Last week I had a very unpleasant conversation on my forum with a person who turned out to be very liberal. The topic was about the ordination of women ministers: she began by asking what protestant churches, if any, and why, do still forbid the ordination of women to the pastoral ministry, claiming that she was "new to all this reformed stuff." I answered by summing up the differences between orthodox, conservative denominations, and those that have adopted the liberal theology, pointing out that the basic problem is not in the biblical text not being clear about the matter, but in the different hermeneutics and their rejection of biblical inerrancy. After a couple more exchanges, seeing that she continued to argue that the Scripture is not clear about this and that it is a "cultural matter" because Galatians 3.28 tells us that there is neither male nor female, I replied by presenting, to the best of my ability, the two main passages in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians and answered the common objections.
She replied very aggressively, saying that while she was in no way a feminist, nonetheless she thought that Paul or whoever wrote those epistles clearly did not construct "well-thought-out theological expressions;" that those verses were "incoherent, illogical, absurd;" that the four Gospels have greater authority than the Pauline epistles which are "the product of men of their time;" that Paul's interpretation of the creation was "twisted and inept," because he had "a patriarchal prejudice" against women. She did not spare questions about my intelligence and conscience.
At that point I ended the conversation, pointing out that our presuppositions about the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible were incompatible, because her rejection of the biblical doctrine of plenary inspiration defied any attempt at dialogue.
In the last few days, however, I have thought about all this and wondered whether I handled the situation in the correct way. Was I right to end the conversation there? Or should I have moved the discussion to her presuppositions and her view of the Bible, ignoring her insults and aggressive language against me and the historic reformed faith I was trying to defend?
More in general, when the discussion reveals that the basic presuppositions of the two sides are diametrically opposed, as in the case of liberal theology, how much space is left for the discussion to continue, and in what direction?


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