Thanks for sharing. I’ve been reading Proverbs regularly of late and the issue of proper interpretation has been eating at my craw for some time. I found your thoughts to be insightful and biblical. Thanks for taking the time.

In Christ,
Pete

P.S. Good to see another math person living for Jesus.

…or infelicitous exegesis.

Loosely speaking, yes. But to be a bit more precise I would say it depends on the context of what we are talking about.
In the context of talking about God’s “living parable” of human marriage, yes most definitely the man is representing God/Christ and the woman is representing God’s people, the church. The classic text on this is of course Ephesians 5, but it is equally clear from the abundant references to God as husband and Israel as bride in the OT, especially the Prophets.
In the context of talking about the “living parable” of creation as a whole, man and woman together bear the image of God, which I understand to mean that they represent the Great King in the way they, as miniature kings and queens, rule over their domain (Gen 1:26ff).
Now granted, Common Loon’s post was more oriented towards the “church life” aspect of complementarianism, whereas my response was more oriented towards the “family life” aspect. At this point I’m not hearing any one question the link between these two aspects, so I felt it sufficient in this post to discuss the link between Reformed theology and “family life” complementarianism.

Brother (or Sister?) Loon,

Got me!?! Honestly, Reformed egalitarians and Arminian complementarians do make me scratch my head. I very much enjoy the ministry of Mike and Debi Pearl for what seems from my perspective as a very “horizontal Calvinist” approach to family life. And yet they are fiercely anti-Calvinist in the original, vertical sense. I haven’t yet wrapped my mind around why.
I may not have an answer to completely satisfy you or me, but here are a few thoughts.
For one, I’m not suggesting that most of the New Reformed complementarians consciously see the connection I am talking about. Indeed, based on the blog posts and comments I’ve seen in reply to your post, it would seem that most do not see this link. In conversations with fellow Reformed complementarians, I have heard friends reply to this observation with, “Oh yes! I see what you mean!” When I pointed out the link, it was perfectly clear to them, but they hadn’t explicitly thought on it before. I think the emotional and Biblical processes a person goes through to accept one of these two doctrines TENDS TO pave the way for receiving the other, but it is understandable that not everyone would be utterly compelled to buy the package deal.
But second, I wonder whether it is even really necessary to “account for… well-respected Reformed egalitarian theologians and evangelical scholars”? Historically, how common is such a combination? If the people you mention are outliers in the big picture, then I would simply say that we always expect some such outliers from the general pattern. My sense of the matter, having not researched it at all, is that historically Reformed egalitarians would be rare enough to not require an explanation for their existence.
Finally, rather than speculating about other people’s thought process, I would be interested to hear from a Reformed egalitarian and a non-Reformed complementarian regarding their thoughts on the link I have proposed. But to the best of my knowledge, I would categorize all my Christian friends that I can think of as either Reformed complementarian, or, shall we say, non-Reformed non-complementarian. If you have a willing, devout Reformed egalitarian test subject to send this way, I’d be interested to hear their feedback.

His,
Zach

If your theory is correct, how might it account for the well-respected Reformed egalitarian theologians and evangelical scholars (Nicole, Mouw, Webster, Wolterstorff etc.) mentioned in my original post?

I also agree with your post in that I do not believe we have any “rights.” All the good we experience is mercy and grace.

I guess I’m still left wondering though–When, if ever, does civil disobedience allow or even invoke us to take up the sword?

If the founders were wrong in their stated justification for throwing off tyranny, was there a worthy justification?