious reminder of Who’s truly in control over all things, even if things don’t always look “good” from our finite perspective. This is particularly the case as many of us Christians here in the US see our election winding down to a close, the ballots being counted, and the shape of the new President, his Cabinet, and the Congress beginning to form.

Hi Mark

Thanks for the question—a relevant one for this blog, but also for Matthias Media as a publisher. It’s a question we’ve been asked more than once in the past: “How is it that you can take a strong stand against women’s ordination, and yet still publish women authors (both in The Briefing, and in books)?”

The answer lies in the nature of Scripture’s teachings about male congregational leadership. The Bible doesn’t say that females can never teach males anything, as if it is a matter of inherent intellectual or moral superiority. It’s not the fragile male ego God is trying to protect, but the order of relationships that he has set up in creation.

What we need to avoid, according to Paul in 1 Tim, is the situation where the headship of a husband in the family is subverted or overthrown by female authority within the household of God. It’s about the relationships involved, and what a woman being in the position of teacher/elder does to those relationships.

This is why there is nothing wrong with a female Sunday School teacher teaching young male children or teenagers. It’s to do with the relationships involved, and the nature of the ‘teaching’.

It’s also why there’s nothing wrong with women ‘prophesying’ in church (according to 1 Cor 11). Whatever prophesying was, it obviously didn’t carry the same connotations of teaching-authority. (The congregation I’m part of regularly invites members to share encouragement and lessons from their lives with the rest of the congregation—women as well as men. I think it’s close to what Paul called ‘prophecy’.)

In the particular case you raise, the relationship we have with the author of a book or a blogpost is largely impersonal and indirect. It’s not an authority relationship—a teacher-student relationship.

This is why we’ve always been comfortable with publishing the excellent contributions of Kirsten Birkett, Claire Smith and others through Matthias Media and The Briefing over the years.

Hope this necessarily brief response helps.

Regards, Tony

Many thanks for the post. It was so encouraging to read it and the comments. It gets weird when people in one’s own church start looking at you funny for being so “obsessed” with God’s Sovereignty.

I once heard someone speak at my previous church who said in effect, “Yes, God is Sovereign. God IS in control. The only time God is not in control is when we don’t let Him be in control.”

It just didn’t sit well with me.

When later asked how this could be, he said, “Well, God gave each of us this beautiful gift called Free Will… that even God won’t interfere with…”

That’s when I started getting nauseous. 

So, can man’s free will really trump Gods Sovereignty?

I’m sure there are lots of opinions out there, but what does Scripture say? What does Scripture teach explicitly as opposed to merely implicitly regarding this?  Where in the Bible does it explicitly say that God gave us a “free” will that even He cannot tamper with?

Some may point to Joshua 24:14-15 where he says “choose now.” But the more I read the passage, the more it becomes apparent that Joshua was quite adamant in commanding people to follow the LORD. He never presented following the LORD as a free choice. 

And if there were anyone there who was foolish enough to think that the command to follow the LORD was a merely a choice, Joshua then presented the only choices there really were: serving false gods or worthless idols.

I pray that all those who profess to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, truly recognize His authority over all flesh, and acknowledge Him in all our ways… that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him and that no one can thwart our God’s perfect will-the least of those being ourselves and our so called “free” will. May we all humble ourselves before Him, He will lift us up in due time… in His time.

To Christ be the Glory!