Sex is not a Hermeneutic & A Prayer for Truth and Unity: (Reflecting on The Gospel Coalition This Week)

I thought I'd mention some positive follow-up after my bombastically titled blog post a few days ago that spoke to problematic statements in a blog post at The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website. 

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The Spermeneutics of Spread Your Legs Theology

11Mar23 EDIT:

At this late date, I'd rather that people read my personal reaction to the article which took me nearly a week to process.

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Well, the Gender Agenda folks just continue to get weirder.  We already know about Tim Keller's sex orgy with God, and yesterday, The Gospel Coalition published an excerpt from a new book by the Fellow at the Tim Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.  Read more HERE.  I didn't even include the stuff in my meme about how a woman's readiness for sex is a show of “hospitality.”

Someone asked me why these people like the Theobros make everything so weird. Well, let's break it down. We've used good hermeneutics to study good theology. Now, you'll hear some spermeneutics to learn about Spread Your Legs Theology. (Shirley Taylor gets credit for naming this theology. It's like a sanitized version of the Kinder, Küche, and Kirche, but it's remade to be Biblical for Christians.)

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Tim Keller, Sex, and Eternal Submission Doctrine: Summing up the Sexualization of the Trinity with Shirley Taylor

This series of posts started with a simple reference to my great disappointment in the statements that Tim Keller has made concerning the Trinity.  Someone at Spiritual Sounding Board asked for more information regarding the specifics of what Keller teaches, not realizing how significant I found this question.  I couldn't just quote him without demonstrating that his peers also taught and said the same kinds of things, and I wanted an opportunity to refute them.  As this meme demonstrates, Keller is not some odd example who made a few poorly communicated statements.

These doctrines argue that husbands rule and reign over their wives because, as the teaching asserts, Christ is subordinate to God the Father who rules and reigns over His Son.  The Father is the exemplar for men and the Son is the exemplar for women within this paradigm.

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A Connection between Marriage and Holiness? Part V of Tim Keller on Sex: A Virtual Discussion with Shirley Taylor

I posted this while bleary-eyed, so please let me know about typos!

In an earlier post in this discussion, we read Shirley Taylor's summary of the writings of Tim Keller and those who ascribe to the misogyny that arises from Eternal Subordinationism.  This doctrine is used to argue that husbands rule and reign over their wives because, as the teaching asserts. Christ is subordinate to God the Father. who rules and reigns over His Son.  The Father is the exemplar for men and the Son is the exemplar for women in this paradigm



In the chapter entitled "Sexualization of the Trinity" in her book Dethroning Male Headship, she writes:

Keller is saying that when husbands and wives have sex, particularly when they climax (when else would there be “shouts of joy?”), they are emulating how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rejoice in each other.  [. . .]. The ‘union’ between the Son of God and his bride the Church, according to Piper and Keller, is sex. Just as sex supposedly points to the love between the Father and Son, now the bride (the Church) is involved.

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Is the Trinity a Sex Orgy? Part IV of Tim Keller on Sex: More Virtual Discussion with Shirley Taylor

  **This September is book month at UnderMuchGrace.com, but today, I want to discuss two books that I don't recommend purchasing.  I feel bad enough because of the necessity to purchase them myself to read them with my own eyes.**

Sex and the Trinity?  (Continuing the discussion of Tim Keller's views on sex)

I didn't intend to include this element of these teachings because I really don't like discussing this aspect of the topic of the Eternal Subordination of the Son Doctrine, but this element keeps surfacing.  In a way, I'm glad to see people discussing the convoluted nature of the doctrine and how bizarre it is when you have time to think about it.  I think that people who sit in a seminary lecture or a sermon and hear these ideas take in the ideas fall into the traps of social proof and the appeal to authority.  They don't have time to pull apart the rapid "pile on" of thoughts in order to make sense of them.  By the end of forty minutes of twisted logic from someone trusted in a room full of fans who accept what they're told, I think people sitting there just absorb it as fact out of the fatigue of overwhelm.  But we who read here can take apart these ideas at our leisure with the freedom of time and logic apart from social proof and pressure.

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The Genesis of Eternal Subordinationism -- Part III of Tim Keller on Sex

Having discussed this issue privately with Shirley Taylor, and as a continuation of this theme and topic, I include it here as part of our dialogue.  In a post that will follow in a close to this theme, I will include Shirley's summary statements concerning this theology and what those who find it problematic can do.  Before hand, I will delve into the connection between holiness and marriage in subsequent post.  It's all so much to take in because it is so convoluted, and the Calvinist learning curve is steep.

The previous posts discussed statements made by Tim Keller in his book, The Meaning of Marriage.  Along with many others who are held in high esteem within the Southern Baptist movement which embraces Covenant Theology and gender hierarchy, Keller professes the Doctrine of Eternal Subordination of the Son (ESS) to validate his views on marriage.  Through a very convoluted interpretation of Scripture along with the extension of what I personally find to be the already dubious "Covenant of Redemption" by inserting hierarchy, Keller claims that marriage relationships are patterned after the love relationship between God the Father and God the Son. 

NOTE:  In this post, I refer via links, in particular , a website devoted to the study of the Trinity, though I may or may not agree with the information presented there.  Links used here mean to give the reader some working understanding of the concepts in some depth.  If needed, google the terms if you need a more basic summary of them, as rank and file folks don't often use them in our common language.

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Tim Keller on the Meaning of the Sex Act in Marriage: A Virtual Dialogue with Shirley Taylor Part II

The previous post discussed the Doctine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son in the Trinity which the Southern Baptist Convention falsely contends has been the only orthodox understanding of the Trinity since the original Biblical texts were penned and a belief always held by theologians.

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Tim Keller on the Meaning of the Sex Act in Marriage: A Virtual Dialogue with Shirley Taylor Part I

Spiritual Sounding Board (SSB) just cross-posted my weekend commentary on Anna Duggar and the scapegoating that "spread your legs theology" doles out to women.    Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd swiftly proved my thesis on Sunday.

I read that the Dugggars "identify" with Floyd's church where their daughter Jill married, though I understand that they often choose to worship at home as well.  By the time that the church deleted the online podcast of Floyd's sermon, the lion's share of the material had been reproduced by a host of journalists and bloggers, noting the manner in which their religion blames wives for adulterous husbands.  I guarantee that within the Gothard system specifically, the condemnation proves far more scathing.  The SBC as a whole isn't quite as miserable about such matters.

And as an aside, I was happy to learn that Anna Duggar's brother offered to take Anna and her children with Josh in and would support them, should Anna choose to separate.  Or something to that effect.

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Who put Jesus in a dress? The Insane Theology of the Eternal Subordination of the Son Doctrine

Shirley Taylor is revising her first book, but I wanted to revisit it in the event that this portion changes. 

I still can hardly believe that anyone takes this Subordination doctrine seriously at all, especially the alleged ramifications that it holds for gender relationships.  I wandered into a seminary a number of years ago and challenged doctrines that I could barely believe that anyone took seriously and found out in a most unpleasant way that it was one of the hottest topics within the Southern Baptist Convention.

I've heard rumors that many who claim to embrace gender roles and female subordination actually reject the idea that these roles and relationships find their origins in the Trinity -- a mystery of religion in and of itself.  But who knows.  Follow the money, I say.  When it completely stops bringing in the bucks, they'll abandon the concept and come up with some new kind of spin to make their concept try to work.   I'm still in awe that seminaries full of Christians can sit and listen to this, saying nothing.

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