We now rightly dismiss the Paul-attributed texts against women teaching or preaching in the church (1 Tim 2:11 and 1 Cor 14:33b-36), not least because the risen Lord had women sent as his first resurrection messengers in all four Gospels. Should we also, perhaps, pass over Paul’s present condemnation of homosexual practice in the light of Jesus’ general silence on the subject? (The Letter to the Romans, 17)

Leave aside for a moment the question of homosexual practice within the argument of Romans. (Reading Bruner’s comments in context leaves me unclear on what exactly he thinks about it; it was slightly odd to hear that his reason to “appreciate afresh Paul’s present conviction” in Romans 1 was reading an article about drag queens in the Los Angeles Times.) What I find dismaying here is the way that a scholar of Bruner’s standing can simply “dismiss” parts of Scripture, feel the freedom to say that he is doing so “rightly,” suggest that we might also “pass over” other passages in the same way, and publish it all in a biblical commentary. Perhaps it is just an Eerdmans thing; perhaps putting that word “now” at the start gives the game away (as if previous generations had never noticed that the witnesses to the resurrection were women, let alone considered how that might be compatible with Paul’s teaching); perhaps the denominational debates of the last few years have ground him down. Anyway: alas.

Plenty of egalitarians do not reason that way at all, of course. Ian Paul and Andrew Bartlett, to take a recent example, do not “dismiss” or “pass over” 1 Timothy 2 in their response to my “Beautiful Difference” essay; they just read the passages differently. (They think, as far as I can tell, that Paul is prohibiting some women from teaching men falsely or exercising authority illegitimately; I think there are good lexical, grammatical and contextual reasons for disagreeing with that.) Nevertheless, in a culture like ours, it may still be worth asking: does the way I handle this text make it sound like I am “rightly dismissing” it? Would a new person hear me talk about it and conclude, “Ah, so that’s OK: there are some bits of Scripture we simply overlook”? Or would they see me taking the Word of God seriously, wrestling with it carefully, and acknowledging the authority of all of it, even those passages I struggle with most? (This cuts both ways, obviously. Complementarians need to ask similar questions of Acts 18:26, Romans 16:7 and so forth.)

Incidentally, on a related note, the last few months have seen a flurry of new contributions on this subject which you might find interesting. I have a review forthcoming of Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender and Josh Butler’s Beautiful Union, which are both superb; Preston Sprinkle is working on a big book on the topic, which I’m really looking forward to reading; and although I haven’t got either of them yet, I’ve had people recommend both Graham Benyon and Jane Tooher’s Embracing Complementarianism and Stef Liston’s Gender Quality. So much to read, so little time ...