First rough draft of Patriarchy Lecture delivered on March 7, 2008. Reviewed, slide by slide with contact at organization on August 24, 2007

1. August 24, 2007
FIRST ROUGH DRAFT OF
Patriarchy Workshop for March 2008 Conf
Cynthia Kunsman,
RN, BSN, MMin, ND

2. Development:
“Theological Innovation”
■ Response to Postmodernism
– Disapproving of the Enlightenment
■ Family as Central to Restoration
– Neo-tribalistic (legalistic and pietistic)
– Narrow definitions of roles within family
– Evangelical Pessimism

3. Contributing Influences
■ Theonomy and Dominionism
■ Christian Reconstruction
■ Confederate Idealism
■ Federal Vision
■ Submission Doctrine

4. Influence:
Christian Reconstruction
■ Cultural and Religious Nostalgia
– Little distinction between
“Christian” and “American”
– Puritan, Antebellum, Revivalism
■ Noll: Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
■ Keillor: This Rebellious House
■ Postman: Building a Bridge to the 18 Century

5. Influence:
Confederate Idealism
■ Secession (Past and Contemporary)
– Decentralization of the Federal Government
■ Prohibited secession was a violation of
Constitution (tyranny)
– Economic exploitation by the North
– Slavery was a peripheral issue in the war

6. Influence:
Confederate Idealism
■ Southern View
– North viewed as largely uncivilized,
Unchristian and industrial
– Film: “God’s and Generals”
■ Emancipation
– Slavery was not viewed as Unbiblical
■ Opened the door to Women’s Suffrage, Feminism
& Destruction of the Family

7. Influence:
Confederate Idealism
■ Robert Louis Dabney
– Most respected Presbyterian minister in the
Confederacy and US
– Defender of Virginia Cause
– Held the Southern View

8. Phillips on Dabney
“Robert Louis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks”
“[F]or those individuals who long for the days in
which a gentleman could hold the door for a
lady without some indignant feminist snorting
at him, Dabney’s writings will seem refreshingly
virile…One must not forget that Dabney wrote
in the last great period of American history in
which men were proud to be men, and to call
someone a “patriarch” was to pay him a
compliment.”
Phillips’ Introduction, xiv

9. Phillips on Dabney
“Robert Louis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks”
“His choicest words were reserved for the
feminists of his day; the suffragettes. He
accurately predicted that the women’s rights
movement would lead to the emasculation of
men, the end of the nuclear family and the
overthrow of Western culture…Dabney claimed
that there was a direct link between the rabid
egalitarian spirit of the women’s rights
movement and similar anti-authoritarian
movements.”
-Phillips’ Introduction, xvi

10. Influence:
Federal Vision
■ “Covenant Membership”
– Viewed as more orthodox than
emphasis on “personal, individual
salvation”
■ Paedobaptism, Paedocommunion
■ Extension of the 5 Points of Calvinism
■ Authors still consider themselves to be
broadly evangelical

11. Influence:
Federal Vision
■ Criticism
■ Romanist view of justification
■ Faulty Hermeneutics of Trust
“Intuitive Art”
(Lusk – Moscow, ID)
■ Infusion of sacerdotalism
■ Redefinition of doctrines of
Reformed Theology
(justification and sanctification)

12. Influence:
Federal Vision
■ Trinity (Doug Wilson)
– Submission hierarchy and relationships
■ Patriarchal Father
■ Ever Submissive Son
■ Exemplars for human relationships
– Anthropomorphized reading of human
(marital, esp.) relationship and roles into
the “eternal fellowship” of the Trinity
(deity? cmk)

13. Influence:
Federal Vision
■ Covenant Objectivity
Shift back to works and community
– Adam as the “Federal (‘covenant’)
representative” for all mankind
– Christ, the Second Adam, viewed as the Son
of Man vs. Son of God (DEITY?! cmk)
– Adam’s sin was immaturity and would
have been invited to partake of the Tree
of Knowledge (Jordan)

14. Influence:
Federal Vision
▪ “Imputation” (redefined)
– Does not refer to the imputation of
sin to Christ and His Righteousness to
the believer
– Challenges the value of Christ’s
earthly works in the life of the
believer (deity? cmk)

15. Influence:
Submission Doctrine
■ Gothardism, Shepherding/Discipleship
– Paternalistic (Romanist)
■ Pessimistic about the believer’s abilities
■ Intervention by an enlightened mediator
– Works Oriented
■ Grace merited through works and attitude
– Spiritual Covering Superstition

16. Influence:
Submission Doctrine
■ Next Generation
Gothardism
– Extension of works to
moral imperatives
■ De-Christianized,
dehumanized status
■ Pejoratives and Monikers
– “non-normative”
– “Canaanites”
– “antinomian”

17. Gnostic Patriarchy…
Űber-Adam? (cmk)
–Preoccupation with Adam
–Redefining of Eve
■ CBMW, SBTS
■ John MacArthur

18. Gnostic Patriarchy…
1. Trinity
■ Federal Vision
■ Bruce Ware
■ Trinity as example for all human
relationships, esp. within marriage
– Counsel on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
– Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
– Books on the Trinity and “Open Theism”

19. Gnostic Patriarchy…
2. Patriocentric Gospel
– Man in family = God in the Trinity
– Criticism of Man = “open theism”
(as challenging God the Father)
– Reinforces community for salvation and
man’s role in sanctification of woman

20. Gnostic Patriarchy…
3. Redemptive Distortion (cmk)
■ Federal Vision: Jesus does not
dissolve or replace our
relationship with the first Adam
■ Jesus as Catalyst to restore man to
Adam’s state before the fall through
speculation on the Trinity

21. Gnostic Patriarchy…
4. Eve: “Derivative”
Image of God (Ware & MacArthur)
■ Eve was created from Adam’s
substance
■ Eve is perceived as only the “indirect
image” of God (Phillips denies in “Tenets”)

22. Gnostic Patriarchy…
(Eve is subjugated to
“ submitted sonship”)
■ Superimposed parallel of wife to the Son
in the Trinity under man/father
■ Christ is forever the Suffering Servant of
Isaiah 53
– Eternal, ongoing propitiation

23. Gnostic Patriarchy…
5. Mysterious, Salvific Man (cmk)
■ Man as earthly savior for family
■ Woman’s spiritual salvation (Romanist)
Is based within man
– Incomplete without man spiritually
(headship)
– Community (marriage), submission,
childbirth

24. Gnostic Patriarchy…
6. Primogeniture / Creation Order
■ Adam held accountable for sin because of
headship (Ware & MacArthur)
– “Sin entered through Eve”
– Must direct woman’s sanctification(+FV, Gothard)
■ All women are given to deception
– Man must protect woman from her inherent
mental/moral weakness

25. Gnostic Patriarchy…
7. Patriocentric Marriage (cmk)
■ Primary Symbolism: Adamic/Patriarchal
■ Tertiary Symbolism: Christ and Church
■ “Incomplete view of marriage”
■ Must include the patriarchal ruling over
wife with discipline
■ Derives from the loving Father chastening
his sons (Heb 12)

26. Gnostic Patriarchy…
Purpose of Marriage: FECUNDITY
– “Militant Fecundity” (passive eugenics?)
■ Hart (First Things), Scott Brown, Doug Phillips
– Evangelism: Womb vs the Cross
■ Quoted from a Jen’s Gems website contributor
(Contraception prohibited or discouraged
through unspoken rule)

27. Militant Fecundity

28. Phillips as Prototype
History
■ Son of Howard Phillips
■ Nixon’s Executive Branch
■ Constitution Party Founder and Presidential
Candidate
■ Doug’s Training
■ William and Mary
■ George Mason School of Law
■ No (peer reviewed) Bible College or Seminary

29. Phillips as Prototype
Activities in San Antonio, TX
■ Founded Vision Forum (1998)
■ Homegroup ministry for Homeschooling
families
■ Boerne Christian Assembly (2000)
■ Vision Forum Ministries

30. Phillips as Prototype
Boerne Christian Assembly
■ Grew from homegroup ministry
■ Reformed Baptist, Independent,
congregational government
■ No “pastor”, recognizes “fellowship of
elders”
– Founder, primary and/or sole
elder-”shepherd” but denies pastoral role

31. Phillips as Prototype
Vision Forum Ministries
(Non-profit organization “projects”)
– Faith of Our Fathers Project
■ Christian Reconstruction
– National Center for
Family Integrated Churches
■ Potentially functions as a denomination

32. “Tenets of Biblical
Patriarchy”
■ Original Document circa 2003
– So legalistic that it had to be pulled and re-
written (more than once)
■ “Consolidated Statement” about
Patriarchy to “counter critics”

33. “Tenets of Biblical
Patriarchy”
■ Spheres of Dominion
– Only men in public square
– Women in the home although may serve
patriarch outside home in his business
Original document declared any work or
employment outside the home to be “sin”

34. “Tenets of Biblical
Patriarchy”
■ Education of Children
– No public school or secular based curriculum;
private school “discouraged”
– No women to be trained outside the home
Original document declared public or
private Christian school enrollment to be
“sin”

35. “Tenets of Biblical
Patriarchy”
■ Father and His Older Children
– Adult children under the jurisdiction and
control of patriarch until marriage
– Daughter “given in marriage”
■ may decline her father’s choice
– Grown, married children required to submit to
parental counsel and approval (Venoit’s
“Uncle Ned”)

36. “Tenets of Biblical
Patriarchy”
* Informal Implications *
– Authoritarian
– Male generational submission
– Women’s chief duty: bear patriarchs
– Courtship
■ Refer to Robin Phillips’ counter argument
– Family together as a group
– Dispensing of existence (de-Christianization)

37. Heterodoxy to Heteropraxy?
■ Vision Forum allegedly hijacked a
creation science excavation project
– DinoDeception.com (see bibliography link)
■ Excommunication of problematic
members
– Baited a local Presbyterian church into
violating their own legal requirements

38. Heterodoxy to Heteropraxy?
■ Aggressive Reaction to Critics
– Blog campaigns
– Enlisted essayists
■ Threatened and Actual Lawsuits
– www.UnderMuchGrace.com for documentation
■ Threatened (SCCCS and excommunicants)
■ Actual suit over creation science excavation
(DinoDeception.com)

39. “National Center for
Family Integrated Churches”
■ Mission under Vision Forum Ministries:
– “Preserving Our Covenant with God through Biblical
Patriarchy and Multi-Generational Faithfulness”
■ Self-Declared Denomination?
– Affiliate (as church or individual contact)
– Church planting organization
– Nicene Creed and NCFIC Confession

40. “National Center for
Family Integrated Churches”
■ “A Biblical Confession for Uniting
Church and Family” (Artifice that supports Phillips?)
– Plurality of Elders (supports Phillips lack of
accountability)
– Acceptable families must adopt “non-
normative ones” for participation
– Separate activities (e.g. Sunday School)
vilified as they separate the family unit

41. “National Center for
Family Integrated Churches”
■ Father as patriarch
– Negative view of church leadership
– Intervention from other church
representatives within families vilified
– Submission to eldest, multi-generational
patriarch
– “Heart-level relationships” with father
■ Home churches denounced

42. Critics
■ KW (Pete) Hurst (“homies”)
■ www.patriarchy.org
■ P. Andrew Sandlin (Center for Cultural
Leadership)
■ Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Intl.
■ Midwest Christian Outreach
■ Blogs, blogs, blogs, …