The drift of Driscoll's apology is a reply to his recent sales scandal, in which he hired a company to buy copies of his book to promote it to bestseller lists; he was also accused of plagiarism.
"“My angry-young-prophet days are over,” writes Driscoll in his apology statement; "to be replaced by a helpful, Bible-teaching spiritual father." He writes that the problems he has caused were the result of him being overwhelmed, and of his plans to cut back on social media and public engagements. All well and good, that's what any sane person does when they find their workload is too heavy.
But the underlying message is that his ministry has never really been that far off course; he affirms what has gone before and that he will continue with his basic vision, a central point of which is "Train leaders (especially men)".
The worrying part of his statement, to me, is that in stating his desire to be accountable, he names various men whom he will work with as advisors, but also says, "To be clear, these are decisions I have come to with our Senior Pastor Jesus Christ." He then closes by quoting St Paul:
"though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” As I get older, I am seeking to increasingly love our people as I do my own children in order for our church to be a great family, because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.A senior pastor is an appointed peer or senior management. Jesus, I would submit, is not "management", but eternal Lord, Creator and redeemer. But the more serious problem is that in appropriating the language of fatherhood to further his ministry to men and endorse his preference for male leadership, Mark Driscoll makes two substantial theological errors. The first is that, theologically speaking, the image of God as Father does not endorse God as male, but God as progenitor. In the scriptures, God is described as Father when it means he is the creator of all, and the One from whom Jesus and the Holy Spirit proceed. (Notably, "Father" language in this mode escalates in the New Testament; there is a sense in which God was not a Father until there was a Son.) But when God's affectionate parenting is noted, it is in terms both of mother and father. Even in those pre-Enlightenment days when it was believed that only men were capable of being progenitors, while women's wombs were regarded merely as a nurturing "garden", theologians such as Julian of Norwich drew out the mother-father qualities of God, even going as far as to develop the idea that Christ himself displayed both male and female "types".
The second error is the misapplication of the language of St Paul. As a towering figure in the early Church Paul had certainly earned the right to describe himself as a "father in God", but it should be noted that the phrase was not used as a title or ministry designation, but as a description of his personal relationship to the Corinthian church to which he wrote. Paul's co-workers and fellow apostles included women, so his phrase "father in God" absolutely did not endorse the idea of male leadership as primary in Christian practice. If Driscoll really wants to emulate St Paul, he needs to appoint some senior women on his ministry team without delay.
Further, Paul's usage of the word "father" in this context was not paternalistic - he wrote repeatedly about his expectation that those younger than him in the faith would grow into his peers, and he longed for the day when they would not be like children. In the very same letter Driscoll quotes (I Corinthians) Paul writes, "Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children...". Paul as father-in-God is one who expects his congregation to grow up. Driscoll's vision of being a father to his church, making them a family in the same way as he is a father to his own children, smacks of sub-Christian infantilization.
I hope Mr Driscoll's desire for maturity is genuine, and I hope his withdrawal from the pursuit of celebrity will give him room to grow. But unless he gets to grips with the fact that Jesus is Lord and not Senior Pastor, and that nothing in scripture or Christian teaching can endorse his belief that leadership must be male, his continued biblical teaching will be badly skewed, and the really radical change that is much needed at Mars Hill is unlikely to occur.