March 29, 2017 Show with Andreas & Margaret Köstenberger on “God’s Design for Man & Woman: A Biblical &Theological Survey”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Biblical Wisdom, the Program’s Purpose, and the Guests’ Introduction

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's.

Our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 29th day of March 2017, and I'm delighted to have today as my two guests, one returning guest and one guest who is making her debut appearance on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

They are a husband and wife team. They both have their doctorates, and they are both co-authors of the book, God's Design for Man and Woman, a biblical theological survey, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Dr. Andreas and.

Margaret Kostenberger. Great to be with you, Chris. Thanks for having us. And Margaret, it's great to.

Have you on the program for the first time, and I want to give our email address right away for anybody who would like to join us on the air with a question of your own about this very important and also very controversial issue.

It's chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA, and you may remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

Perhaps you don't want to get your wife upset with you, so you want to remain anonymous, or anybody else for that matter, your own pastor. Well, we would love to hear from you, and it's great to have in the studio once again Reverend Buzz Taylor, and it's good to see the.

Reverend Buzz. I am looking forward to this conversation. Sounds like it's going to be interesting, and by the way, if you can keep couples from getting mad at each other, Chris,.

That's a good career move on your part. And once again, it's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Well, first of all, before we even get into the weighty matters of gender roles, I'd like to hear, since we've never had Margaret on the program before, Margaret, if you could tell us how you.

And Andreas met. All right, yes. Well, we were both in seminary actually in Columbia at Columbia International University. At the time, it was known as Columbia Graduate School of Missions. He had come from Vienna, and I'd come from Toronto, Canada to study.

Actually, he was there.

First, and then I came after. Oh, well, I have a very good friend who has become a guest fairly often on Iron, Sharp, and Ziron, Dr. Tony Costa, who's on the faculty of Toronto Baptist.

Seminary. Okay, okay, good. I didn't know that. Yeah, well, I actually called the seminary before ever arriving, and Andreas answered the phone. He was working the switchboard there, so I just happened to talk to him on the phone before I ever even came there.

He gave me the first.

Advice about the school, so that was good. And so tell us a little bit more about how you first met and how eventually he proposed to you. I'm assuming maybe you proposed to him. I don't know.

No, that didn't happen, no. Well, I got to the seminary, and eventually we were at a kind of social type situation at one of the women's homes. There was kind of like a game night or something. I happened to be sitting beside him.

There was snow, and there was tobogganing after, or that's what we call it in Toronto, Canada. That's where I'm from, actually. Sweating, and we just had some conversation, so that was just the beginning of several times we got together, and we're talking, and eventually he took me to Vienna, Austria, where he is from, to meet his family, and at that point he still hadn't asked me to marry him, just wanted me to meet his family, and after we got back several months later, he did ask me to marry him.

So.

That's kind of just a short version. And the rest is history. And tell us something about your own upbringing, religiously, if any, religious atmosphere, and how the Lord, in his sovereignty, providentially drew you to himself and saved you.

Okay, yes. Well, I grew up in a home that was with non-believing parents, and no family members at all who were believing. I was invited by my older cousin to go on a college and career retreat with a Baptist church in a town that was three hours away, London, Ontario, and we went on a trip to her cottage, and I was just lives of Christians, young, college-age Christians who were very, I thought, very interesting, very attractive, very wonderful people.

I just hadn't seen people like that before. The scriptures actually discussing the end times, very impassioned discussions, but it didn't turn me off. It actually piqued my curiosity, and so I started to study scripture and ask them lots of questions.

So that was the beginning of my spiritual journey, and then after I got home from this retreat, they knew a church in my area in Scarborough, a good youth group there, so I started attending on Friday nights, started going to church, and learned, you know, of my need for a Savior, and connected with the community there and gradually got involved and accepted the Lord.

As my Savior. Oh, praise God. And I know that some of the brilliant women that I have met, such as Rosaria Butterfield, who has written a wonderful commendation for your book, some of them start out as either full-blown feminists or more egalitarian in their mindset, even some after their rebirth and their early Christian experience, and then have come to more of a conservative, complementarian understanding as time elapsed.

What was the case with you? Were you, as a Christian, already leaning in a conservative direction, a direction that would interpret the scriptures more literally and in a more complementarian fashion?

Yeah, I guess I was.

Not quite aware of any kind of, you know, issue at all at the time. I was just pursuing God and reading His Word, and I guess I didn't have a leaning either way, except that I was what you might call an accidental feminist.

I just absorbed, yeah, it's true, I'd absorbed the culture's, you know, kind of idea that women could kind of be whatever they want, and I still think women can, you know, be whatever they want in the sense under God's guidance, but yeah, studying the scriptures, it was amazing to see that there was a design for me as a woman that I wanted to follow and to obey and to submit to.

So yeah, it was a bit of a journey. I wasn't against it. I wasn't a flaming feminist. You know, I just had absorbed what was in the culture around.

Me. You mentioned accidental feminist. You didn't write that book, did you? There's a book out, a Christian book called The Accidental Feminist. I did not, but I love the title. I haven't read.

The book myself, but I do love the title because I think most of us women fall in that category, no matter who we are, unless we've had clear instruction and have submitted ourselves to the.

Scriptures teaching. And how did you come about to eventually become the adjunct professor of women's studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina?

Yeah, well, Andreas and I and family moved here 20 years ago to North Carolina, and at that time I was focusing on family, bringing up family, and because I had a master's degree from Columbia and I was interested in mentoring women, I started teaching a class for women on hermeneutics and the scripture and also women, you know, teaching women in the church.

So I just gradually, you know, adopted that role. Great. Now, Dr. Andreas, you have been on the program before and have already given your testimony of how the Lord saved you, but perhaps for those of our listeners hearing you for the first time, you could give a summary of that.

In your own life. Sure. Well, I grew up in Europe and I was your typical intellectual, kind of existentialist university student, really of looking for meaning in life, and I was really into the arts.

And, you know, then I met an opera student on a train and heard the gospel, I think, for the first time, and I was thinking, well, if that's, you know, salvation in Christ and the way I heard the gospel, but it really wasn't.

And neither was my sisters or anybody I knew, and I was at the same time really strangely drawn to the Word. I bought twice from about a six-month hungry to know what it said, and at the end of that, I just broke down before the Lord and acknowledged that as much as I tried to be good, the more I realized, you know, how bad I am, that there was nothing I could do to save myself, and I just needed it.

But my life has radically changed. It changed almost immediately. I didn't know that there was a difference for me, you know, for Him. If He was my Savior, He was also my Lord, and so I immediately sensed a call to the ministry and ended up liquidating some of my assets and moving over to the States to where Marnie and I met.

Endorsements for the Book and the First Listener Question on Complementarianism

Great. Well, I'm going to read some very powerful.

Endorsements for this book we are discussing, God's Design for Man and Woman, a Biblical Theological Survey. First of all, we have an endorsement from someone who I just mentioned earlier, Rosaria Butterfield, who's been a guest several times on Iron Trump and Zion.

I so much enjoyed meeting her for the first time face-to-face at the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia back in January where she was speaking. So delighted to meet her and her husband, and I hope that I have many more opportunities to meet her and fellowship with her again.

But she, as I mentioned very briefly before, a lot of people listening might not realize that Rosaria Butterfield, who is now a very conservative Bible-believing Christian and the wife of a Presbyterian pastor, she was a very public lesbian, a very unashamed, unabashed lesbian.

She was a feminist. She even would describe herself in such extreme terms as a leftist, and she had come to the saving grace of Jesus Christ and became a born-again believer and is now a prolific writer, and I always enjoy having her on the program, very brilliant, articulate woman and a dear sister in Christ.

She says, the eclipse of the family in human society is one of the most disastrous developments of our age. Sadly, the eclipse of the biblical model of marriage and family has also happened within far too many evangelical churches.

Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger come to the rescue with biblical and theological insight and practical wisdom. Oh, that was, I read the wrong endorsement. That was from Dr. Al Mohler, President and Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I've had Dr. Mohler on the program as well. And then we have Rosaria Butterfield's commendation, models the best of Christian discernment about matters of gender, theology, justice, roles, and gifts. It is faithful in its representation, both of God's character and our own propensity to sin, pastoral in its application of faithful biblical hermeneutics, insightful in its explanation of original word usages and their application, concise in its framing of hot-button issues and the hermeneutical fallacies that often fuel them, and charitable in its handling of the motives of those who disagree.

And that's Rosaria Butterfield, former professor of English at Syracuse University and author of The Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. And then we have Wayne Grudem, who has been very much in the forefront of defending biblical gender roles in the church and in the family and home.

Wayne Grudem says, a refreshingly clear, well-informed, balanced, thorough, biblically faithful overview of the teachings of the entire Bible about manhood and womanhood as designed by God and intended for the joy and well-being of both women and men, a significant achievement.

And Wayne Grudem is research professor of theology and biblical studies at Phoenix Seminary. And if you ever happen to talk to Wayne, tell him I would love to interview him on the program. He's the only one of those three that I have not had on the program yet.

But I'm going to do something right now that I normally don't do. I'm going to immediately take one of the questions that has already come in. The reason being is I think that this listener's question will help to set the stage for the rest of the interview.

Daniel in Bakersfield, California, writes, what side do your guests fall on when it comes to the whole egalitarian versus complementarian debate? And if your guests are complementarian, how would they defend it against people who might find it to be chauvinistic or outdated?

By the way, thanks for all you do, Chris. I've been blessed by your show. That's Daniel in Bakersfield, California.

Well, great question. And the short answer is that we try to set forth what God's design for man and woman is. So we don't really use those in that scripture, as well as of male. In some ways, I think we once wrote a blog in the gender debate, we feel like often, you know, they are of limited value, because in this case, egalitarians believe in complementarity, and complementarians believe in equality, right?

And so labels can only go so far in describing what scripture teaches. So in the end, I think, you know, we invite people to actually read the book, rather than just, you know, either they might attack...

Well, they don't call Genesis, Genesis for nothing, because it's.

The beginning of a lot of what we believe, even as Christians today. But I understand that Genesis has a lot to do with the roots of where you are focusing in this book, and how you've even come.

To the beliefs that you have about gender roles. Absolutely. You know, we have a couple of chapters just on the original design in Genesis 1 and 2, and then also the corruption of that design in Genesis 3.

And Chris, as you know, Jesus and Paul both repeatedly refer back to the original design in Genesis, when they were asked questions about this topic. And so I think it clearly is the foundation, and I think it's important to remind that female with a design, that those roles are merely a matter of, you know, of subliminally, and created a foundation, and we need this in our culture, that the biblical teaching is deeply countercultural in this regard.

By the way, I forgot to tell Daniel in Bakersfield, California, you have won God's Design for Man and Woman, a biblical theological survey, by our guests Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger. Please make sure we have your full mailing address, and that will be shipped to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

That will be on the return label on your package that you receive in the mail, God willing, within the next week or so. So thank you very much for calling, not for calling, for writing. I'm going back to my old days when I started the show in New York, we had a call-in show, so sometimes I'm getting confused about my own career here.

But one of the things that Daniel in Bakersfield, California, had brought up, or asked, is when you're talking to not only secularists or secular humanists, atheists or agnostics who are liberal and have very feministic understandings of the genders, you have to deal with this issue, even amongst evangelicals today, and even some that would be rather conservative, about confronting the claims or the accusations that they make that this is outdated, old-fashioned, antiquated nonsense.

It's prehistoric. We've got to get with the times. The theologians and clerics for centuries have gotten this all wrong just because they were misogynists or chauvinists.

And so on. How do you overcome those kinds of accusations? Well, you know, one of my favorite Tim Keller quotes is this, he said, if your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.

Wow, that's a good quote. Isn't that powerful? And so I think what he's saying is that we shouldn't be surprised if scripture, you know, critiques and confronts our culture. And I think too often we are actually on the defensive when we talk about gender issues in the culture.

I have a very good friend who deals with transgender issues on a pastoral level, and he told me that what he has learned is to point people who are in many cases confused and broken and struggling to the beauty and the wisdom and the goodness of God's design for us as men and women, rather than remain on the defensive.

And Margaret, do you ever get treated by not only feminists outside of the faith, but even sisters in Christ, that you are somewhat of a traitor, being someone who's a brilliant woman, who's got a doctorate, who's working as seminary teaching, and yet you have come to embrace a more, I mean, obviously, everybody uses the term biblical if they believe that the Bible has validity and they cherish it in some way, or at least profess to cherish it.

But for the sake of argument, the conservative view of gender roles, do you ever get that kind of backlash? Why on earth would you come to this conclusion when you obviously are more brilliant and articulate and eloquent and gifted than many men who are professors or standing behind pulpits?

Yeah, I mean, it is constantly something that we face in the church and even in the seminary. Students come to seminary and aren't even aware of the biblical teaching, young women, and become, in our classes, aware.

Sometimes Andreas and I have taught a class together of this teaching, and like Andreas said, we do try to present things from a positive viewpoint, and yes, we acknowledge the countercultural factor, but it's surprisingly people turn, for the most part, who are open to scripture, who are spiritually attuned and open to the leading of God in their lives, of the Spirit, they gradually open to it.

But definitely people who are not open, people who are hardened, not spiritual, I believe are the ones who are, you know, those, they are legitimate in the sense of women feeling like maybe they haven't biblically treated as equals in terms of co-heirs of Christ, in terms of their salvation significance.

You know, it's true because there has been abuse in the past, so I think that there needs to be kind of a little bit of a leveling of what really the Bible does teach on some of those areas, because there are extremes out there.

I am going to read a question to both of you before we go to a station break, and then you can have time to mull it over and answer it after we return from the break. In fact, what I'm going to do, I don't know if you're in front of a computer or a laptop, but I'll email you the listener's question, because it is kind of lengthy.

But we have Jerry in Charlestown, New Hampshire, and Jerry, I'll read the question first, and I have to enlarge Jerry's typeface because I'm going blind and I can't read his email. But Jerry asks, how does mankind made as male and female relate to us being an image of God?

I have heard some theologians and pastors teach that Genesis 127 indicates that man and woman together make up the image of God. Genesis 127, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

They teach this because the phrase male and female is parallel with image of God in the previous phrase. What this means, they say, is that while a solitary male or female is certainly made in the image of God, it is male and female together in marriage that highlight or showcase the image of God.

Do you think this is a fair interpretation, or is it reading too much into the text? If it is so, it certainly seems to explain why the world and the devil do so much to try to defame and destroy marriage and the distinctions of manhood and womanhood through no-fault divorce, homosexuality, and so-called transgenderism.

They can't get it into their hands, I'm sorry, they can't get their hands on the king, he is out of their reach, but they can't get their hands on his image, marriage and sexuality, I think he meant to say, but they can get their hands on his marriage and sexuality.

That's Jerry in Charlestown, New Hampshire, and I will email you this question just so you can read it on your own, and we're going to a break right now. If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside of the good ol' USA.

Don't go away, we will be right back after these messages, God willing, with Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger. One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.

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The Image of God, Marriage, and Sexual Difference

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnsin,.

If you just tuned into Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Our guests today for the full two hours with 90 minutes to go are Dr. Andreas and Dr. Margaret Kostenberger, a husband and wife. Dr. Andreas Kostenberger is senior research professor at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and his wife, Dr. Margaret Kostenberger, is adjunct professor of women's studies at the same seminary.

We are discussing their book that they co-authored together, God's Design for Man and Woman, a Biblical and Theological Survey, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsin at gmail .com, chrisarnsin at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, but just to repeat Jerry's question, which you have in front of you, Jerry in Charlestown, New Hampshire says, how does how does mankind made as male and female relate to us being the image of God?

I have heard some theologians and pastors teach that Genesis 127 indicates that man and woman together make up the image of God. Genesis 127, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

They teach this because the phrase male and female is parallel with image of God and the previous phrase. What this means, they say, is that while a solitary male or female is certainly made in the image of God, it is male and female together in marriage that highlight or showcase the image of God.

Do you think this is a fair interpretation or is it reading too much into the text, or in other words, eisegesis? If it is so, it is certainly, it certainly seems to explain why the world and the devil do so much to try to defame and destroy marriage and the distinctions of manhood and womanhood through no default divorce, homosexuality, and so-called transgenderism.

They cannot get their hands on the king, he is out of their reach, but they can get their hands on his image, marriage, and sexuality. If you could respond, both of you, if you could.

We talk at length about what it means to be made in God's image and it's always a good idea in our study of Scripture to allow Scripture to interpret itself, to explain itself, and so you already quoted Genesis 1, 27, which says, so God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them male and female, he created them.

And then as you read, the very next verse says, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. And so what we see here is that God's image is identified in the very next verse, in terms of procreation, in terms of the man and the woman having sex, becoming one flesh, as Genesis 2, 24 says, being naked and not ashamed, and who then, manatee at large, multiplied in such a way would then represent God, our Creator, on this representative.

So yes, I largely agree with Jerry's comment that obviously it takes a man and a woman to procreate, this is given before the fall of course, and so then after the fall, whether it's through sexuality, fertility, in all those ways, the man and the woman are no longer fulfilling God's creation design, of being created in his image.

Of course, we know that the culture is rebelling against God's design, and faithfully against God's design in Genesis 1. Do you have anything to add, Margaret?

No, I agree totally. The image of God is reflected in the man and the woman together, and I see the images being the man and the woman partnering together, multiplying, and ruling the earth together. So definitely, it is something that the culture is challenging, the man and the woman together, reflecting the image for sure.

Yeah, I agree.

And so there you see the wonderful partnership, and I think it's really unfortunate that the fall introduced the man and the woman. This was not God's original plan. His original plan was for there to be, yes, male leadership, but in the context...

Well, thank you, Jerry, in Charlestown, New Hampshire. And you have won a free copy of this book as well, God's Design for Man and Woman, a biblical theological survey. Keep your eye open in the mail for a book from cvbbs .com.

That's C-V for Cumberland Valley, B-B-S for BibleBookService .com, who will be shipping that out to you, compliments of our friends at Crossway Books. And we also thank Todd and Patty Jennings at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for being such faithful supporters of Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

We have, all the way in Slovenia, we have Joe in Slovenia writing. And Joe, and I have to, I'm sorry for the time it's taking me to enlarge his font, but it's microscopic. Joe says, Dear Brother Chris, please ask your couple to address a contention that I've had for a long time, but doesn't seem to be shared by many that I know.

It seems to me scripturally and experientially that all the problems regarding gender roles in marriage, the church and in society, generally are traceable in each case to specific sins that are outlined in scripture.

Rather than focusing on finding the specific sin and addressing it scripturally and directly, we seem to rather spend lots of fruitless time and energy on subjective feelings, preferences, likes and dislikes, emotions, hormones, and a host of other distractions.

Am I completely off track here? If not, why does the church not correct course to a more biblically faithful approach to gender and marital... Hold on a second, I just clicked out of the question here.

Why does not the church correct course to a more biblically faithful approach to gender and marital issues? Thanks for answer to my questions, and please pray for my wife. She has a challenging calling being married to me.

And he actually predicted that I was going to laugh loudly at that.

But if you could respond to Joe. Well, if I understand the question correctly, there seems to be the underlying premise that I totally agree with, that ultimately this issue, really like every issue, is ultimately an issue of biblical authority.

That in the end, it's our own personal lifestyle, it's our view of scripture authority, and you know, subject, and we feel like in the long run that's a very... How to be the kinds of men and women that God.

Wants us to be. Yeah, I definitely think it's, as we've all been saying, it's people I think are afraid, women leaders in the church are afraid that they're not going to be received well. Rejection, financial, you know, it really is just a matter of courage.

And Reverend Buzz? You know, I was having a conversation recently with somebody that we were talking about older women teaching the younger women to be, you know, love their husbands, love their children, be keepers of home, and all this stuff, and being an older woman herself, you know, she said she'd like to be teaching them that, but she says overall what she's finding out is, in exasperation, is they just don't want to hear it anymore.

Are you finding, in the church, are you finding a resistance?

Yes, yes, and so just, so for the pastors and teachers are definitely facing that, we're facing that, we see that. It's few and far between the churches and the seminaries even that are committed to this even now.

It's sort of sliding. I actually am now a part of a group called Shepherds Theological Seminary. They're very committed to the biblical design for man and woman, and I'm helping them develop their women's program in this area, and I'm so thankful for them, so that's a new venture for me.

But yeah, every church I think in this day is facing that, so people don't want to hear it anymore. Well, I guess we just start with the few who do. You know, the seminary that I'm in, I'm so thankful for, you know, that at Shepherds Theological Seminary now that I'm helping fortify.

You know, we have four children. They're all in their late teens, early 20s. We really have a sense of the younger generation with the biblical teaching on God's design for man and woman. That's actually one major reason why we wrote the book in the first place.

You know, I'm so grateful that Marnie, as she mentioned, Marge has been called to be director of women's programs and mentoring at Shepherds Theological Seminary, which is a wonderful equipping, as Marnie mentioned, those who are actually receptive and who actually strongly long for and desire godly role models to be mentored and to learn how to live out, you know, what is becoming increasingly rare, as you mentioned, in our churches today.

Unfortunately, the world is no longer a church, and so it's sometimes hard to know where the world is. You know, I get the impression, too,.

That this was not some tangential teaching, even in the New Testament, because back in my pastoral days, I was preaching through Ephesians, you know, the obvious passage about it, and in context of, you know, all the relationships that are taught there.