Three Views of Hell, Part 1

Recently, I have been studying the Biblical doctrine of Hell, and have come to a surprising conclusion: I don’t know what to believe about Hell.

As I studied the passages that most Protestant Christians believe speak about Hell, I discovered that the Bible has far less to say on the subject than I ever thought. You’ve probably heard it said that Jesus spoke more about Hell than about any other single subject; I have heard it said countless times in my life, but in studying the subject I found that Jesus either rarely, or never (depending on how you understand several vague passages) spoke about Hell. In reality, He spoke most often about the Kingdom of God, but that’s a subject for another time.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this subject, and as my views are now up in the air, I would like to present what I have found and see if any readers have any comments. This will probably take three or four posts (or six or seven), and I imagine that each will be pretty long. That said, I hope this interesting for all.

Three Biblical Views of Hell?

Like most Christians, I grew up believing in what is generally known as the “Eternal Torment” view of Hell. We’re all familiar with it - In brief, it says that all people who die without having accepted the saving work of Christ are judged and then cast in Hell, or more specifically the Lake of Fire, where they are separated from God and suffer torment for eternity. While I was aware that liberal Christians and some groups I would call cults had different beliefs about Hell, I never for a moment considered that anything other than the Eternal Torment view was Biblically justifiable.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in “Annihilationism,” that the soul of the unbeliever is destroyed upon death so that there isn’t any hell at all. For the JW, there is only Heaven and non-existence. The Unitarians believe in “Universalism,” that there are many ways to God, and that all people will be accepted into God’s presence upon death. For them Heaven is the only destination. These are not the only pseudo-Christian cults and groups that hold such alternative doctrines about Hell, but they are two of the most prominent.

Neither Annihilationism nor Universalism, as stated above, has any grounding in scripture. Both views primarily emanate from a strong distaste for the eternal torment view – a distaste that most Christians can probably empathize with. I have never been particularly comfortable with the eternal torment understanding of Hell myself, but I have defended it on internet forums and in the High School Sunday School classes I taught because I believed it was what the Bible taught. That said, in conducting a more focused study of the Biblical teachings on Hell I was very surprised to come to the conclusion that two other views, very similar to Annihilationism and Universalism, do have as much Biblical evidence in their favor as the view of Eternal Torment does.

“Universal Reconciliation”

I imagine that most conservative Christians will have a bad reaction to this view instinctively, as on it’s surface it appears almost indistinguishable from Universalism. Like Universalism, Universal Reconciliation teaches that all people will bow the knee, be reconciled with God, and join Him in Heaven. While the end result is the same, there are three key differences which make Universal Reconciliation, I believe, tolerable to Biblical Christianity while Universalism is not.

1. There is a Hell in Universal Reconciliation.
While Universalism teaches that all men go to heaven because God is too loving to send people to hell, that He is pleased with us no matter what we do, Universal Reconciliation teaches that men who die without Christ suffer judgment and Hell for their sins against God.

2. All men will be saved, but that Salvation is only through Christ.
While the god of Universalism loves everyone so much that he will overlook any sin in accepting people into Heaven, Universal Reconciliation holds that it is only because of suffering and Hell that the damned are brought to a place of repentance and repaired relationship with God through Christ.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Universal Reconciliation.
Universalism is based on a negative emotional response to the doctrine of Hell. Those evangelicals who consider themselves Universal Reconciliationists hold the view not because they hate idea of Hell but because they believe the Bible teaches it.

“Conditional Immortality”

Like Annihilationism, this view teaches that all men not found in Christ when they die, will cease to exist. The ultimate final destination is either Heaven for the saved or non-existence for the lost. Many evangelicals would call this view Annihilationism, and it is very similar to that heretical position except for three points.

1. There is a Hell in Conditional Immortality.
Like Universalism, Annihilationism gets rid of Hell completely, as those who hold to it choose not to believe that a god of love could punish people in Hell. Conditional Immortality recognizes the Biblical teaching of Hell and the requirement of judgment upon those who reject God before they are extinguished from existence.

2. Human Beings are mortal by nature.
Annihilationism holds that God destroys the soul that dies without Christ, that ceasing to exist is the sum total of the punishment that God meets out. Conditional Immortality says that human beings are not innately immortal, and thus there is no need for God to destroy them. Immortality, it is argued, emanates from God, and without God to sustain the soul it passes away.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Conditional Immortality.
Like Universal Reconciliation, the Biblical argument in favor of Conditional Immortality is surprisingly good. Those who support the view do so not because they hate the idea of hell, like the cultist and the liberal, but because they believe it is taught in the Bible.

Let me reemphasize that I am up in the air, no longer leaning toward Eternal Torment, Universal Reconciliation, or Conditional Immortality. I am totally undecided. As that is the case, I want to present each of the views and the arguments both for and against them as best I can. Because I am undecided, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and want to know what everyone thinks about each view. I hope everyone will find this interesting.

Nowhere Else to Go

Have you ever considered whether you could come to a place of total unbelief in God, a place where you could walk away from your Christian faith? I have pondered that question numerous times. Recently, Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason gave the best short answer to that question that I have heard:

"I have never doubted so strongly...that I have been tempted to walk away. And the reason is because I think I know too much. What am I going to walk to?

Am I going to walk to atheism? I couldn't be an atheist if I tried! There's too much evidence for the existence of God. I would have to buy all these atheistic conundrums: everything came from nothing; life came from non-life; consciousness came from matter; morality came from nowhere; law came from chaos. All of these are wildly counter-intuitive.

Maybe some other religion? What other religion doesn't have the same kind of problems I'm facing right now? Whatever it is that I might be disappointed with God about, there is no other religion that is going to offer me something more. I could be a Hindu, I guess, and say that it's all just an illusion anyway, but that doesn't ring true.

I have doubted, I have been challenged, I have been hurt, I have questioned God, I have disbelieved God's goodness many times. But in all I have never been tempted to walk away because there's nothing [else] to go to."

"Jesus Didn't Exist"

Those of you who have taken the time to talk with atheists and skeptics about the historicity of Christianity have probably engaged someone who has made the claim that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Generally, when this claim is made we Christians fall all over ourselves attempting to provide evidence to the contrary. We do all the heavy lifting, fruitlessly providing evidence to the contrary. I have to admit that I have done exactly this on more than occasion.

I have recently been reminded of a better option. Do nothing. Don’t engage in the debate on the terms of the one making the ridiculous claim. One of the most important tactics to remember when debating with anyone, no matter what the topic, is, “The one making the claim bears the burden of proof.” When the atheist makes the claim that Jesus never existed, in total contradiction to all the available evidence and virtually the entire community of ancient historians, it’s up to them to support their claim, not for us to refute it.

Instead of immediately jumping into the debate with research and evidence, just sit back and ask, “What’s your proof?” There is none. This is just a claim that atheists make without any support at all, generally because it gets Christians riled up and distracted doing all kinds of leg work to refute the claim. Chances are, you won’t make any headway trying to convince an atheist that their claim is bad by providing evidence, but you might actually get him to back away from such a claim by forcing him support it himself.

Apocalyptic Prophesies

I want to look at one more prophesy from Isaiah. I separated this one from the three previous examples as it’s not about Jesus, but is an excellent example of what many scholars call
"Apocalyptic literature;" or prophesy in the apocalyptic style.

Apocalyptic literature is particularly strange to us in the West, as it is the only literature type in the Bible for which we do not have a corresponding style. Some of the peculiar hallmarks of this literature type include: symbolic language making frequent use of hyperbole; focus on a coming divine judgment on a people or a nation often referred to as a “visitation” or “coming” of God; often, apocalyptic literature is written in verse, or in poetic form. In my opinion, these distinctive are vitally important to keep in mind when reading Biblical prophecy that is likely apocalyptic in nature.

Isaiah 13 declares itself to be an “oracle concerning Babylon,” and it’s an excellent example of the apocalyptic style. It is also an passage to learn from because we know a great deal about the fulfillment of this prophesy from both the book of Daniel, the historian Herodotus, and modern archeology.

Vs. 9 – Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it.

The second half of this verse didn’t happen. The land wasn’t made desolate in 539 BC, in fact, Babylon remained a large and important city until well after the life of Alexander the Great. Neither did God literally exterminate sinners from the land around Babylon; sinners lived in the city throughout the time of the Medes and the Persians and through the time of the Greeks as well. In fact, there are records in existence that relate the continuation of pagan sacrifices in the city temples until at least 275 BC, 264 years after the event predicted in Isaiah 13.

While this didn’t literally take place, it paints a picture of severe judgment against the Babylonian empire and its people because of their great sin before God. This part is clearly true and, I think, the intended image Isaiah wished to convey.

Vs. 12 13 – I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold and mankind than
the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will
be shaken from it’s place, At the fury of the Lord of hosts, In the day of His
burning anger.

None of these things literally occurred in the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were just as many men in the 5th century BC as there were in the 6th, even in and around Babylon. While none of us can say whether the heavens trembled or not, it seems pretty clear that the earth was not shaken from its place.

This type of language, the shaking of heaven and earth from their place, is not an uncommon image when the author desires to communicate serious and significant changes. In this case, the greatest empire in the world at this time, Babylon, is going to be overthrown, in a single night no less, and replaced by an entirely new power, the Medes and the Persians.

Vs. 19, 20 – And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’
pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be
inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his
tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.

Verse 17 places the time of this whole prophesy unmistakably in 539 BC at the overthrow of the Babylonian empire by the Medes and Persians, yet none of the things in verses 19 and 20 actually happened. God did not burn Babylon off the face of the earth as He did to Sodom and Gomorrah, but it continued to be an important city in the hands of both the Medes and Persians and the Greeks; it was inhabited and lived in for many generations following the Babylonian overthrow.

However, in another sense, God’s judgment on Babylon is exactly like His judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. In both cases the cities, or nation, under judgment completely vanished in an instant. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in a moment by fire from heaven, while Babylon was completely supplanted by an entirely new empire in the space of a night. In both cases the entities under judgment ceased to exist in a virtual instant.

We need to understand the writing in the way the author intended it to be understood: The point of the prophesy is that God is going to bring judgment on Babylon and that the tool of that judgment will be the Medes and the Persians and that the changes brought about by this judgment will be significant.

This is very standard hyperbolic language which is used regularly in this type of Ancient Near Eastern literature. Rather than conveying actual events, its purpose was to convey importance and significance. We know this from many examples this style of literature found in both Biblical and extra-Biblical documents.

For example, consider the extra-Biblical prologue and epilogue written for the book of Esther and attributed by the author to Mordecai:

Prologue:
Behold, noise and confusion, thunders and earthquake, tumult upon the earth! And behold, two great dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared terribly. And at their roaring every nation prepared for war, to fight against the nation of the righteous. And behold, a day of darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth! And the whole righteous nation was troubled, they feared the evils that threatened them, and were ready to perish. Then they cried to God and from their cry, as though from a tiny spring there came a great river with abundant water, light came, and the sun arose, and the lowly were exalted and consumed those held in honor.

At the end of the book of Esther this epilogue is added:

I remember the dream that I had concerning these matters, and none of them has
failed to be fulfilled. The tiny stream which became a river, and there was light and the sun and abundant water–the river is Esther, whom the King married and became queen. The two dragons are Haman and myself. The nations are those gathered to destroy the name of the Jews. And my nation, this is Israel, who cried out to God and were saved.

You can see how the story of Esther is retold in this apocalyptic paragraph and how the symbols, similar to those found in Isaiah and other apocalyptic passages in the Bible, play a role in depicting the story. I think that from this example we can see how apocalyptic literature tends to retell (or foretell, in the prophets’ case) history in fantastic imagery and sensational symbols. I think the same thing is going on in the case of Isaiah 13, and a number of other passages in the Bible. There certainly is a precedent for it.

It is a mistake to apply the same literal standard to all prophesy in the Bible, nor is it a good way to interpret scripture. Taking the time to examine passages like Isaiah 13, and the extra biblical prologue and epilogue of Esther can give us insight into a style of writing wholly unfamiliar to us, and give us tools for understanding other scriptures where the fulfillment has not been provided.

Are Prophesies Always Fulfilled Literally?

I recently got into a discussion about Biblical prophecy with an acquaintance who happens to be a dispensationalist. The conversation got started when he told me that prophesy “is always fulfilled literally.” To clarify the point he provided an example: If a prophet declares that it’s going to rain on Tuesday, and it doesn’t rain on Tuesday, then he is a false prophet. He can’t suddenly say, “Well, when I said rain I was referring to spiritual raining down of God’s blessings; not actual rain!” He worried that if fulfillments aren’t “literal” then we have no objective way of determining the truth or untruth of any prophesy.

I don’t think that this is the case at all. We simply have to look at a few prophesies given in the Old Testament whose fulfillment is explicitly recorded elsewhere in the Bible to see that his point is mistaken. Let’s take a look at just a few examples of such prophesies:

Isaiah 22:20-23
Then it will come about in that day, That I will summon My servant Eliakim to the son of Hilkiah, And I will clothe him with your tunic And tie your sash securely about him. I will entrust him with your authority, And he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, When he opens no one will shut, When he shuts no one will open. I will drive him like a peg in a firm place, And he will become a throne of glory to his father’s house.

The fulfillment, according to the vision of John, is expounded upon in Revelation 3:7:

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this…

Although the passage in Isaiah was made about the man Eliakim, in Revelation 3 Jesus claims this prophesy for Himself! This is clearly not a literal fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. Isaiah made his prophesy about someone other than Jesus; in fact, without the passage in Revelation, there would be no reason why anyone would even think to apply Isaiah 22:22 to Christ at all. None of the things which Isaiah predicts for Eliakim ever literally occur during the ministry of Jesus: Jesus never literally had the key to the house of David, nor did He literally shut or open anything of note during his time on earth.

Despite this, Jesus Himself claims that He presently holds the key of David and is the one who opens and the one who shuts. This isn’t about some future time, Jesus says these things are true about Himself now. It seems that the proper understanding of this passage is a spiritual one, not a literal one.

Isaiah 28:16
Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.

There are several places in the New Testament where the Apostles point out this fulfilled prophesy (Romans 9:33, 10:11, 1 Peter 2:6, Acts 4:11), yet if I were to apply a literal standard to this passage I could not apply this passage to Christ. Jesus was never a literal stumbling stone, certainly not in the wooden sense that my acquaintance forcefully advocated to me.

The fulfillment of this passage is spiritual: Christ is the spiritual foundation of the present spiritual Kingdom of God. For the Jews (and many others today), Christ was and is a stumbling stone in a spiritual sense – they do not want to believe that He is the Messiah they are waiting for. It’s a spiritual hang-up, not a physical one.

Isaiah 8:7-8
And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.

The author of Hebrews references this passage and applies it to Jesus in 2:13. While many actual children came to Jesus during His earthly ministry, they are not what the prophesy is referring to. God does not have physical children in view here, but spiritual Children, the author of Hebrews make this clear in vs. 14 and 15:

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

We become His children when God becomes our Father through our love of Christ, as Christ Himself stated in John 8:42.

I could give more examples of spiritual fulfillments from the prophesies which the Apostles tell us are fulfilled in Christ, but I think these three make my point clearly.

When my acquaintance provided the example of a prophesy for rain on Tuesday, he was articulating a standard which would require that all outsiders would be able, with simple observation, to independently confirm or refute the accuracy of the prophesy. The point of bringing up these three passages from Isaiah is that, in each case, there is nothing for the observer to observe. Without the divinely inspired writing of the Apostles these passages would have no concrete, observable fulfillment that contemporaries of Jesus could have confirmed or denied. That said, the lack of an observable fulfillment does not make these prophesies any less true or any less fulfilled than Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.

The Proper Place of Science

Here in The West, we have a love affair with science. It’s completely understandable; science has spread prosperity to an unprecedented level, it has put men on the moon, given us the means to feed the whole planet, created the microwave, and allowed us to carry excessively tiny telephones with us wherever we go. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of science has caused many people to place it on pedestal and rely on it for every answer. For so many, an answer provided by science no matter what the subject, is wrongly valued far above answers provided by its sister disciplines of philosophy and theology.

Science is a tool and like any tool it is good for some jobs and absolutely useless for others. Science can’t explain the deepest questions that we have asked ourselves over the centuries: “Why are we here? (Not “How did we come into being,” which it might be possible for science to answer, although even that answer has so far eluded scientists, but rather “WHY, or for what purpose, are we here?”). Science can’t explain consciousness, kindness, morality, or even free will.

Here are two classic examples of the limitation of science:

1. A brain surgeon knows a great deal more about the physical brain than I do, yet he has absolutely no access to my mind. He knows nothing about my innermost thoughts, he can’t discover them by looking at my brain, and he can’t tell what I’m thinking about, or what makes me happy, sad, worried, or elated through any scientific means available to him.
   
   
2. (Credit to Philosopher Brian Magee for this example):I am sitting in a room, when the human body sitting opposite me rises out of it’s chair and then moves across the room to a table. On the table it locates a small silver box, out of which it removes a cigarette which it places in it’s mouth. Upon completing this action, the body proceeds to light that same cigarette.
   
   I, and anyone else who observes this action, immediately understand that that person desires a cigarette, even if we have never experienced such a similar desire ourselves before. However, if we try to explain this sequence of events in scientific terms, those of atomic motion and chemical reaction, this sequence suddenly becomes totally incomprehensible.

Science is very limited in its ability to explain the universe around us. It is only a tool, and a flawed tool at that as philosophers David Hume and Thomas Kuhn have so brilliantly pointed out. Yet, it remains the best, most important tool we have for explaining the natural world. That is all. Only what can be examined physically and measured quantitatively and qualitatively is available to science. Everything else falls into the realms of Philosophy or Theology.

You’ve probably heard an atheist say that “science has proven that miracles can’t occur.” This is complete rot. By definition science is the study of order and patterns, usually in the natural world. Miracles, by definition, are events that go against the natural order and established pattern of the world. In other words, miracles are forever outside the realm of science. Trying to explain genuine miracles with science is a little like trying to gauge an individual’s wisdom with a tape measure. It’s the wrong tool.

Science is necessary and useful, but it by no means has the last word (or often any word) on the most important aspects of human life – meaning, morality, love, selflessness, consciousness, or rationality; and the list goes on and on. For each of these areas we need the separate but equally useful tools of philosophy and theology.

Women in Government - An Affront to God?

In my post In Defense of Deborah I pointed out that adherents to “Biblical Patriarchy” claim that God commands that all positions of authority whether in the home, the church, or any form of civil government, be held by men at all times regardless of the circumstances. In his article Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate?, posted on Vision Forum, William Einwechter writes:

“…as creation establishes the headship of man in the civil sphere by means of man being created first and the woman being created for man, so the law of God sets the headship of man in the civil sphere by means of the stated qualifications for civil rulers.”

Einwechter makes this claim by appealing to several Old Testament (OT) passages for support:

1) The creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:18-24; I have already answered Mr. Einwechter’s arguments from the creation story in my last post, “Biblical Patriarchy from Creation?”

2) Jethro’s council to Moses to set up judges under him to handle common problems and disagreements:

“Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens." – Exodus 18:21 (NASB)


3) Moses’ restatement of Jethro’s advice in Deuteronomy 1:

'Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.' – Deuteronomy 1:13 (NASB)


4) The laws given for the kings of Israel (whenever they should happen to come along):

"When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,'…He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. – Deuteronomy 17:14,17 (NASB)


In looking at these passages, Mr. Einwechter notes that the pronoun in each of them is masculine. He correctly points out that these words are gender specific, unlike the word ‘man’ from the creation story which is the gender neutral ‘mankind.’ That the pronoun is gender-specific is particularly meaningful to Patriarchists as they believe that it communicates a God-given requirement of male-ness for all positions of authority.

Mr. Einwechter writes:
“God set for the essential qualifications for civil magistrates for all people and for all time when He spoke through Jethro to Moses…The word “men” chosen by the Holy Spirit in both of these texts is the Hebrew, gender specific word for a man.” (emphasis added)

I think this makes the Exodus 18 passage do far more work than it was ever intended it to do.
The first thing that must be pointed out is that Mr. Einwechter goes well beyond the Biblical text and good Biblical exegesis in making the claim that it was God himself who selected the precise wording of Jethro’s comments, i.e. God “spoke through Jethro to Moses.” Actually, if you read the whole the passage you see that Jethro makes an entirely different claim about his words:

Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. – Exodus 18:19 (TNIV – emphasis added)

The simple truth is that Jethro offers Moses his advice on how he should handle the burden of leadership over the Jewish people and articulates a desire for God’s blessing on whatever path Moses chooses to follow. Nothing more. I am not claiming that Jethro’s advice was not wise or even that it was not inspired by God, however the Bible never makes this claim. It is good advice from a wise and apparently Godly man; let’s leave it at that.

The second point that must be made is similar to the first; even if these words are spoken by God through Jethro, they come in the form of advice that Moses could choose to follow or not. They are not a command. To claim, as Einwechter does, that this advice from Jethro, along with it’s repetition in Deuteronomy 1, constitutes a law of God regarding civil leadership stretches this passage to the breaking point. Let’s be serious. God was not shy about supplying the people of Israel with very specific laws pertaining to everything from the criminal justice system to the daily washing of various body parts to the proper way to prepare foods, yet He choose to rely on advice from Jethro to communicate His will regarding civil leadership? To quote John Stossel, “Give me a break!” The passage reflects wise counsel, and I often wish that we had leaders who fit that mold, but it’s hardly a command.

The third point is that the actual use of the word “men” in Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1 may be culturally bound. For Moses and Jethro to refer only to men when contemplating a candidate for leadership would be completely in line with their culture, which was genuinely patriarchal (not the warmed-over modern interpretation of patriarchy of Vision Forum and others). Think about it. Even today, in a culture that could hardly be called patriarchal, except by the most hardened feminists, we still tend to use masculine pro-nouns when talking generally about the people who hold positions of authority. In the same way, only more so, it would never have occurred to Jethro to even consider a woman for any position of leadership at all.


The forth passage that William Einwechter cites as establishing God’s “essential qualifications for civil magistrates for all people and for all time” is Deuteronomy 17:14-17. About this passage Mr. Einwechter writes:

Furthermore, the directions that God gives concerning the establishment of a king in Israel requires that a man, and not a woman, be chosen (Deut. 17:14-20). The king was to be a “brother,” and he was not to “multiply wives to himself.” Clearly, a man is in view here.

To that I say: Yes, a man is in view here! Or maybe we should say that 44 men are in view here. As “The Lawgiver” and a prophet of God, Moses knows that in several hundred years the people of Israel will demand a king. Armed with this foreknowledge, Moses gives several basic laws by which those kings should abide (although none of them did). Far from making strictly male leadership a command for all people for all time, Moses’ failure to acknowledge Queens in this short set of laws only recognizes that Israel only ever had kings over her for as long as the nation existed. This is a fact of history, not a command.

The final point that needs to made is about the nature of the Old Testament Law itself. Even if we actually did find commands for male-only leadership in each of these passages, the Church is no longer under the Old Testament Law and the obligations that come with it. Such commands would no longer apply to us. The laws given by God through Moses to the Jewish people were for the governance and blessing of the religious theocracy of Israel that God established.

Today the order has changed. Jews and Gentiles alike are no longer under the Old Covenant, but are under a new Law, the New Covenant established not between God and nations, but between God and those who love Him and follow His Son, Jesus. If Jesus had come to establish a political kingdom He would have done it. Instead, He came to establish his Kingdom, for the moment a spiritual Kingdom, made up of people from every creed, nation, and race on Earth.


As this is true, we find the commands for Christians regarding civil government to be few, indeed they can boiled down to the simple statement “Obey the civil authorities.” This sums up Jesus statement regarding tribute to Caesar in Matthew 22:17-21 and Paul’s statement regarding civil obedience in Romans 13:1-7. For the Christian it no more difficult than that. No statement about qualifications and certainly none about gender. What does this tell me? That God has allowed Christians to make their own choices on civil leadership issues, tempered by Godly wisdom.


Am I saying that we should expect numerically equal gender representation in positions of authority? I am not. I believe that God has generally provided men and women with different strengths and abilities that offset each others weaknesses. God has made men in such a way that they will take on the rigors and demands of authority far more naturally than women. However, by acknowledging that I am not saying women can never or should never take on roles of authority. History has shown that there exist great women who have skillfully and effectively taken even the highest positions of authority and held those offices with such grace, dignity, and efficacy that they brought honor to the position and to those over whom they held authority. Is this the normal order of things? It is not, but just because something is not normal does not make it illegitimate or unbiblical.

William Einwechter’s position on women in civil government may look impressive and Biblical at first glance, but when you compare his interpretation with the actual passages he cites and the rest of scripture, his case falls apart so completely that there literally is nothing left for him to hang his argument on.