The CBE Conference Has Started
Linda and I are at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, at the Christians for Biblical Equality conference with what looks like around 200 other attendees. The conference started with a general session called “One Body, Many Gifts,” led by Dr. Craig Keener, a professor of New Testament Studies at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, who is the author of the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, and other books.
Then this evening, at a second general session, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen spoke about C.S. Lewis’ long journey to gender equality. Lewis viewed pagan myths a foreshadowing of Christianity and read pagan gender archetypes back into scripture. He also lived in a world without women as Oxford and Cambridge had for a very long time not admitted women into the ranks of professorships and getting married was considered not being professional in one’s profession.
But Joy Davidman brought about a change in Lewis and his later books, Till We Have Faces, The Discarded Image, and “A Grief Observed,” showed a much more egalitarian view than he had previously held. More on this coming up.
I purchased the CD and listened to her presentation again (twice)on the drive home after the conference.
I had several abiding questions answered by her presentation. I had long wanted to understand where hierarchialists (sp?) get their interpretation of “God’s created order” for men and women.
Her presentation set it out unambiguously; Pagan myths, Greek philosophy (Aristotle’s ladder of nature) and more recently, Freudian and Jungian philosophy.
She was speaking specifically of C.S. Lewis but his view of male hierarchy is certainly representative of mainline complementarian doctrines.
I was glad to hear from her analysis that Lewis, later in life, adopted a more egalitarian approach to the matter.
Her whole presentation has opened for me a new avenue for further study.