Revisiting Egalitarianism

I was recently given a book by a friend entitled, "Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?" It was a good read, and served to increase my passion for the subject. As Grudem explained, in many cases the hermeneutic that leads one to accept the position that men and women are entitled to equal roles within the church also leads one to water down the teaching on homosexuality.

For instance, Roy Clements says:

As a result, Christian homosexuals, who formerly would have remained "in the closet" protected by a conspiracy of sympathetic silence, have little choice but to "come out". For most this has been a profoundly liberating experience, in spite of the bullying hostility to which they have often been subjected. In many ways their experience has run parallel, if a little behind, that of Christian women in the last few decades. In the wake of the secular feminist movement, women have found a new confidence to claim a role for themselves within the church. They have developed a hermeneutic to deal with the biblical texts which had been used to deny them that role in the past. Of course, this was not achieved without resistance from a conservative rump mainly within the older ecclesiastical establishment, but the majority of evangelicals have now moved very substantially in the direction of welcoming women into Christian leadership. Gay Christians are using exactly the same kind of hermeneutic tools to challenge tradition in regard to homosexuality. If it is taking them rather longer to succeed than the Christian feminists did, this has more to do with the inferiority of their numerical strength than of the justice of their cause.

Amazing.

Egalitarians and homosexuals have identified that Scripture does not warrant certain things, and with increased pressure from culture to become more "tolerant" they have formulated a hermeneutic that will allow them to make God in their own image. One way this takes shape is through the "Trajectory Hermeneutic" which, according to Grudem is "a method of interpreting the Bible in which our final authority is not found in what is written in the Bible itself, but is found later, at the end of a 'trajectory' along with the New Testament was progressing at the time it was being written. This view would claim that the New Testament authors did not reach the final destination of these developments, but we can sense the direction or the trajectory along which they were moving, see where they were headed, and carry their thinking further, until we reach the destination they were moving torward but did not reach in their thinking and writing."

This hermeneutic seems to validate Scripture in that it acknowledges that one can't use the Bible to support these beliefs and one must therefore add to the word of God in order to be justified in their thinking.

Why must truth change? Or better, why do so many see the need to change truth? What is it about the spirit of this age that would lead people to reject an old truth in favor of "diversity, tolerance, creativity, progress" and whatever other buzzwords may be used to place relativistic ideas in a positive light?

I know these views can be labeled as full of pride and arrogance, but is it really arrogant to submit to what God has said rather than change the words of God to achieve a desired goal of tolerance, cultural relevance and diversity? Obviously Christians need to hold all of these attributes to a degree, and I'm not arguing against contextualization, but didn't God say that "friendship with the world is enmity with God"? (James 4:4) If we water down the truth, and then see people come to faith as a result of our watered down message, do they really have an authentic faith? If we convince people that hell isn't real, that men and women are without difference, that homosexuality is acceptable, that God doesn't know "the end from the beginning," and that Christ is not the only way, are they really followers of Christ?