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The Fulfillment of the Law and Active and Passive Righteousness

Perhaps one helpful way of conceptualizing how the law can be fulfilled and abrogated coram Deo, while remain a rule of life coram mundo, is through Luther’s distinction between two (active and passive),[1] or in some cases three (civil, imputed, sanctified),[2] kinds of righteousness.[3]  Coram Deo, humans are righteous or unrighteous not on the basis of what they do, but through what they receive.  We passively receive our sinful nature from our parents, which in turn colors everything we do or leave undone.  Likewise, faith is created by a monergistic act of the Holy Spirit, and we receive the gift of imputed righteousness and a renewed heart passively.  This passive gift of righteousness completely abrogates the law coram Deo.  From the perspective of this relational horizon, the law as condemnation moves to the gospel as freedom from condemnation.  Once the gospel has arrived, the law no longer holds sway since it is completely fulfilled.

In terms of our external person coram mundo, humans are good or bad based on what they do (i.e., active righteousness).  Under the first use of the law, the unregenerate can make better or worse decisions and likewise be judged as just or unjust based on what they do.  A person is defined as a good spouse, parent, or citizen based to what extent to which they behave well in these roles.  Indeed, as far as active and civil righteous is concerned, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas are essentially correct.  One can indeed train himself to act in a habitually correct way within his roles in society.  Likewise, under the gospel and the third use of the law the regenerate can cooperate with the Holy Spirit and can listen to and obey the commandments of God through specific external actions.  The faithful do this both as an act of gratitude for the gifts of creation and redemption that they have received, as well as restrain the wicked impulses which remain present in them this side of the eschaton. 

It should be noted that fallen humans tend to reverse these two kinds of righteousness.  Rather than being judged by who they are before God (children of Adam, or redeemed sinners in Christ), humans desire to be righteous on the basis of their works.  As a result, humans have created the various world religions (which work on the basis of the opinio legis),[4] as well as rationalistic/moralistic schemes of theodicy.[5]  Coram mundo, humans desire not to be judged righteous and worthy of status on the basis of what they do, but on the basis of who they are. Likewise, human desire to judge others on the basis of their identities.  In human history, this has given rise to the sins of racism, sexism, and classism, among others. 

[1] LW 26:7-8, LW 31:297-306.

[2] WA 2:43-7.

[3] See Charles Arand, “Two Kinds of Righteousness as a Framework for Law and Gospel in the Apology,” Lutheran Quarterly 15, no. 4 (2001): 417–439; and Robert Kolb, “Luther on the Two Kinds of Righteousness: Reflections on His Two-Dimensional Definition of Humanity at the Heart of His Theology,” Lutheran Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1999): 449–66.

[4] Chris Marantika, “Justification by Faith: Its Relevance in Islamic Context,” Right with God: Justification in the Bible and the World, ed. D.A. Carson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 228-242; Sunand Simithra, “Justification by Faith: Its Relevance in Hindu Context,” in Right with God, 216-27; and Masao Uenuma, “Justification by Faith: Its Relevance in Buddhist Context,” in Right with God, 243-55.

[5] Gregory Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997); and idem, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Gottfried von Leibniz, Theodicy, trans. E.M. Huggard (New York: Cosmo Classics, 2010).

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).

Image from R. J. Grunewald, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” Grunewald, accessed May 24, 2021, https://www.rjgrune.com/blog/two-kinds-of-righteousness.

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Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease

Part III: The Second Part of Our Epic Critique

Making of Biblical Womanhood presents several convincing historical arguments that deconstruct the assumed uniformity of biblical womanhood throughout the church’s history, but Barr falters when attempting to address modern controversies of the twentieth century.  Barr’s conclusion that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy “became important because it provided a way to push women out of the pulpit” may well be true.1  Barr does show evidence of correlation.  But she did not present enough evidence to convince us that this was in fact a case of causation, that inerrancy became important primarily because it served as a helpful item in the patriarchal toolkit and not merely that promotion of inerrancy and the solidification of “biblical womanhood” among evangelicals happened to occur around the same time.  We suspect Barr is correct, but we would have liked to have seen more evidence.

Additionally, Barr’s argument regarding inerrancy is built around an insufficiently nuanced doctrine of inerrancy.  One way to think about the doctrine of inerrancy is to make it the foundation of one’s belief system.  This is common among both fundamentalists and evangelicals.  According to this line of thinking, Christians believe in the Bible because it is inerrant.  Since the Bible is inerrant, Christians believe everything it says about Jesus and can trust Him.  Therefore, if inerrancy is undermined, by, for example, questioning Paul’s directives regarding women, all of Christianity comes crashing down.  A better, and we would argue more biblical, approach is to begin with Christ.  We believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.  His divine authority then leads us to trust His authorized Scriptures completely.2  In this way, inerrancy flows from belief in Christ, rather than belief in Christ resting precariously on inerrancy.

I think we know someone who recently published the definitive confessional Lutheran dogmatic work on this topic….

Unfortunately, this dismissal of inerrancy as a tool of the patriarchy leaves Barr vulnerable to the argument that she rejects complementarianism because she rejects the authority of Scripture, which would be an unfair characterization of her work.  In an earlier chapter, for example, she invites the reader to reexamine Paul’s writing on women by way of cultural and historical context, whereas someone less committed to the veracity of Scripture might either argue for non-Pauline authorship or blatant rejection of difficult passages.  However, despite her problematic approach to inerrancy, Barr’s broader point that inerrancy has been weaponized against women has validity. Indeed, literalist readings of 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14 are often used a litmus test for biblical faithfulness, whereas other Pauline texts that are not directed specifically at women rarely receive the same sort of rigid application.

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Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease

Part II: The First Part of Our Epic Critique

Barr’s real contribution in The Making of Biblical Womanhood is to finally make scholarship detailing the historical development of the threads constituting biblical womanhood accessible to the public.  Her main argument that biblical womanhood, which tells women they must be domestic, housebound, and married mothers at the expense of other vocations is important and prophetic.  As such, her book deserves to be widely read throughout the Church.  She demonstrates that the way we often read even the Bible through a patriarchal lens has led the Church to discount the significance of named women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, and Junia.  Moreover, the chapters on the history of women in the Church during the Middle Ages and Reformation period are alone worth the cost of admission.  Her chapter on the Reformation, for example, helps explain why Katharina von Bora Luther died impoverished.  Her tragedy extended beyond an individual failure on the part of the Church.  Rather, it was a product of a newly constructed economic system that limited women’s opportunities outside the home.

People! Go read this book!

The Making of Biblical Womanhood is a tour de force, but there are also spots where Barr could strengthen her historical arguments and where we, as confessional Lutherans, disagree with her theological conclusions.  Again, historically speaking, Barr’s argument that “biblical womanhood” is essentially an evangelical version of the patriarchal cult of domesticity is accurate.  There is nothing in the Bible that confines women to the domestic sphere and subordinates them to all men in all contexts.  As the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) noted in 2009:1

"The Bible’s clear direction regarding responsible male leadership in the home and male ordination to pastoral ministry may not be assumed to mean that only men can exercise any kind of leadership or authority in home, church, or society. Some view this as an inconsistency, but it is not. In Baptism every believer is called to service in his or her vocations within the various spheres of life. The body of Christ requires that its individual members exercise the wide variety of their gifts, whether that individual is male or female (1 Cor 12:7).... Such leadership of women is not inconsistent with Scriptural teaching. On the contrary, it exists in the very context of our church’s life and teaching which upholds and promulgates the divinely ordered responsibility of pastors and husbands. When women serve in this way they are enhancing the work of the priesthood of all believers, serving as members of the body of Christ, and not usurping pastoral authority or violating the 'order of creation.' Scripture provides numerous examples of such service, for instance Priscilla’s instruction of Apollos (Acts 18:26) or the teaching Timothy received from his mother and grandmother (2 Tim 1:5)."2

However, this is not to say that we support approach Barr’s exegesis uncritically.  She does not adequately address the distinction between biblical texts dealing with the vertical relationship between humans and God and those addressing the horizontal relationships between humans and other humans.3  For example, Galatians 3:26-29 relates to the vertical relationship between believers and God in Christ. But the other passages, such as those in 1 Corinthians 14, deal with horizontal relations within the Church or between spouses.  Others, such as Ephesians 5, may address both.

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Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease

Part I: Here’s What’s In This Book

Beth Allison Barr’s book is one of a bevy of new books attempting to deconstruct (white) patriarchy in American evangelicalism hot on the heels of the #metoo movement and anti-racism protests of 2020.  As an evangelical Baptist with a high view of Scripture, Barr grew up in the world of biblical womanhood.  In contrast, neither of us grew up with complementarianism, although as adults we have become more conscious of the gendered ideals of “biblical womanhood” promoted within our own corner of Christianity.

The categories of complementarian and egalitarian are often assumed to be the only two interpretive lenses available when considering of the role of women in the church: denominations that ordain women are “egalitarian” and those that do not are “complementarian.” However, these categories do not simply address whether or not women may be pastors, or if men and women are interchangeable.  Complementarianism packages the distinctions between men and women into a broader cultural and social hierarchy—biblical man/womanhood—governing gendered roles in church, family, and society.  Barr’s experiences with complementarianism, including biblical womanhood, clashed with her scholarly training, causing her to wonder, is biblical womanhood actually biblical?  Did God ordain patriarchy?  Does Jesus want women to live in “complementary” marriages under male headship?  Eventually, the “evidence” showed her “how Christian patriarchy was built, stone by stone, throughout the centuries, [and as a result] arguments for women’s subordination reflect historical circumstances more than the face of God.”1  As an historian and a youth pastor’s wife, Barr is now on a mission to get the word out that biblical womanhood is far from biblical.2

Image from “Is Biblical Womanhood Really Biblical? Historian Beth Allision Barr Joins the Discussion”
Continue reading “Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr”
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Check Out This Webinar For My Wife’s New Book

My wife’s new book, Fallacy and Falsehood: How to Think, Read, and Write in the Twenty-First Century just came out with University of Toronto Press. If anyone is interested, she will host a thirty minute webinar on Zoom on Wednesday, April 28 at noon. Participants will receive a discount code if they want to buy the book.