COPPENGER: WOMEN AS PASTORS NOT PERMITTED BY SCRIPTURE
by James A. Smith, Sr. Vol. IX, No. 6, June/July 1996
The Bible clearly prohibits women from serving in the role of pastor, said Midwestern Seminary President Mark T. Coppenger, warning, "You crash and burn when you defy the clear teaching of the Word of God." Coppenger, preaching from 1 Timothy 2:11-15 at an April 11 chapel service, compared himself with the person standing in the road warning travelers away from a road with a bridge out of service.
Having read the passage, Coppenger raised his Bible and asked with mocked incredulity, "What is this? I'll tell you what this is, this is God's inerrant Word. This is perfect, perfect, perfect holy Scripture. Now I may not understand it, but I do understand this: It is perfect, and it cannot be improved upon one syllable because it comes from God.
"You can approach this (passage) by saying, 'This is a difficulty and I've got to somehow clean up after it: or you can say, 'Praise the Lord. I don't totally understand it ... but that's no limit on it'"
The chapel service was scheduled as a panel discussion on the topic of women in ministry. Public notice was made on campus about the panel discussion and in advance of the event through Midwestern's library on SBCNet, the Southern Baptist forum on CompuServe.
At the request of Midwestern’s Student Body Association president, Coppenger agreed a few days before the scheduled panel to give half the chapel hour to the SBA for a student election forum. Chris Morris, SBA president, had originally requested the panel discussion on women in ministry in a conversation with Coppenger following a panel discussion earlier this year on the topic of divorce and remarriage. Coppenger granted the SBA request and decided to address the topic himself in the remaining time.
"I didn't seek the conflict but believe the invitation of the student leader was divinely engineered," Coppenger said in an interview. "It provided the opportunity to show the leadership of Midwestern Seminary on this issue in no uncertain terms. The national office of Baptist Women in Ministry has recently relocated to CBF-supported Central Baptist Seminary here in Kansas City, and I welcome the clear distinction between our institutions." [Editorial Note: Central Baptist Seminary is an American Baptist Seminary which receives financial support from the CBF and which recently welcomed CBF representation on its trustee board. A number of the more liberal professors who have left Southern and Midwestern Seminaries have received positions on the faculty at Central. TCP]
Coppenger expressed regret that a female student chose to drop his evangelism class following the chapel message which, otherwise, received sustained applause at its conclusion. The student "expressed dismay at my anger," Coppenger reported. "I told her it seemed to me that Scripture-twisting and rampant feminism were just cause for passion if anything is."
In his chapel message, Coppenger expressed concern about the advocacy of women as pastors, saying, "This is one of the raging, raging heresies and confusions of the day and it is eating up churches. It's astonishing to me how people who should know better roll over and buy this kind of stuff. I beg you, don't touch it with a stick.
"Now I'm not saying that everybody who toys with this idea is utterly apostate," Coppenger later added. "But I am saying that they are playing with a very dangerous approach to understanding Scripture and the church."
Using his own wife, Sharon, as an example, Coppenger rejected the notion that women have lowered their expectations by not seeking professional or pastoral roles. "There are those who say that Sharon has been cheated because she has been denied the opportunity to be a pastor,” Coppenger said. "I say that is utterly wrong-headed and non-biblical – there is glorious service for women." Calling Sharon a "heroine of mine,” Coppenger noted the contributions she has made to their family as mother and wife and through churches with missions, evangelism and discipleship programs. "Equality in value, but not in identity of role,' Coppenger said.
Coppenger also rejected modern-day commentators who have suggested the I Timothy passage is no longer relevant because it was based on the culture of the first century and that the Apostle Paul's biases contradict Jesus' teachings. Citing such comments in The Interpreter's Bible commentary, Coppenger said, "I read this and I say, 'Anathema! Ichabod! The glory has departed!' Paul and Jesus do not contradict, Paul and Jesus both speak the Word of God. It's Scripture," Coppenger insisted.
Paul gave three reasons, according to Coppenger, women should not have teaching authority over men: It's an affront to the creation order, to home and family, and to women themselves. Noting Paul's illustration from creation clearly undercuts the argument of cultural relativity, Coppenger said, "If somebody presumes to say that it's simply situational and ignores the tie to Genesis, that ... is hermeneutically, utterly irresponsible.
"This ascent of woman as pastor is a threat to the order of the home," Coppenger continued, noting the apostle's words addressing women who were repudiating child-bearing. "Paul is concerned that there not be a wedge formed in the church ... that breaks up the home."
Paul also rejects women as pastors because it is "an affront to herself," according to Coppenger. "Eve suffered from the fall as well. In a sense she confounded herself."
Women pastors also are "an affront to holy Scripture," Coppenger said. Experienced-based and culture-based Christians, as opposed to "Word-based Christians," are susceptible to rejecting the biblical prohibitions on women as pastors, according to Coppenger.
Although "there are churches and denominations that embrace that kind of easy, breezy, whichever-way-the-wind-blows approach," Coppenger said Southern Baptists have traditionally opposed women as pastors, citing AT. Robertson, John A. Broadus, and B.H. Carroll.
"Folks. those are your roots," Coppenger said. “I affirm those roots." [BP]