We must be resolved, as Christians, to have absolutely no problem passages.

Douglas Wilson, again, take the link and read it all. Gods Grace for all of life!

The Coming Glory

With regard to the slavery fracas, I have said that the only issue is that of biblical absolutism. We must be resolved, as Christians, to have absolutely no problem passages. What this means is that, once the exegesis is done, and we know what the passage actually teaches, we will have no problem with it. Further, we must not flinch at the possible problems for us if the exegesis goes off in an unpalatable direction, and consequently take care to "steer" the exegesis in order to keep ourselves academically respectable. We may have a problem passage if what is meant by this is that we don't know what the passage teaches. But once we know, because we are Christians, we should simply accept the teaching of the Bible. All this is to reverse Mark Twain's famous dictum about the Bible -- it wasn't the parts he didn't understand that bothered him, it was the parts he did understand. Because we are Christians we should never be bothered with the parts we do understand.

But we sometimes struggle with this. Liberals are sometimes more to be trusted with the text than evangelicals are. This is because the liberal is not stuck with the results of his exegesis. He can say, for example, that the apostle Paul taught the doctrine of male headship, and "wasn't he silly?" But if the evangelical concludes that Paul in fact taught this, the evangelical has to go off and act as though he believes it. But if there are bad social consequences for him if he acts that way, then it is time for the old Greek word-study ploy. "The Greek word kephale, which is translated head, actually means 'one who fetches."...