Leadership Is Male

Foreword What a relief to find a bold book with a bold title on a subject most men won't touch with a barge pole! I don't know Mr. Pawson, but surely he is a bold man. He faced the cost of putting his "obsolete and offensive" (his own words) viewpoint into print and went ahead and did it anyway-with scholarly care, with grace and courtesy. I hope and pray that people will read and heed what he has written. The issue of so called equality of men and women touches the very foundation of Christian faith, for it goes deep into the nature of God and the great mystery of which the much-maligned apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians. For years I have watched with increasing dismay the destruction the feminist movement has wrought in the world, in the church, in Christian homes and marriages, and in personalities. I have studied the tortuous arguments of those who would persuade us that Galatians 3:28 cancels everything the author says elsewhere in his epistles about the vital distinctions between men and women. I have listened to the endless discussions of Paul's rabbinical prejudice and cultural insularity. I have delved into treatises on the meaning of the Greek word hypotasso, "to arrange under," "to be under obedience," "to put under," "to subdue unto," "to subject to," "to be in subjection to," "to submit self unto"), and I have on a few occasions been asked (as a "traditionalist," whatever that means) to debate those who would rewrite history, literature, psychology, and the Bible itself to make them palatable to the woman of the late twentieth century. I have done practically everything but jump up and down and scream about it. Here is a simple, sane, serious treatment of the subject by a man who loves God, respects women, and takes the inspiration of Scripture and the integrity of the apostles for granted. He deals with all the "difficult" texts. He tells us that his subject is not a clerical issue, nor is it hierarchical, situational, historical, or experimental; it is biblical. With that I agree wholeheartedly , but whether it can be settled, as he says, only by "scrupulous exegesis" I am not sure. I think it is even bigger, even deeper than that-a theological mystery representing Christ and the church, bigger than exegesis, deeper than our deepest understanding. And such …