Your post on the complementarian question was excellent Mark. I've waited a week before posting to follow up, in part because I didn't want anything else to deflect attention from your reflections on that important matter. There were dozens of comments left here at the T4G and the conversation was all over the place in the blogosphere.

Two notes before I make a few remarks. First, as I was preparing to post tonight, I think I noticed new formatting for the T4G site going up. Looks good. Way to go team. Second, I plan to start blogging through our T4G statement to give some context to it. Hope you, C.J. and Al will join me.

Now, as to the issue of younger conservative evangelicalism and complementarianism, I think your observations are spot on - though I want to point out that guys like Harry Reeder, Kent Hughes and Ray Ortlund (who were in that meeting and who are over 50) have led brilliantly and faithfully in the whole area of biblical manhood and womanhood, not to mention our own dear C.J. who has been on this issue like white on rice for years. Once again, C.J. shows his world-class discernment!

Allow me to reiterate a few points you made, as a public expression of solidarity, and to explain why I think this is so important, and warranted inclusion in our T4G statement.

One, the denial of complementarianism undermines the church's practical embrace of the authority of Scripture (thus eventually and inevitably harming the church's witness to the Gospel). The gymnastics required to get from "I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man," in the Bible, to "I do allow a woman to teach and to exercise authority over a man" in the actual practice of the local church, are devastating to the functional authority of the Scripture in the life of the people of God.

By the way, this is one reason why I think we just don't see many strongly inerrantist-egalitarians (meaning: those who hold unwaveringly to inerrancy and also to egalitarianism) in the younger generation of evangelicalism. Many if not most evangelical egalitarians today have significant qualms about inerrancy, and are embracing things like trajectory hermeneutics, etc. to justify their positions. Inerrancy or egalitarianism, one or the other, eventually wins out.

Two, and following on the first point, the church's confidence in the clarity of Scripture in undermined, because if you can get egalitarianism from the Bible, you can get anything from the Bible. Paul may be excruciating to read aloud and hear read in a dominant feminist culture, but he's not obscure in his position! In 1 Timothy 2:11-12 he says, "A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet." Elsewhere, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, we find the confirming parallel to this previous pronouncement: "The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church." These verses (and many others) are uncomfortably clear and certainly politically incorrect, and