I promised, in my review of Beyond Authority and Submission, to give a more detailed assessment of it.  The biggest challenge is knowing where to start and what to skip over, because I can’t just reprint the whole book with commentary.  In addition, some things are individual issues that only appear once or twice in the book, some issues are contextual, and some are patterns that are difficult to articulate without showing multiple portions of the book.  And some of these issues have already been well-addressed in previous reviews by church leaders and men who are (mis)represented in the book.

Which is all to say, please bear with me if the organization of this series seems lacking, as I’m trying to address virtually the entire content of a book without writing a book.  My goal is to unravel the rhetoric Miller uses, so we can separate the legitimate concerns (there are some) from the faulty assumptions and rescue biblical leadership structures from the strawmen that mimic them.  We do need to tackle the questions raised — but we need to tackle them honestly and biblically.

The Rhetoric Starts with the Title

One of the rhetorical devices used consistently throughout the book appears right at the start — in the title.  It’s subtle, but pervasive.  Savvy readers might notice that the book’s subtitle, Women and Men in Marriage, Church, and Society, reverses the traditional order of  the phrase “men and women,” placing women first.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with saying “women and men,” but this wording in the subtitle is merely the start of a consistent pattern throughout the book of placing women first and removing masculine references whenever possible (even where the “masculine” is really the universal/neuter).

There is not mixed use of “men and women” and “women and men”; the phrase is consistently “women and men.” And all references in the catechism to “man” (as in mankind) are truncated so the word “man” will not appear.  We’re not told, for instance, that “man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” but that “our ‘chief end’…”  Again, not something that is necessarily problematic, in and of itself, but notable when it shows up as a consistent pattern, particularly when partnered with the more overt rhetorical concerns we’ll see as we continue.

Issues are Seen Even in the Footnotes

If the issues begin with the title, they continue even through to the footnotes.  This, too, we’ll see in greater depth as we work our way through the book, but for now I want to point out what the reader sees when viewing the footnotes as a whole.  The representation is biased; it isn’t even-handed.

Historical chapters rely primarily on citations of pagan writers and on feminist writings, with little to no representation of Christian thought during the periods in question.  Modern chapters cite a range of authors including a Mormon, men widely considered to be dangerously extremist in their views, and more traditionally complementarian authors, with a presentation that implies a consistency of thought among them all.  (And that’s without even getting into the ways the more mainstream quotes are frequently pulled out of context.)

Since we’re talking broad patterns right now, it’s difficult to cite locations without being lengthy and awkward.  But by way of example, historical passages quote Plato, Livy, Hesiod, Plutarch, Darwin, and Barbara Welter.  (Just a selection.)  Modern chapters cite Helen Andelin, Douglas Wilson, Owen Strachan & Gavin Peacock, IBLP (Bill Gothard), RC Sproul Jr., Voddie Baucham, Anna Sofia Botkin & Elizabeth Botkin, etc.  That’s a pretty mixed bag.

The Overall Methodology is Flawed

Rachel Green Miller rightly tells us that “our culture needs clear teaching from the Bible.  That means that we need to study the Bible and allow the Scriptures to peel back any layers of unbiblical and extrabiblical beliefs we have added.” (p. 17)  But she doesn’t “study the Bible” here (except in a couple isolated instances) or start with the Scriptures.  It is impossible to prove the assertion that a belief is extrabiblical while skipping over entire passages of Scripture that are related to the topic at hand.

Miller simply states that certain beliefs are derived from sources other than Scripture, while avoiding any attempt at all to engage with the arguments the proponents of those beliefs make regarding where they come from.  We’ll also see glimpses of the habit she makes of mocking biblical language, while distancing such quotes from the citations of the Scriptures they reference.

In the next post, we’ll dive into the argumentation that begins in part 1 of Beyond Authority and Submission.