Egalitarianism and the Scope of Scripture

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There is a contemporary evangelical understanding of the interpretation of scripture that is fundamentally antithetical to the Wesleyan tradition, the Reformation, and the Patristic witness. Yet it has become a dominant way to interpret the text of scripture within the evangelical world. It involves an appeal to a canon within the canon or to a “control text” that then determines the meaning of a particular doctrine. Evangelical exegetes have employed this technique to reinforce cessationism and complementarianism. While its roots are in the Reformation, it has more in common with liberal approaches to interpretation than the Reformation principle that scripture interprets scripture, which itself is a refinement of the Patristic approach to biblical interpretation. 

Canon Within a Canon

One of the fundamental principles of interpretation from the Reformation is that scripture interprets scripture. Luther asserted this point over against the need for a magisterium in the Catholic Church. We might call this the intertextual principle of biblical interpretation. It stems from the Spirit’s role as both inspirer and interpreter of the text. The problem resides in how to understand and apply it.

All readers of scripture recognize that some parts are more challenging to understand for a variety of reasons, such as the meaning of the words or the apparent contradictions with other passages of scripture. For this reason, a second principle usually accompanies the intertextual principle, which is that the clearer passages illuminate and control the interpretation of more obscure passages. We might call this the perspicuity principle because it begins with what is clearest. It is also a Reformation principle. Luther understood the gospel to be the story of Christ. He grounded the clarity of scripture on the clarity of the simple declaration that all the promises attest to Christ as the gift of righteousness received in faith. Luther’s condensed meaning of “gospel” becomes the interpretive lens.   

Yet, there are still issues with how the perspicuity principle should function and there is more than one answer to these issues. One answer is to appeal to a canon within the canon so that certain passages become controls for the meaning of others, even as certain books become controls on the interpretation of the whole. One can find precedent in Luther’s preference for Paul in general and Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians in particular. Alongside of the Gospel of John, 1 John, and 1 Peter, these books were the core for Luther because they presented the clearest picture of the gospel of Christ and justification by faith alone. The German scholar Rudolf Bultmann followed Luther in making justification the Bible’s central theme and centered his program to demythologize scripture on it. He operated with a canon within a canon.

When you examine interpreters like Richard Gaffin and Thomas Schreiner, you see a similar approach. On the question of the cessation of miracles and charismatic gifts, the proper understanding reduces to how one interprets Paul’s claim of the church being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20). According to Gaffin, “As a guideline for interpretation, the decisive, controlling significance of Ephesians 2:20 needs to be appreciated.” Following Gaffin, Schreiner makes a similar claim in his book Spiritual Gifts: “The basis for cessationism is the claim that the church was ‘built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets’ (Eph. 2:20).” 

Once the interpreter determines the meaning of Eph. 2:20, it becomes the lens for interpreting other passages. This is crucial in two respects. First, it means that understanding Ephesians is the starting point for the doctrinal position. One begins with an exegesis of one Pauline letter and one passage within that letter. Second, it means that Ephesians defines the parameters for everything else, including a book like Revelation written over three decades later. None of this means that Schreiner and Gaffin do not exegete other texts and incorporate their findings into cessationism anymore than Bultmann’s demythologizing program meant that he failed to engage other parts of scripture. It means that the fundamental conclusion that the gifts have ceased reduces to a control text and all other exegetical conclusions must be interpreted through that single interpretation. 

The same can be said of the basic approach to women exercising leadership roles in the church. Andreas Köstenberger and Thomas Schreiner co-edited an entire book (now in its third edition) devoted to the exegesis and interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:9-15. The various essays make it clear that the question of women in ministry reduces to the interpretation of this passage, which then serves as a control lens for the doctrine and thus the interpretation of other passages. The point is not that these scholars don’t engage other passages elsewhere, but that they do so on the basis of this text as the starting point and control for meaning, which becomes a kind of canon within a canon. The fundamental doctrinal conclusion that women cannot teach or exercise authority over men, and thus men must lead, stems from this text. Everything else must be interpreted in this way.

Before I turn to talk about a different approach, there is one more application of Reformation principles of interpretation that informs the intertextual and perspicuity principles. The Reformation interpretation of scripture has been encapsulated in the phrase “historical-grammatical” exegesis. The phrase highlights two important dimensions to biblical interpretation: 1) that interpretation depends upon contextual issues (historical); 2) that interpretation flows from the syntax and the meaning of words (grammatical). 

In practice, however, some evangelical interpreters fall into a lopsided tendency to reduce exegesis to matters of syntax and word study. One can see this in the way Wayne Grudem does a word search for all the meanings of “head” (kephale) without a close examination of the larger context of each passage he cites. Such a tendency results in a more atomistic approach that mutes the literary, theological, and canonical contexts in addition to the historical contexts of the first century. In its most extreme version, it weds a theological literalism to an exegetical atomism.

Finding the Scope of Scripture

Finding a control text that then supplies the doctrinal boundaries of meaning for scripture as a whole is not traditionally how Wesleyans have approached their interpretation of scripture. Instead, it is better to see the Wesleyan approach as grounded in exploring and articulating the texture of the whole as the way to apply the intertextual principle. Following the patristic tradition, we can call this finding the scope of scripture on any particular matter of doctrine.

Athanasius referred to the scope of scripture or the scope of faith as the way scripture builds up a thick account of a particular doctrine. By “scope,” Athanasius means finding the plotline or course of scripture. There is an intertextual pattern to the biblical witness that must be understood and brought to bear on texts. For example, one cannot understand the Son without attending to scripture’s dual way of describing the divine and human aspects of the Son’s existence. Both he and Augustine use this point to argue that scripture, as a whole, contains a double account of the Son as the Word and Wisdom of the Father and the savior who was made flesh in the womb of Mary. In On the Trinity, Augustine notes that “people who are careless about examining or keeping in view the whole range of the scriptures” mistakenly take passages that speak of the Son’s humanity and transfer them to his divinity. This leads to the subordination of the Son.

The perspicuity principle is found not in a control text or individual book, but in the intertextual shape of a doctrine through an intensive reading of the whole of scripture. This is because every biblical text entails divine authorship and human authorship and thus the meaning of any individual text is not reducible to the human author. The Christological interpretation of scripture depends on just such a conclusion. The meaning of the personification of wisdom in Proverbs extends to Christ as the wisdom and power of God.

Wesley understood this patristic view of the scope of scripture in terms of the analogy of faith. By analogy of faith, Wesley meant the way a doctrine runs through the entirety of scripture with individual passages serving as connective tissue comprising its form or shape within the canon. In speaking of salvation as the restoration of the image of God both in terms of deliverance from sin and being filled with the fullness of God, Wesley states that “It runs through the Bible from the beginning to the end, in one connected chain; and the agreement of every part of it, with every other, is, properly, the analogy of faith.”

When Wesleyans began to examine the role of women in scripture, they did so on the basis of the promise of Joel fulfilled at Pentecost that the Spirit would be poured out on all flesh, including sons and daughters. The full meaning of this Pentecostal outpouring is found in the scope of scripture, which begins with the examination of women prophets and judges in the Old Testament and their authoritative status in the nation of Israel. 

It moves into an examination of the role of women in the life and ministry of Jesus, observing their unique position as the first to proclaim the resurrection of the Lord. From this point, it moves into Luke-Acts and the Pauline letters exploring how the people of God met in houses associated with women, the role of women prophets, teachers, and even apostles. It also remains attentive to the historical relationship among the books of scripture so that earlier Pauline letters set the tone for later ones. When this happens, the plurality of authority in the various roles described within New Testament texts becomes clear.

This scope of scripture pertaining to the role of women upon whom the Spirit was poured out informs the perspicuity principle. It is how Wesleyans understand scripture interpreting scripture. The language of the Pastoral Letters should be understood through the scope of the whole, which illuminates the small details of 1 Timothy 2:8-15 that emerge such as the references to stylized hair and costly jewelry. These details focus the passage on wealthy women, not women who were slaves, in the same way that the appeal to a “husband of one wife” does not rule out the celibate and single from episcopacy (1 Tim. 3:2). Given the letter to Philemon and the later reference by Pliny the Younger to a female slave who served as a deacon, it seems clear that there were male and female slaves who could assume leadership roles. It would be odd for any first-century female slave to hear the reference to costly clothing and jewelry as applying to her, and yet the Spirit was poured out even on male and female slaves.

There is one final point that goes with this understanding of the intertextual principle of interpretation. Because the Spirit continues to guide the church into the truth, the scope of scripture emerges not merely from exegesis, but as believers enter the mind of Christ by being formed in holiness within the church. In Wesley’s language, there is no holiness that is not social. 

Being formed into saints by the Spirit through Christ and his body, believers become more faithful readers of scripture. We surrender our reason to be sanctified in the temple of the Spirit that is the church of the living God. This requires that all believers take seriously Christian tradition as part of the path into the mind of Christ through the common mind of the church. 

All Wesleyans should refuse to appeal to a canon within a canon as though a single book or passage should control the doctrinal meaning of the whole. If this approach had been taken in the debates over the nature of the Son, then the Arian approach to scripture with its rigid literalism and appeal to specific texts as controls might have won the day. 

A full examination of the role of women requires that believers take seriously the ongoing prophetic and charismatic voice of women mystics, preachers, and teachers, some of whom have been declared to be authoritative doctors of the whole church. To enter the scope of scripture through the mind of Christ by the slow and steady immersion into the common mind of the church means that sola scriptura can never imply that scripture is the “sole” authority. Scripture is the final authority, but never the only authority.

By examining the scope of scripture, the full role of women in the plan of God emerges in the same way that the double account of the Son emerges. The same could be said of the issue pertaining to the continuation of spiritual gifts and the ongoing role of the prophetic in the church. Wesleyans understand the intertextual and perspicuity principles to require following the scope of scripture, which illuminates the nature of marriage, the image of God, the role of men and women, and a host of other doctrinal and moral positions. 

Dr. Dale M. Coulter is Professor of Historical Theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He also serves on the Editorial Board for Firebrand.