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Stackhouse then turns to the letters of Paul, to see how they too fit into this paradigm. The church to whom Paul writes lived, as we still do, in the "already but not yet," a time when "God's direct and glorious rule is already and authentically here, through Jesus Christ, but it is not yet fully realized in this world still marred by sin."
As inhabitants of both worlds—the community of redeemed, and the sinful culture that surrounds them—the believers of the New Testament are told to live within the structures of their society. Never mind that those structures were developed by a pagan nation which paid no homage to God; Paul tells them to honor the emperor (even if that emperor happens to be Nero). He tells them to pay taxes, to work with their hands. He tells slaves to be content, and not to strive for freedom.
No evangelical could argue with any heat that these straightforward commands reflect God's ultimate plan for his redeemed people. They are given so that the church of God can thrive in hostile surroundings—and so that the spread of the gospel will not be hindered. Would boycotting your taxes hinder the preaching of the Word? Then don't do it. Would escaping from your master increase suspicion among the unsaved that the gospel is merely a cover for rebellion? Then don't escape.
But while the church is striving not to cause unnecessary offense to the unbelievers around it, another dynamic is unfolding, at least within Christian homes and the church: "kingdom values at work overcoming oppression, eliminating inequality, binding disparate people together in love and mutual respect, and the like." And this, of course, is central to Stackhouse's understanding of the "difficult passages" having to do with gender. There is tension between the message of the gospel and the particular commands to the churches. "Paul means just what he says about gender," Stackhouse writes, "everything he says about gender, not just the favorite passages cited by one side or another… . He believes that women should keep silent in church and that they should pray and prophesy. How can they do both? By being silent at the right times, and by praying and prophesying at the right times."
As the church accommodates itself to avoid unnecessary offense in the "already," we also catch glimpses of the "not yet": "exceptions," as Stackhouse calls them, "that do not make sense unless they are, indeed, blessed hints of what could be and will be eventually in the fully present kingdom of God. We would expect, perhaps, to see exceptional women teaching adult men … offering leadership through their social standing and wealth … bearing the titles of … deacon and apostle." And so we do: in Priscilla, Lydia, Phoebe, Andronicus, Junia.
What, then, of the church today? In a society that is (at least theoretically) egalitarian, a different kind of offense looms. "The church," Stackhouse concludes, "is … not rejoicing in the unprecedented freedom to let women and men serve according to gift and call." Many evangelicals are clinging to patriarchy as God's perfect plan for his people, rather than recognizing it as a sinful and temporary cultural phenomenon. In this way, Stackhouse suggests, we are doing exactly what Paul was trying to prevent: we are hindering the gospel, driving away unbelievers who might otherwise hear the truth of Christ's deliverance and be redeemed.
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