Click on the links below to view the following articles:
By Jon Zens
- Have You Heard? Gossip in the Body
- Each According to His Ability
- Essays on Hermeneutics
- Were Women Silent at Pentecost?
- Healthy Assembly Life
- 1 Cor. 14:34-35 and Its Context
- Search for a Spiritual Home
- Ray Comfort: Hell’s Best Kept Secret
- Why Jesse May Be Right – A Letter to the Governor
- A Better Society Without the Gospel?
- Is There A Covenant of Grace?
- God and Country or Christ’s Kingdom
- Building Up the Body – One Man or One Another?
- Today’s Israel: Is God on Her Side?
- The Clergy/Laity Dist: A Help or Hindrance?
- Four Tragic Shifts in the Visible Church, 180 – 400 A.D.
- Review of “Deep Church” by Jim Belcher
- Law and Ministry (orig. 1984 / rev. 2012)
- Jon Zens Critiques John Piper On Women
- The Pastor, 1982
By Other Authors
- Authority and Ministry in the Local Church by Rudy Ray
- Is Civil Disobedience Biblical? by Bruce Davidson
- The Lord’s Supper is Not a Sacrament by Vernard Eller
- The Church in the World by Tom Frazier
- Patriotism by F.H. Hankins, (1920)
- Slain in the Spirit – Biblical or Unbiblical?
- Pastor’s Wife Letter to Austin Miles (1989)
- The Phenomenon of Ekklesia (1986) – Fred Mackler
- Kephale (“Head”) by Laurie Fasullo
- The Organization of the Early Christian Churches by Hatch
- Communion in the Early Centuries by Thomas M. Lindsay
- Some Considerations Regarding the Lord’s Supper Today by Marshall
- The Seed of Abraham and the Old Covenant by Albertus Pieters
Web Articles (Not published in ST)
Author, speaker, editor of Searching Together, itinerant encourager of relational communities.
Absolutely excellent response to Governor Ventura.
I never heard back from Governor Ventura, but it appears that many other people have profited from my response to his remarks about religion.
Jon, in your paper “Jon Zens Critiques John Piper On Women” I wonder if you can distinguish your views from the typical liberal approach?
Can you explain why there were no female apostles?
Is it your view that men and women have no separate roles save those determined by biology, e.g. child bearing?
Would a church with 3 women pastors and no male pastors be scriptural? If not, why not?
Is there nothing in created order that suggests male headship?
If absolute equality in every sense and in every role is biblical, why has virtually every element of historic Christian experience missed this apparently obvious standard?
Why the differing male/female requirements/expectations in the OT? In other words, there seems to me instances where parity does not seem the norm. Where the armies of Israel generally led by women? Were women in the ranks? Why not? Why kings and not queens ruling? In all, there were 42 kings (and one queen who ruled instead of a king). What conclusion is reasonable?
Why the dominance of male prophets?
Can there not be essential parity w/o absolute parity? In the Army, if I am a Lieutenant and my supervisor is a Captain, I may be as smart, as brave and as good a soldier as my superior – but is that a reason to feign total equality? In this lust for absolute equality, do you not fear you may be trampling on God’s order to justify a preferred presupposition? This is what troubles me about so much of theological liberalism – it is agenda driven, and simply finds ways to accommodate agendas to generalizations at the expense of pesky particulars.
Well enough for now. I’m an old man now with heart problems, and I better close.
All the best to you Jon.
David Leach
David, it was good to meet you in Houston after knowing you only by phone and letter for so many years! Your questions are very good. I will respond to them crisply. You got a copy of “What’s With Paul & Women?” so if you read that it will cover many of your inquires. I think some of your questions are touched on in my critique of Piper’s book.
I think you can see in my writings that I seek to take Scripture seriously. That in itself would distance me from a liberal approach. The Bible is Christ-focused, and I want Him to be my focus.
You ask why there were no female apostles. But Romans 16 mentions a female deacon and a female apostle, Junia. She was “outstanding among the apostles.” If one is mentioned, there were surely others. See Eldon Jay Epp’s “Junia — The First Female Apostle” as an excellent opening up of this matter. Jesus chose 12 male apostles because He was a New Jacob.Jacob had 12 sons who comprised Israel, and Jesus picked 12 men to symbolize the New Israel He would create. “Apostle” is not a gender-specific function.
The problem has been that male/female roles for the most part are based on stereotypes, not Scripture. If “head” means “source,” not “authority over,” then we have a new ballgame. Paul’s many words to husbands in Eph 5 are not about “roles,” but about relationship — “cherish, nourish, lay down your life for her.”
“A church with three female pastors…” “Shepherding” is not gender-specific. Compared to traditional views of “the pastor,” a functioning ekklesia would not connect gender to shepherding. In Heb 12:15 the whole body is to participate in “bishoping/overseeing” (Greek, episcopeo) one another.
“Kephale” (head) is connected to husbands only. Traditionally, “head” has been assumed to mean “authority over.” “Kephale,” generally speaking, was not an authority word in the first century. Adam was Eve’s source just as Christ is the Source of His Bride, the ekklesia. We speak of “headwaters” being the source of a river. Paul’s conclusion in 1 Cor 11:11-12 is “mutuality” and interdependence in the Lord, not authority over.
To be continued……..