You cannot expect the enemy to argue honestly. You must expect outrageous claims, the use of proof texts or passages within papers taken out of context. We see this in Aussie, where the NZ student survey is taken as gospel on gender confusion: about 2% have a wish they were a girl when a boy or vice versa. No one in NZ uses that survey that way: we know the methodology and we hold the answers lightly. Answering “yes” in a survey is not gender dysphoria: which, like all fashionable disorders, may be other things now called good.

The introductory quote comes from Dalrock, who is quoting the best biblical scholar of the last generation: Gruden. As Vox Day notes, it shows that reasoned argument won’t trump feelz.

The text is Ephesians 5, which has just been read.

This of course still didn’t satisfy the egalitarians, because this was never really about a serious disagreement on what the Bible said. This was about feminist rebellion against Scripture, with a minimal effort made to pretend this was a real theological discussion. Unfortunately Grudem still hadn’t figured this out, so he went back and did even more research on the topic and published a third scholarly article

But there were still more responses, and more people disagreeing. So eleven years after that, in 2001, I published another article, forty-one pages in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, on “The Meaning of kephal? (“Head”): An Evaluation of New Evidence, Real and Alleged.”4

So that’s 132 pages of lexicographical research published in academic journals on one word in the Bible. And these articles spanned sixteen years of my life.

Note that the egalitarians only had to make an unsubstantiated claim, and continue to make the claim despite irrefutable proof to the contrary. By doing so, they managed to tie a scholar like Grudem up for fifteen years. Even after all of this, the organization Grudem founded (CBMW) presents this totally baseless argument as if it has merit.

This is sophism. It is a rebellion against the righteous, and against creation. This is what the prophets talked about. For our God is not a god that cares not about the material, or denies that which is no longer perfect. Christ would have not come to fallen world if it was not for love.

And our God is the God who saves. Ideologies damn: the love of theory is the root of much evil.

Isaiah 45:18-25

¹⁸  For thus says the LORD,  who created the heavens (he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it(he established it;
he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!):
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
¹⁹  I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,“Seek me in chaos.”
I the LORD speak the truth, I declare what is right.

²⁰  Assemble yourselves and come together,
draw near, you survivors of the nations!
They have no knowledge — those who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god that cannot save.
²¹  Declare and present your case;
let them take counsel together!
Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, the LORD? There is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and a Savior; there is no one besides me.

²²  Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
²³  By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”

²⁴  Only in the LORD, it shall be said of me,
are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
shall come to him and be ashamed.
²⁵  In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall
triumph and glory.

Mark 4:35-41

³⁵On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

The left is of chaos: they want to break down all structures and with it all the walls of protection that exist. In a deliberate dystopia about a slave holding South Africa, S M Stirling has a mother tell her child that the rulers have all the riches of the slave’s labour — but have to take all the risk of protection. All of them.

The leader has to be in front. A leader has to make order. In doing this, you are sub-creating: building, imperfectly, something that is akin to the model we have from God.

None of us are perfect here. But we worship a God who is. And we need to reflect, in seeking, truth, beauty, and honour, the virtues of order, modesty, humility, dignity and justice. For we are for this generation the watchmen on the gate, the shock troops of the righteous, and all powers and prinicipalities of chaos must be resisted.

For in the end, we will bow our knees in joy. The enemy will bow in shame and defeat.

And while we can still do, Choose Christ, and let all things fall from that.