I take accusations of sinning seriously, but not forever. I take them seriously enough to set aside my other practices (such as using pseudonyms) in order to address such claims. But after this, I will not speak on the matter again, no matter how many slanderous repetitions follow.

This is an open response to Deti and any other witnesses. Unless you are Deti or a Christian witness—per Matthew 18—confirming or denying the claims made below (against myself or Deti), do not respond to this post with a comment of your own. I will delete any other commentary. This is about addressing claims of sin against another and that is the only purpose of this post. This is not something to gossip about. Either bring substantive evidence (one way or the other) or remain silent.

If anyone wishes to approach me privately to present witness testimony for (or against) myself (or Deti), email me at me@derekramsey.com.

If I hear nothing after a week, I will close comments on this post and treat the matter as resolved.

Let’s begin by getting a couple of things out of the way.

The reality is that I got tired of the spurious personal attacks and slander against my person, especially after I pointed the errors out. Even I have limits. I use pseudonyms (and referrer hiding links) to reduce direct or indirect personal engagement while still addressing the ideas presented (and nominally citing my sources). While I occasionally find various ideas quite interesting, I am not even slightly interested in nearly-always hostile personal engagement.

Obviously I post criticisms here on a semi-regular basis. I just do so with reduced attribution. So, it’s patently absurd to conclude that removing attribution removes the criticisms themselves. But even if I was running away in quivering fear, that’s my call to make. I owe nobody a response to anything, especially not to those who regularly slander me.

While I have deleted comments and anonymized others (including some by request of their authors), I have never engaged in viewpoint censorship on this blog.

This kind of spurious slander is exactly why I anonymize comments and sometimes hide referrers. Some personal interactions are decidedly awful and should be avoided. The only reason I’m writing this at all is to clear my name once and for all.

I don’t believe Jesus demands of us things that are beyond our ability to perform. I followed the Matthew 18 protocol—in accordance with the commands of Jesus—as maximally as was possible. This included directly confronting him of his sin—albeit not privately as this was not possible—and the gathering and presentation of witness testimony to establish the truth of the matter. I also requested that the matter be formally adjudicated, but the request was refused.

Had I had the ability to do more, I would have done so. Moreover, if he wishes to fix my “lapse” by agreeing to bring the matter of his sin before his church, I will provide his church with the evidence and witness testimony that I have. And after they make a formal, public decision—whichever way it goes—I will prominently link to that decision from the articles that it pertains to as a matter of public record.

Now, let’s get to the accusation.

I already responded to this false allegation in “Talking About Old Women,” but it was in a footnote. Here is the contested claim from the original version of that article:

And here is what I changed it to after Deti’s objection:

After writing the original, Deti responded by claiming I made a false statement:

Contrary to Deti’s assertion, what I said was accurate and correct. I did not double down on a lie, I maintained my innocence by directly refuting the false accusation made against me. Thus, I responded:

Deti did not respond to my comment.

At no point did I say that “all women submit to all men under Ephesians 5.” I’m not even aware of anyone who has ever even made this claim! I did not even use the word “all” in my response, and Deti has never shown me anywhere where I have ever made such a claim. I scanned my blog for references to “all women” and could not find any such match. Thus, given the evidence presented above and below that makes this explicit, he is further perpetuating another falsehood against me.

Thus, did I respond with both courtesy and politeness by making the alterations referenced above, even though what I had said originally was not wrong.

Contrary to the claim by Oscar, an English-as-second-language commenter…

…what I had originally said was factually accurate (see here and here) and did not require an update nor an apology. I choose to edit the OP out of politeness because Deti asked nicely. Getting accused of lying and deception for being nice is precisely why I avoid personal interactions these days.

Many comments (including this one) demonstrate a distinct lack of reading comprehension. I never said that women in general should be subservient to men in general, nor did I say that all women should be subservient to all men, nor did I attribute any of those claims to anyone else. The selfsame commenters who oppose putting words into people’s mouths responded by putting words I didn’t say into my mouth! That’s why the commenter there had to add the phrase “in general” because what I wrote does not logically or grammatically demand that meaning.

The context of what I my statement—husbands and wives—was completely obvious and explicit from the context in which I wrote it. Here is another snippet I wrote in my original, pre-edited version:

The context of the “women” mentioned in 1 Peter and Ephesians 5 is obviously and explicitly referring to wives. Similarly, “men like him” refers to suffering husbands.

But even ignoring that fact, a simple grammatically analysis of what I said…

…is that some unspecified women are subservient to some unspecified men. The simple observation that wives submit—are subservient—to husbands is sufficient to illustrate some women submitting—being subservient—to some men. This is why the bible itself says literally:

Who are the women and who are the men? The context tells you! Paul’s context is husbands and wives. Paul did the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16. People have a problem with me using words in the same way the Bible itself does. How absurd!

Using “man” and “woman” is a way to semantically be less precise intentionally. The way I phrased it did not presume a particular concrete explanation because that wasn’t important for what I was saying. The whole point is that I don’t need to know the exact identities of whichever women should submit to whichever men. The details didn’t matter (and I frankly wasn’t 100% sure which it was anyway!).

In my discussion on subservience, the subservience itself is the focus, so making the identity of the persons ambiguous allows me to shift the emphasis where I want to place it (and why I didn’t use “wives” in my ‘correction’). This is a common rhetorical technique, as the Bible itself demonstrates. Indeed, far from putting words into anyone’s mouth, I refrained from doing so by the very way I structured the phrase.

Deti’s objection boils down to me not being specific enough for his tastes and not focusing on what he wants me to write about, which he has no right to demand of me as he isn’t my personal editor. I didn’t misrepresent him, I simply failed to be as specific as he would prefer, nor did I make it a point of emphasis to describe the fine-points of his personal theology. What I said was ambiguous and after reading it you might not know precisely what Deti believes, which is perfectly fine. Just don’t leap to unfounded conclusions, and everything will be fine.

This type of “I demand that you be more specific!” objection is very old. The Byzantine Text Type inserted the word ιδιοις (own) into the text of Ephesians 5:24 before the word ἀνδράσιν (men), presumably because the editor didn’t like the ambiguity in Paul’s text. Rather than leave Paul’s words as they were, they put words into his mouth that were not there. Deti even did this within his accusation:

By implication, my interlocutors want you to believe that ambiguity is a lie and a misrepresentation. This is a foolish stance. As I noted in “Lying to Combat Lying,” this ridiculous standard turns Jesus into a liar.

The objections I have received to this are essentially pedantic and autistic—hyperfocus or persistence on a restricted explanation—in nature. Indeed, Deti’s own objection that I put words in his mouth is his way of forcing me to describe him using whatever language he deems. This is, ironically, him trying to put words into my mouth.

I did not lie.

If Deti wishes to obey Christ by bringing witness testimony against me, he is encouraged to do so. Then, if and when it is time to involve his church in this matter, I will be happy to subject myself to the its oversight, presuming that Deti also subjects himself to its oversight regarding the matter of his excommunication.

If he is unwilling, I encourage him to retract his false accusations.