CATEGORY:
Doctrine & Exposition REVIEWER:
Rick
Leadership is Male
David Pawson
This is a relatively thin book and by no means an attempt at anything near
exhaustive on the subject of male and female. David Pawson makes it his stated
aim to simply expound upon this one aspect concerning men and women’s respective
roles – biblical, authoritative leadership is male. He shows from Scripture that
patriarchy (males taking the lead in families and Church) is a very evident
feature of Old and New Covenants as well as Pre-Covenant days.
There is a nice foreword by Elizabeth Elliot (a cunning move to invite a woman
to contribute in this way!). She picks up on something that David Pawson says
concerning meticulous exegesis being the key to resolving this issue. Elizabeth
Elliot is more insightful about this in my opinion stating that it is unlikely
that painstaking analysis will bring an end to the debate. She knows that the
issue in hand runs much deeper.
The issue of feminism is shown to be a matter of women refusing to accept the
simple command to be in submission. Equally importantly male chauvinism is shown
to be an overreaction causing men to become dictators rather than gentle, loving
leaders. It’s all pretty obvious to those who are filled with the loveliness of
the Spirit of Christ and have read the plain words of Holy Scripture.
Mr Pawson makes a particular point of addressing Galatians 3:28 – “…there is
neither male nor female…” which he describes as being a universal maxim for
feminism (or something like that) whilst either totally ignoring or making all
kinds of accusations about all of Paul’s many other statements on the same
subject. Speaking of which he cites some of the ‘alternative’ translations and
interpretations of these passages the likes of which beggars belief! He doesn’t
dismiss these strange and marvellous alternatives with any abruptness but just
carefully and courteously shows that they are nonsense!
