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A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you.
—Proverbs 9:8

"Is this the room for an argument?" asks Michael Palin's character in a classic Monty Python skit.

"I told you once," John Cleese tells him.

"No, you didn't!"

"I most certainly did."

They continue in this vein to Palin's mounting frustration. Cleese simply contradicts everything Palin says. Back and forth the nonsense goes until finally Palin shouts, "This isn't an argument! An argument is a series of propositions laid out in order to establish a central point. It's not the mere gainsaying of whatever the other person says!"

To which Cleese loftily replies, "Can be."

This is a bad argument, of which there are too many examples in our evangelical world. Still, I don't think the problem we face as a community is that we have too many arguments of poor quality, but that we have too few of any kind.

We need more arguments. We need them in our churches, in our families, in our marriages, in our schools, in our country, in our lives.

Let me rush to say that we don't need more bickering. We all have plenty of that already. We certainly don't need more contention, more backbiting, more disrespect, more pompous pronouncements.

What we do need instead is more proper argument. Proper argument sets out as clearly as possible just why someone has come to the conclusion he or she has. It exposes the evidence for this conclusion to clear view and shows all of the steps by which someone has arrived at this opinion. Proper argument then invites the listener or reader to scrutinize both the warrants and the logic of the argument. Perhaps the warrants are weak at step B: The Bible tells the truth (step A); the Bible says that God helps those who help themselves (step B—a highly questionable claim about the Bible's teaching!); therefore, we should do what we can to help ourselves (step C).

Perhaps the argument leaps from step D to step F with no intermediate step E: … so since God commanded Adam and Eve to eat only green plants (step D), therefore we should be vegetarians (step F—leaving out step E, which would have to demonstrate that what God commanded regarding diet in the Garden of Eden is entirely applicable to Christians today).

Whatever the case, the listener or reader follows the argument and then suggests what he or she can suggest to complement, correct, or replace the argument. From there, the process circles around again. This is teamwork. This is taking each other seriously as thinking human beings. This is speaking the truth in love.

I wonder how the ongoing debate among evangelicals regarding gender would look, for example, if key leaders on various sides of this issue practiced this wisdom better than they seem to do. My overwhelming impression is that most prominent speakers and authors on such matters talk right past their "opponents," rather than gladly welcoming the arguments of those who disagree with them as encounters with the concerns of fellow Christians, encounters that might lead to mutual edification.

Biblical feminists, it seems to me, are right to ask proponents of subordination or "complementarity" just why God would want women to be led by men in the home and the church, always and everywhere. Are men more intelligent or more spiritual, and thus naturally better decision makers? Are men categorically superior leaders in other respects? The habit of subordinationists of simply invoking the "creation order" and other biblical passages, however appropriate this might be on some levels of this debate, does not answer this sensible question. God seems to have good reasons for his instructions to us on other matters; surely subordinationists at least ought to consider what they might be in this case.

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October 6 1997, Vol. 41, No. 11