“In this light, the modern habit of translating these texts into the language of ‘leadership’ or ‘male authority’ is a reversion to the very power structures the gospel overturns.”
Rev. Aaron Mize
Ordained Servant Magazine
OPC
Note, the implicit declaration here that power structures are inherently evil. Power structures are overturned so that no power structures (supposedly) remain. Power is automatically evil. Patriarchy and hierarchy are automatically evil because they are power structures.
The dirty secret here is that power structures are an inescapable category. As such if, as Mize desires, we get rid of the power structures of patriarchy and hierarchy what fills the vacuum is matriarchy and egalitarianism as the new power structures. So, hierarchy doesn’t go away but is replaced by egalitarianism that serves as a mask for a rampant Matriarchy. If men do not rule (patriarchy) then women will rule (matriarchy). Somebody has to have the authority folks. If we are going to denounce patriarchy then all that is left to fill the void is matriarchy but as we can’t be obvious we will call it egalitarianism instead.
Next, if the Gospel overturns the power structures of hierarchy that Rev. Mize insists that it overturns then pray tell why all that language in the Westminster Larger Catechism (Q. 124-130) about the duties and sins of superiors, and inferiors? Mize’s own Confession, that he swore to uphold, teaches that hierarchy is Biblical and yet here is Mize insisting that Christ came to overturn these sinful power structures.
And what about the Editor, Gregory Reynolds, who let this bilge be printed? Greg Reynolds is older than I am, for Pete’s sake, and he let this get into the magazine he edits? As far as I am concerned Gregory Reynolds should be ash-canned for letting Mize’s garbage be printed.
I’ve been told that he’s an anarcho capitalism by someone who has done ministry with him. If so, and I believe it’s true, this would explain his hatred of anything with power structures or hierarchy.
God rid of us of this filth. This is almost boring, if it weren’t coming from an “orthodox” denomination. What foolishness.
This idea that the world before the Fall was a perfect egalitarian utopia, with no hierarchies that came only with sin, comes originally from PAGAN myths of the Golden Age – and even theologians much smarter than Aaron Mize have fallen for it. This is a good case study of how egalitarian notions silently infiltrate the church (similar to the way many other false traditions of men also slowly crept into the Romish church, making the Reformation necessary):
https://archive.org/details/pursuitofmillenn0000norm_i9m3/page/186/mode/2up?view=theater
“It was from the Greeks and Romans that medieval Europe inherited the notion of the ‘State of Nature’ as a state of affairs in which all men were equal in status and wealth and in which nobody was oppressed or exploited by anyone else; a state of affairs characterized by universal good faith and brotherly love and also, sometimes, by total community of property and even of spouses.
In both Greek and Latin literature the State of Nature is represented as having existed on earth in some long-lost Golden Age or ‘Reign of Saturn.’ The version of the myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses was to be repeatedly echoed in later literature and to exercise considerable influence upon communistic speculation during the Middle Ages.
…
At least by the third century A.D. Christian doctrine had assimilated from the extraordinarily influential philosophy of Stoicism the notion of an egalitarian State of Nature which was irrecoverably lost. And although it was hardly possible to talk of social and economic organization of the Garden of Eden, orthodox theologians nevertheless managed to use the Graeco-Roman myth to illustrate the dogma of the Fall.
At the centre of this theory of society stands the distinction between the State of Nature, which was based on Natural Law and expressed directly the divine intention, and the conventional state, which has grown out of and is sanctioned by custom. It was agreed by most of the later Fathers that inequality, slavery, coercive government and even private property had no part in the original intention of God and had come into being only as a result of the Fall.
…
And nevertheless it was above all the teaching of the Church which perpetuated the idea that the ‘natural’ society was an egalitarian one.”