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By Women, for Women

Women's Evangelical Commentary offers a complementarian perspective.

Review by La Shawn Barber | posted 2/02/2007 09:20AM

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The Women's Evangelical Commentary: New Testament offers a conservative and complementarian perspective on Scripture by women, for women. For example, in Ephesians 5:22, where Paul exhorts wives to submit to their husbands, the commentators stress that submission is always in the context of love for the Lord: "When a Christian woman marries, she should understand that while she is her husband's equal in personhood and in her spiritual accountability to God, she is called to submit herself willingly to her husband's leadership," the editors counsel. "Their love must be first for the Lord and then for their husbands."

This volume uses the big-selling Holman Christian Standard Bible translation, sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. The editors acknowledge that "far more Bibles and spiritual resources are purchased by women," and this commentary provides background information, settings, literary genres, authors, dates, recipients, and major themes of every New Testament book.

The commentary's complementarian credentials are clear. It is edited by Dorothy Kelley Patterson, wife of Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Rhonda Harrington Kelley, wife of Chuck Kelley, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. But whatever your position on sex roles in family and in church, this is a worthy effort by true Proverbs 31 women, faithful and wise.

Related Elsewhere:

Women's Evangelical Commentary: New Testament is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

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February 2007, Vol. 51, No. 2

Comments (9)

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Displaying 1–5 of 9 comments

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Shirley

February 08, 2007 1:18am

I'm not so sure that complimentarianism is keeping in line with the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament. Is this really what should happen when people are born again? Complimentarianism is primarily found in reformed theology is it not?. I don't here the term 'born again' very often in those circles.

pika

February 04, 2007 11:06pm

Did the review get cut off? This is poor writing.

February 04, 2007 10:02pm

" But whatever your position on sex roles in family and in church, this is a worthy effort by true Proverbs 31 women, faithful and wise." Saying this to egalitarians is like telling Christians: "this book by atheists about living in a universe with no gods is a worthy effort." The response is "So what? what value to me are exhortations and interpretations based on a foundation which (I believe is) false?"

February 04, 2007 11:32am

It drives me crazy when women who are obviously capable, intelligent people in and of themselves, such as the authors of said commentary, are presented as "so-and-so's wife". As though being Mr. Christian University President's wife is a credential far more telling than, say, amount of education or previous published works or career achievements or leadership in a local church!

Barbi Williams

February 03, 2007 7:52pm

It is interesting and timely to note that the editor, Dorothy Patterson, is the wife of Paige Patterson, who just refused tenure to a Hebrew scholar because of her gender. Dorothy stays on staff because she "only teaches women-- " Or is it because she's more "submissive?" I'm not sure I'd care to waste my time on something so tainted at the outset.

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