My Easter reading has led me back to the continuing debate here scripture and women and men in leadership. 

Kenneth Bailey in his Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes  (SPCK 2008 Part 5 pp195ff) traces the roles of men and women either side of Easter in Mark's gospel. It is very revealing and very relevant.

A. The account of the burial     (men are central - women in background)

1. Women are peripheral. Follow at a distance, only appear at beginning and end of narrative.

2. Joseph of Arimathea is central figure as he seeks the body of Jesus

3. An outsider (Male, Centurion) is called on to witness the death of Jesus.

4. Pilate is the antagonist from whom Joseph must rescue the body.

5. Joseph is afraid and must ‘take courage’ in order to accomplish his task.

B. The account of the resurrection    (women now central - men absent)

1. The women again appear at beginning of account (chatting) and at its conclusion (trembling, afraid, silent)

2. The women are the central figures throughout the story, and now it is they (not Joseph) who are seeking the body of Jesus.

3. The initial witness to the resurrection of Jesus is a young man dressed in white.

4. The antagonist is no longer Pilate but death itself. The success of the rescue is not the act of will by Joseph or the women- it is an act of God.

5. The women, like Joseph, are afraid. They are challenged to overcome their fears and declare the message of resurrection to the men.

Bailey's conclusion: The women move out of the shadows (cross and death) to central place (resurrection life) and are sent to witness to the men. Symbolically and actually they are signs and witnesses at the threshold of the new age and the new community in all its vulnerability and possibility. Bailey find this totally consistent with the way Jesus relates to women and men throughout his ministry – a point he finds particularly stressed in Luke.

Snowdrop

Your post coincided with a personal memory that always surfaces on Good Friday of man who took his life shortly after returning from the D Day landings reunions some years back. He was a maintenance man and craftsman. A very private man and the feeling was that his memories of the war were a factor in his suicide. It was my first experience of the suicide of someone I knew personally - with a lot of the questions you raise. This piece is what i wrote as I reflected on his. His name was Stan.

Lord,

have mercy on a man whose

hardest cross

   (we only glimpsed)

was caring much

who all these days looked out

through the private scars

of wounded sight

have mercy on a weary heart

- and haunted too we think

until remembering

itself became a shadow that

cast long across his face

his world

and into all to come

   (he thought)

have mercy

for whether yet he knew your name

his hands knew well

and loved

the texture of our mind

Lord have mercy on a man

whose last work

chosen designed completed alone

was his own life

and that

he gave to you

Phil  OK, having first missed or ignored my point you now simply dismiss it.  

You now throw out one of your 'are we all agreed' questions. As always you draft something that you clearly think is an unambiguous,  self evidently concise summary of the issue at stake here. It may be for you but it isn't for me. So no, I don't agree. 

How can the claim that the entire human race is born under God's wrath be established as an 'objective fact' by any measure that makes sense? 'The Bible teaches'  = 'objective fact'?

'known by God to be an objective fact'. Seriously? You are claiming to know what God knows as God knows it? And further that God is objective or subjective in his knowledge and understanding of things? In this case he  objectively knows. 

Sorry Phil. I think you need to stick to scripture.  

Phil  Thanks for responding but I think you are missing the point I am making. 

For what it is worth my pastoral (and personal) experience suggests that the message that we deserve the divine anger and punishment  for being who we are or for what we do is all too predictable and even (curiously) acceptable to us. We may want to argue with it. But it doesn't surprise us. It makes sense. And we know where we stand. The much greater struggle is to accept the love with which God fore-gives himself to us. That is undeserved, unmerited. It is a response to us outside of any familiar measure of moral and relational character we have any experience of.  So it leaves us feeling totally off balance. We resist it. It is unacceptable. This is the cross.

Experience also shows people have great difficulty coming to accept and trust God's total love for them when it is offered conditionally on the other side of a message of God's present wrath against them and the threat of their eternal (but never ending) torment unless they repent.  Accepting love is quite tough enough. It doesn't need hell and hell doesn't help anyway.

I agree with you John. By placing the enjoyment of God as our primary human vocation the Westminster Catechism stresses what I have come to believe the longer I journey in this earthly pilgrimage -  that our greatest struggle is not with sin or taking the wrath of God seriously but with accepting and enjoying the love with which God freely chooses to love us. 

Phil I can't let this moment pass without comment. I think this is first time you have agreed with on Fulcrum, ever! You even agree with my view that we need to be focused on scripture. 

But then you go and spoil it by claiming that my view on this topic is taken from 'outside scripture'. Meanwhile your view, it seems, is not only scriptural. Scripture agrees with you and Andrew. You are right. Well congratulations.

Phil I can cope with the fact we disagree. I come on these threads to test ideas and to learn. I have a number of times expressed respect for your love and passion for scripture - even when strongly disagreeing with you - a compliment you have never returned I might add.  But to claim my position is not just wrong but is not even based on a serious attempt to study holy scripture  is not just exasperating - it is actually deeply offensive.

You are a puzzle Andrew. Engaging, helpfully, in quite academic theological debate on one thread while on this one you suddenly seem to have left your brain on top of the microwave and post lurid apocalyptic visions from an unknown source as an self authenticating, authoritative warnings to folk like me that we are dangerously astray. 

1. Scripture says claims to prophecy should be tested. Who is she? Where, how and by whom has her revelation been discerned? Why does she herself not urge us to test what she says?

2. Prophecy in scripture is a form of teaching. She is teaching throughout this prophecy and leaves no margin for doubting her. Hell is the place for those who question.

3. To avoid double tribulation in hell as false pastors do we have to literally believe that in hell everyone is saying ‘ouch, ouch, it’s for ever’ and in heaven all houses are made with solid gold and there are escalators. It sounds like a mix of Colonel Gaddafi’s former summer palace and John Lewis.

Let’s get back to scripture shall we …

You are a puzzle Andrew. Engaging, helpfully, in quite academic theological debate on one thread while on this one you suddenly seem to have left your brain on top of the microwave and post lurid apocalyptic visions from an unknown source as an self authenticating, authoritative warnings to folk like me that we are dangerously astray. 

1. Scripture says claims to prophecy should be tested. Who is she? Where, how and by whom has her revelation been discerned? Why does she herself not urge us to test what she says?

2. Prophecy in scripture is a form of teaching. She is teaching throughout this prophecy and leaves no margin for doubting her. Hell is the place for those who question.

3. To avoid double tribulation in hell as false pastors do we have to literally believe that in hell everyone is saying ‘ouch, ouch, it’s for ever’ and in heaven all houses are made with solid gold and there are escalators. It sounds like a mix of Colonel Gaddafi’s former summer palace and John Lewis.

Let’s get back to scripture shall we …

Phil  'the man is head of the woman' (whatever the meaning and implications) was true in pre-Fall Eden'. You have added that to C1 and C21 in your last post. Just where do you find this in your bible? 'Helper'/'Companion' is very hard to translate but to find male headship in it is a stretch by any measure.  Indeed if there is hierarchy of any sort in God's creating we must note that the most important comes last not first - which surel;y suggests female headship. Male headship appears quite explicitely after the Fall. It is part of the curse. Trying to read back something that is not only not original but actually 'cursed' is a very big serious error if that is what it is. And I believe that to be so. (Though I am in no doubt that those who follow headship teaching seek to express it in a faithful, redeemed form in their own marriages. But I just do not believe it to be in any way 'original' to creation as God intends.) 

Now I know you will say -  but Jesus and Paul clearly find it there. But it is not unreasonable to read those texts and expect to see exactly where they find it. We don't expect Paul and Jesus to contradict the original sense of the Genesis text do we? If headship ordering is not there that strongly suggests that Jesus and Paul are making  different points when they draw on those texts.  So I must return to their words and seek understandings that accord with the Genesis texts. 

Phil  'the man is head of the woman' (whatever the meaning and implications) was true in pre-Fall Eden'. You have added that to C1 and C21 in your last post. Just where do you find this in your bible? 'Helper'/'Companion' is very hard to translate but to find male headship in it is a stretch by any measure.  Indeed if there is hierarchy of any sort in God's creating we must note that the most important comes last not first - which surel;y suggests female headship. Male headship appears quite explicitely after the Fall. It is part of the curse. Trying to read back something that is not only not original but actually 'cursed' is a very big serious error if that is what it is. And I believe that to be so. (Though I am in no doubt that those who follow headship teaching seek to express it in a faithful, redeemed form in their own marriages. But I just do not believe it to be in any way 'original' to creation as God intends.) 

Now I know you will say -  but Jesus and Paul clearly find it there. But it is not unreasonable to read those texts and expect to see exactly where they find it. We don't expect Paul and Jesus to contradict the original sense of the Genesis text do we? If headship ordering is not there that strongly suggests that Jesus and Paul are making  different points when they draw on those texts.  So I must return to their words and seek understandings that accord with the Genesis texts. 

Greetings Andrew

I agree with everything you say in the first paragraph. Completely. I have just come to a very different understanding of what the Bible actually teaches on these topics  and am living in faithful obedience to the Word. 

Meanwhile I presume your reference to one Bernada Fernandez and her technicolour visions of heaven and hell (yes I googled her!) are intended to be an added inducement in case my wife and I are still in any doubt that our approach to marriage and ministry means we are surely well on the way to missing out on the rapture?

Greetings Andrew

I agree with everything you say in the first paragraph. Completely. I have just come to a very different understanding of what the Bible actually teaches on these topics  and am living in faithful obedience to the Word. 

Meanwhile I presume your reference to one Bernada Fernandez and her technicolour visions of heaven and hell (yes I googled her!) are intended to be an added inducement in case my wife and I are still in any doubt that our approach to marriage and ministry means we are surely well on the way to missing out on the rapture?