Equality in the Spirit for Men and Women:
A Biblical Critique of Authoritarianism and Complementarianism
Rev. Dr.
Douglas Olds
April
16, 2021
Males
and Females are regenerated as equal participants in and by the organic
circulation of the Spirit.
Religious
dichotomization--of the sexes like that of insider and outsider, rich and
poor--has been used for coercive and manipulative control to serve
sin and agon rather than the ontology of shalom and freedom. It
follows that non-controlling egalitarianism is the foundation of peace and
freedom that is Life in Christ that will be fulfilled at the eschaton. Yet
Christians are urged to live eschatologically in the here and now, “living as
if one has no spouse” (1 Cor 7.29), which most probably would include that they
should live as if with no doctrine of gender distinction. In the context of the
rebuilding of Jerusalem (Jer. 31.4, 38), Jer. 31.22b announces, “For the LORD
has created[1]
a new thing on the earth: a woman encompasses a man.”[2]
Three
pre-Fall facts distinguish between Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3. A) Adam was
created first B) yet the woman was co-initiated in Adam’s flesh, and C) the
woman was deceived by the serpent while Adam was not.
The
argument from (A) temporality has no relevance to ontological essence,[3]
and other arguments from essence collapse when it is realized that (B) the flesh
of the couple was shared in the creation and reunited in marriage. The NRSV’s
Gen. 2.18c, “I will make him a helper as his partner,” is an apt translation. Better than the KJV translation: “I will make
him an help meet for him.” This redundant construction concludes with the LXX's emphatic prepositional accusative of advantage attributed to the Hebrew particle כְּ , with
the result of highly marking a helping role for the woman for the advantage of
Adam, thereby grammatically subordinating her to the instrumental role of
helper (as Ortland claims in Piper and Grudem 1991, 89-92). The
ESV propagates the sense of purposive subordination of both the concluding noun and an objective function of its appended pronoun (כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ ) by its translation, “a helper fit for him.”
The joining of the particle ke to the noun ְּנֶגְדּֽ links two morphemes with the sense of “comparability.” This doubling of comparability highly marks the sense of correlation-- “partner”-- rather than a subordinated helper. The NRSV more adequately reflects the
syntax and semantics of the Hebrew of Gen. 2.18c than either the KJV or the ESV.
The
statement that the woman is Adam’s helper does not exclude the opposite in the
context of their equality in God’s image and their creation for companionship.
Ortland is basing an argument on silence that only the woman functions in terms
of helper. Ortland does not engage with the greater themes of mutuality that
appear elsewhere in Scripture, as well as making too much of a functional
meaning for “dominion” that he applies to Adam-- its functional aspect
supposedly calling forth agonism
Within
the context of companioning in v. 18a, no functional subordination or different
roles attend this translation or that of the Hebrew text. Rom. 8.5-9 calls into
question whether differences in the flesh of humans impart any ontological,
eschatological, or essential distinction when they are made one in the Spirit
by faith (Gal. 3.28), and that the same Spirit is delivered to both males and
females.
Complementarians
need to make much of (C) the priority of the woman’s deception. Piper and
Grudem (1991, 66) state that the serpent’s choice of the woman was based on its
desire to sow discord in the couple by elevating her to the role of “spokesman,
leader, and defender” in Eden. However, these authors overstate the issue.
Surely, the serpent did not actually elevate the woman to “repudiate”
“God’s order of leadership” over that of Adam (Ibid., 67), rather that the
serpent tempted the woman and she failed the test. There is no
indication in the text that Adam would have succeeded where the woman failed. While
the priority of Adam’s creation is noted in 1 Tim. 2.13 AND he was not deceived
by the serpent, though the woman was, no link between these items is revealed [see also postscript, below].
1 Timothy does not add any additional detail, and we cannot import other
considerations into the woman’s seduction. The text of Genesis 3 gives no
information regarding why the serpent chose the woman rather than the man to
tempt, and neither does the author of 1 Timothy. The serpent’s plan MAY have
reflected its understanding of how best to sow discord, but there is no
indication that the woman was more susceptible based on some essential
distinction with respect to Adam. To base a program of complementarianism and
male leadership from this episode is to give the devil what he thinks is his
due. Speculating about a “devil’s plan”[4] and the
woman’s essential susceptibility to temptation and/or to self-promotion
requires eisegetical importations from other ideologies and traditions.
The rest
of the Biblical data regarding the relationship of men and women as distinct
reflect texts detailing provisionality (rather than ontology) of conditions
after the Fall. Piper and Grudem (1991) recognize this and disavow basing arguments of
distinction upon sinful conditions in gender relationships. However, their
edited volume includes multiple arguments from these very texts without a
nuanced appreciation of the relationship of eschatological regeneration of
gender equality under Christ and the aboriginal condition of egalitarian
sexuality at the Creation (as discussion of A, B, C [above] contraindicates
putative ontological distinctions).
Kostenberger
and Jones (2004, 272) do not grapple
with the “kai” in the Greek of Gal. 3.28 but instead take the KJV
tradition (as repeatedly do Piper and Grudem 1991, passim, esp. 65-66) that
supports complementarity by translating this phrase, “neither male nor
female” in terms of salvation through the church. Even that flawed translation
would take gender roles as non-essential.
The fact
that kai functions so markedly in the Greek of Gal. 3.28,
interrupting the first two parallel phrases of “no…nor” with “no… and”
should awaken us to the probability that Paul is proposing a new understanding
of relations between the sexes in the age of the resurrected Christ. The
clause, “there is not male AND female,” should call Genesis 2-3 to mind, where
God made Adam and the woman in God’s image as male and female. They were
originally unaware of their gender distinctions because they were ontologically
of one flesh. Moreover, Gen. 2.23 notes that their classification as man and
woman are equally and passively derived. While Adam did name the animals as a
function of his trusteeship of the Garden, he did not name the woman in her
aboriginal creation. She was “woman” by virtue of his created being as “man,”
together existing as “human.” She was not functionally subordinated to Adam’s
naming prerogative until AFTER the Fall, when he actively names her “Eve” (Gen.
3.20). It is after the Fall that nominalism and its gender subordination began.[5]
The relational change between Adam and Eve following
the eating of the attractive fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
was immediate and dramatic. Their eyes were suddenly opened in a negative
way to their gender differences, which they attempted to rectify by trying
to cover themselves (Stutzman 2012, 26 emph. added).
To the
Galatians, Paul is saying that this recognition of negative difference is NOT the
case after Christ. The old categories that caused gender shame and differential
control have been reformed—the old patterns of human organization based on
kinship, domination, and subordination have given way to an eschatologizing
egalitarianism in the Church. The Edenic roles of male and female are subject
to a new understanding based on eschatology, which in Gal. 3.29 is based on equality
of promise. Complementarianism based on the order of creation—and later, on the
post-Fall economic foundations of family provisioning—has given way to a new
relationship in Christ.
Alongside
other Scriptural messages reconsidering kinship (e.g., Mk. 10.29; 1 Cor. 7.29;
Mt. 12.48-50), Gal. 3.28 was applied to:
the Church’s efforts to transform marriage
and … [prior] European trib[al,] kin-based institutions …[that manifested]
broad patterns [of ethnocentric patriarchy, such as]:
-People lived enmeshed in kin-based
organizations within tribal groups or networks. Extended family households were
part of larger kin-groups (clans, houses, lineages, etc.).
-Inheritance and postmarital residence had
patrilineal biases; people often lived in extended patrilineal households, and
wives moved to live with their husbands’ kinfolk.
-Many kinship units collectively owned or
controlled territory… retain[ing] inheritance rights such that lands couldn’t
be sold or otherwise transferred without the consent of relatives.
-Arranged marriages with relatives were customary,
as were marriage payments like dowry or bride price (where the groom or his
family pays for the bride).
-Polygynous marriages were common for
high-status men. In many communities, men could pair with only one “primary”
wife, typically someone of roughly equal social status, but could then add
secondary wives, usually of lower social status…
By the end of the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern Period, [the
relationship between the sexes has tended toward increasing equilibration.
D]emographic data become plentiful enough that historians can begin to
statistically delineate the European Marriage Pattern. This pattern is marked
by certain key characteristics:
-Monogamous nuclear families with neolocal
residence, with males becoming heads of households at younger ages and new
wives moving out from under the thumb of their mothers or mothers-n-law...
-Late marriage, with the average ages of
both men and women often rising into the mid-20s. Many factors likely influence
this pattern, including the importance of personal choice (no arranged
marriages), the challenge of finding nonrelatives (incest taboos), and the
financial demands of setting up an independent household (neolocal residence).
-Many women never marry: By age 30, some
15–25 percent of northwestern European women remained unmarried. The Church
provided a respectable alternative institutional mechanism to evade marriage:
women could enter the convent…
-Smaller families and lower fertility: …
likely influenced by many factors, including fewer kin ties (less childcare),
neolocal residence (less pressure from in-laws), a later age of marriage, and a
lack of polygyny.
-Premarital labor period: Between late
childhood and early adulthood, young people often moved to work in the homes of
other families, where they could earn money, learn new skills, and see how
other households operated…
-As their intensive kin-based institutions
dissolved, medieval Europeans became increasingly free to move, both
relationally and residentially. Released from family obligations and inherited
interdependence, individuals began to choose their own associates—their
friends, spouses, business partners, and even patrons—and construct their own
relational networks. Relational freedom spurred residential mobility, as
individuals and nuclear families relocated to new lands and growing urban
communities. This opened a door to the development and spread of voluntary
associations (Henrich 2020, ch. 5).
The Church’s disestablishment of polygyny
gave lower status males more of a stake in the future through domestication,
which reduced toxic masculinity, intragroup conflict, and crime, and the
anti-social effects of testosterone as children came to be born to them (Ibid.,
ch. 8).
These phenomena revealing equalizing
roles and relationships of the sexes manifest the hand of the Sovereign of
History, especially as the Church—applying Scripture—is the primary
transformative agent of European society.
Men are
(or could be) inhibited by the gender stereotypes in society, especially when
they are reinforced in the church. Perhaps more than women, men struggle with
the “let the children come to me” (Mt. 19.4) aspect of repentance, and so hesitate
to take on a vulnerable role of confession which society denigrates. If the
Church valorizes these traditional roles for men who wish to experience a new
way of being human, how is Church leadership different from conceptions of
secular leadership? How have Biblical leaders succeeded in modeling masculine
leadership—in David’s carnality or by Jesus’ pattern of virtues in self-denial
and -sacrifice?
McGrath
(2021) lists the women with whom Jesus interacted in the Gospels. He describes
how Jesus learned something about himself and his ministry from all of them.
Contrast Jesus’ interactions with his male disciples, Nicodemus, Pilate, and
other men. The latter were characterized by denseness in the face of Jesus’
identity and expectations. Women were involved in teaching Jesus something, the
men rarely if ever did.
With
this in mind, I wonder if the popularization of gender roles of leadership and
servanthood in Christian circles appropriately reflects the nuances and
peaceful ontology of the New Man and Woman (see below regarding Piper’s assertions).
Any complementarianism that has a man adopt stereotypical gender roles derived
from secular monuments of authoritarian masculinity so to make the woman
submissive is suspect to my understanding of Christian anthropology.[6]
Byrd (2020 Session 1) notes how these tropes serve to categorize males as
leaders with rational and worldly agency and women as tasked with caring of their
husband’s ego so that he can serve his own call. Moreover, complementarianism
may categorize women as weaker than men, more anthropologically seated in
emotion, and often functioning as victims. On the darker side of these
categories, men especially tend to victimize women and are tempted by
pornography and profligate sexuality. However, masculine leadership traits not
grounded in the ontology of peace are denied in my view by the full witness of scripture, and I do not see
enough of that primary message in these complementarian proposals. Men can
learn a lot from women about shalom, so that the egalitarianism flows to
the bilateral teaching offices of mutual domestic and community life.
Gender
stereotypes must be encountered pastorally as it reaches out to males raised
inside traditional gender roles, patriarchy, and androcentrism. Gender roles
and tropes in greater society need to be navigated when drawing and guiding a
questioning man into the faith of an egalitarian shalom. Bauckham (2002)
notes that Scripture has “gynecentric” interruptions of the dominant
androcentrism in a way that exposes the latter’s deficiencies so that men can
learn about themselves so that shalom is advanced in this mutual, charitable
teaching by the woman (like at the well with Jesus, Jn. 4.27), making “visible
what was invisible.”
Women
were part of the Holy Spirit’s work in the canonization of Scripture: In 2 Ki
22.14ff, the prophetess Huldah is sought by Josiah’s dignitaries for a word from the Lord, to
authenticate (“thus says the Lord”) the Book of the Law (probably Deuteronomy) deposited in the
Temple treasury. Men and women cooperate to authenticate God’s word, with
gynecentric interruptions when androcentrism goes astray.
Each contemporary couple situated in
the European Marriage Pattern mutually works out for themselves their
householding roles—child nursing, for example, domestic chores, neighborhood
development. Both sexes are equal in their imaging of God in their conscience
and in their call to virtue (2 Peter 1. 5-7; Phil. 4.8; cf. Prov. 15.4 etc.), so that they
are eschatologically equal in the regenerating plan of God. However, they may
be practically complementarian in their householding (cf. Eph. 5.22-23).
Complementarianism is more of a praxis of domestic peace and nurturance, and
egalitarianism more the NT anthropology of equal accountability on which my
understanding of doctrine is founded. In short, I believe in facultative complementary
egalitarianism between the sexes. It is not either/or. It is both, with
each partner submitting to the other in mutual, charitable love[7]
Piper
(1991, emph. orig.) states the Biblical basis for complementarianism’s
assertion of differing roles for the two sexes:
When the Bible teaches that men and women
fulfil different roles in relation to each other, charging man with a unique
leadership role, it bases this differentiation not on temporary cultural norms
but on permanent facts of creation. This is seen in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16
(especially vv. 8-9, 14); Ephesians 5:21-33 (especially vv. 31-32); and 1
Timothy 2:11-14 (especially vv. 13-14).7 In the Bible, differentiated roles for
men and women are never traced back to the fall of man and woman into sin.
Rather, the foundation of this differentiation is traced back to the way things
were in Eden before sin warped our relationships. Differentiated roles were
corrupted, not created, by the fall. They were created by God…AT THE HEART OF
MATURE MASCULINITY IS A SENSE OF BENEVOLENT RESPONSIBILITY TO LEAD, PROVIDE FOR
AND PROTECT WOMEN IN WAYS APPROPRIATE TO A MAN’S DIFFERING RELATIONSHIPS. AT
THE HEART OF MATURE FEMININITY IS A FREEING DISPOSITION TO AFFIRM, RECEIVE AND
NURTURE STRENGTH AND LEADERSHIP FROM WORTHY MEN IN WAYS APPROPRIATE TO A
WOMAN’S DIFFERING RELATIONSHIPS.
According
to Byrd (2020, Session 5), complementarians “want to recover the beauty” of
God’s created sexual distinctions and order, and that females were designed to
“spotlight” Christ’s relationship to the church while men spotlight the Lord
God’s relationship to Christ in a way that females do not. However, this
complementarian distinction is not supported by the male role in Eph. 5.25.
Piper
(1991, emph. added) states this difference in capacity follows from male
assertion: “Masculinity does not assume the authority of Christ over woman,
but advocates it.” Complementarianism’s hierarchical and subordinationist ontology
was, it claims, clearly manifest at the creation of the two sexes. Yet, it is
not clear why females model the Church’s subordination to Christ while males differentially
model Christ’s subordination to the Father.[8] Moreover,
Ruth 2.12 notes that she is under the Lord’s wings as she takes refuge in Boaz’s
faithfulness. Ezek. 16.8 applies in negative images Boaz’s spreading of his cloak for Ruth in chapter 3, where Ruth and
Boaz model conjugal mutuality. Ezek. 16.1 extends this action
of the Lord to all the Jerusalem resident group consisting of men and women
alike. There is no sexual distinction in this relationship of companioning
presence and accountability.
If a man
and woman undertake a reciprocal rather than mutual marital relationship based
on household functioning, they are free to negotiate its terms. The ontological
equality of the sexes is not founded on marriage, but as Genesis 2-3 notes, on
companionship--and then on a marital covenant of redemption extended to all of
Israel per Ezekiel 16.
Christian
companionship as love [hesed, agape] involves mutuality and loyalty, not
reciprocity,[9]
so any submission to another [ὑποτάσσω] goes out from the heart
without an expectation of advantage.[10]
The claim
that complementarian gender hierarchy manifests Christ as ontologically
subordinated to God the Father, such as argued by the Danvers Statement (Piper
and Grudem 1991, Appendix 2; Schreiner in Ibid., 121),[11] is creedally if not Biblically questionable. It is the incarnated office that
Christ holds in his humanity that is subordinated to the Father.[12]
It characterizes the Economic role of Jesus Christ in Salvation rather than of
the Transcendent Trinity.
An
additional consideration to the egalitarianism/complementarianism debate is the
ancient controversy regarding whence processes the Spirit: from the Father
alone, or from the Father and Son. In the latter, a differential relationship
flowing from the Trinity to the sexes does not seem to hold: both males and
females receive and attend to the same Spirit. An ontological distinction
between the sexes may be complementarian if the Spiritual processing manifests
hierarchy in the immanent Trinity as by the Father alone sending the Spirit to
Christ’s male servants. However, I understand the Son’s subordination inside
the Economic Trinity only, by virtue of his human nature. I do not see an
ontological distinction “spotlighted” in the two sexes reflected in the church
household.
“The Son
is begotten from all eternity [John 1.1-4],” generated from the Father’s divine
essence. The Son’s eternal generation and coequality with the Father derive from [is understood within] the doctrine of divine simplicity which teaches that God is not made up
of, composed of, or compounded by parts. His attributes are His essence and His
essence His attributes” (Barrett 2021). Berkhof locates subordination not in
the essence of the Son and the Father but in the distinction of temporal
“order.”[13]
Following Berkhof--and Bavinck’s stronger position--rather than Grudem, would
wipe out ontological arguments for sexual distinctions based on anything but
the order of Creation, putting those distinctions within an economic and
functional (Lambert 2016, 191) analogical role and not within some proposed ontology
of essence or hierarchy of authority.
Jesus in
the Gospels does repeatedly subordinate himself to the Father. The key
theological question is whether that subordination is a reflection of his human
nature inside the Trinitarian economy of human salvation, or if it manifests a
Transcendent ontology of the eternally generated, divine Son of God. How one
parses these questions will lead to an temporal complementarianism or a
contextualized egalitarian view of sex roles in family, church, and society.
Hebrews
5.8: the Son “learned obedience,” which suggests that this “subordination” is
not ontological, but rather characteristic of the Son operating inside the
economic Trinity toward human salvation --an obedience realized through
pedagogical subordination in human child development. The Son learning
obedience suggests that this happened economically—on earth—and is not part
of the perichoretic—mutual and relational--processing of the Immanent Trinity.
As disciples, both sexes are to follow this path of obedience under the
direction of the Gospels and in the virtues proposed in the Pastoral Epistles. God
may call individuals in a way that reflects their different gifts,
including experience, but gender distinction is not a special gift or charism
(see below).
Distinctions
between the sexes in the Bible are descriptive—portrayed as negatively or
positively functional and mutually charitable--rather than ontological,
hierarchical, or reciprocal. Adam gives up his rib for his fulfillment in the
woman and her companionship, which is a key image in the story of redemption. By
being of Adam’s flesh, the woman integrally inheres in the de novo creation.
While her individuality and integrity of person may arise second, her flesh and
body arose as a moiety with Adam--a moiety disrupted in function (by the arising of the need for childbirth upon the entry of personal death)
rather than ontology. Becoming “one flesh” again by marriage suggests
ontological restoration of the sexes by the Spirit, in which there was no
distinction evident in Eden prior to the Fall’s necessitating childbirth.
Companionship
as mutual--a communion rather than subordination--seems also to characterize
the ontological Trinity in Heaven reflected economically on earth by family and
community life and that we share in our union with Christ through the
processing Holy Spirit. Where masculinity errs is arrogating to its sex the
manifestation of pagan virtues of agon (the ontology of predatory
conflict to achieve order—Ps. 5.6) more flamboyantly—if woefully—than women.
Such evident and contingent “moreness” of agon should not carry over to the
Christian life of shalom in the renewed ontology of peace and the
Christian virtues detailed above.[14]
Different
people are further along the path of sanctification at any given moment, and
such progress is not empirically sexualized. Sexualized considerations of righteous
hierarchies seem especially questionable to me because they are based on a
status that is purely endowed by God in conception that distributes a “Y”
chromosome. No sanctification is involved in such a phenomenon of gender
distinctiveness. Realization of sex is a gift of God without any work of human
sanctification or special grace.
The
effect of sin, where domination and violence are imported into a distorted
ideal of the image of God in the sexes realized differentially. The Church is accordingly
often complicit in importing secularism’s ontology of masculinity as agon. Virtu culturally embodies the Latin word for “man” so that classical
virtues prioritized pagan ideals of masculinity. Through Machiavelli,
Nietzsche, and beyond, the taming of the supposed “ontology of chaos” by
masculine force was the ideal of character.
Christian
virtues are not differentially allocated by cultural tropes of sex but are
universal to the building of Kingdom shalom. By their achievement, an
egalitarian mutuality of persons regardless of gender creates shalom.
All sexes are enjoined to these virtues and their development. A dichotomous
view that virtues apply to particular sexes does not lead to this shalom.
As an example, Piper (1991, emph. orig.) stereotypes the following gender
distinctions without Biblical evidence:
Mature masculinity does not have to initiate
every action, but feels the responsibility to provide a general pattern of
initiative… Mature masculinity accepts the burden of the
final say in disagreements between husband and wife, but does not presume to
use it in every instance… Mature masculinity expresses its leadership in
romantic sexual relations by communicating an aura of strong and tender
pursuit… Mature masculinity is sensitive to cultural expressions of
masculinity and adapts to them (where no sin is involved) in order to
communicate to a woman that a man would like to relate not in any aggressive or
perverted way, but with maturity and dignity as a man… Mature
masculinity recognizes that the call to leadership is a call to repentance and
humility and risk-taking.
Mutuality
not reciprocity in charitable and persistent hesed love structures the
allocation of family roles (Eph. 5.21; cf. Luke 6.30; Mt. 5.42). The claim of
ontological distinctions between the sexes by the strong complementarian
position, like those in the previous citation, overreaches the Biblical witness
and takes on secular dysfunction, bringing about dissension and authoritarian relations
contrary to household and community/church shalom.
It was
the culture of Jesus’ time to deny women’s witness based on traditional
stereotypes that are overturned in the Gospel. Especially Mary, Elizabeth, Ruth,
and Mary Magdalene are key “tradents” of the Gospel—the meta-narrative of
salvation by a deliverer (Byrd 2020, Session 4). Mary especially is an
eyewitness for the details of the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ resurrection.[15]
Other women in the Bible are lamenting tradents or witnesses to masculine
depravity (e.g., Judges 11.39-40).[16]
Enscripturated female tradency would suggest that Paul’s prohibition of female
teachers [1 Cor. 14; 1 Timothy 2.12] is contextualized in crisis rather than addressed
universally [see also Postscript, below]. That certain unruly churches plagued his apostleship (1 Cor. 11) does
not imply a universal salient to those churches, or by extension, of women’s
witness both to the Triune God and to what is lamentable. Note also that Paul
chose Phoebe, Junia, and others in Romans 16 as benefactors and co-workers in
his ministry, especially as sent tradents of his theology to interpret
his letters in their intended recipient communities. The Roman and Corinthian
churches seem to have contrasting levels of shalom that Paul mediates by
chastening some women in Corinth while enabling and sending forth some in Rome.
Paul’s contextualization of women’s role is ad hoc.
Contrast
the authority Paul claims in 1 Cor 7.10 (as apodeictic law: divinely normative
and therefore universal) with that of 7.12 and 7.40 (his personal, casuistic
judgments that are culturally conditioned and descriptive of a particularized
family microcosm).[17]
In the same way, Jesus (Matt. 19:9) considers Moses’ allowance of divorce in
Deut 24.1-4 to be pragmatic rather than theologically unchanging through all
time. Paul in 1 Cor. 7, like Jesus’ characterization of Moses, pronounces both
apodeictic and practical, tradition-accommodative judgments, the latter like that
of Moses’ allowance of divorce. Must not a hermeneutic of Paul’s household
codes in Ephesians account for a casuistic dialectic of gender in households
(and house churches) as indicated by his demurral of apodeictic authority in 1
Cor. 7.12 and 40? It seems clear that Paul is rendering rulings in his letters
to the particular contexts of the churches he addresses. 1 Cor. 7.12 and 40 manifest
Paul’s awareness that his letters are conditional—they were not intended to
render apodeictic law in the universal church for all ages.
To wit: Paul
in Ephesians and the letters to Timothy does speak of differentiated gender
roles in churches. A complete analysis of each gendered reference in the
Pauline Letters is not possible in this limited space. However, Osiek and Balch
(1997) explain that these more traditional roles were manifest in house
churches where an entire family system converted—where the Pater familias
converted and brought along his family and its culturally traditioned roles of
patriarchy. Paul addressed these whole-family house churches to exhort and incorporate
them along traditional gender lines. The authors claim that other communities
of faith in early Christianity consisted of individuals absent these household
family agglomerations and gender patterns. These churches structured sex roles
on egalitarian lines like can be gleaned by analysis of the named actors in the
letter to the Romans (where the ministries of women exceed the number of men).
Complementarianism in the Pauline letters is contingent on—and descriptive of--existing
relationships rather than normative.
In
contrast, Gal. 3.28 is an apodeictic pronouncement where Paul notes that provisional
distinctions dissolve in the church’s eschatological and resurrection era, an era
which embodies the testamented delivery of equality of Abraham’s faith to male and
female.
Regarding
the argument that Paul’s use of kephale signals the “headship” of men over
women (Piper and Grudem 1991, Appendix 1): I ask, why would an anatomical feature be monumentalizd to indicate priority of
roles in the context of images in the Great Commandment of the Shema
(Deut. 6.4ff)? There, the heart that has priority in the structuring of human
responsiveness to God, not the head. Granted, Jesus expands to the mind (Mk.
12.30) the Shema’s directive to be loyally devoted to loving God through
the whole body and soul, but neither of these two texts evidences an anatomical
hierarchy. While Paul uses the word to
relate the sexes, a non-hierarchical understanding devoid of an implication of
leadership is probable. Schreiner (ch. 5 in Piper and Grudem 1991) allows that its
meaning of “source” is possible, but he goes on to claim that Grudem has
convincingly demonstrated that “head” indicates authority, most dramatically in
Eph. 1.22 when it relates Christ to the Church. And so, as discussed
previously, Grudem and complementarians analogize this authority of Christ over
the Church to men over women, thereby continuing a pattern within those circles
that find theological meaning in created, physical distinctions.
However,
a close reading of the use of kephale when it is applied to male/female
relations in Paul’s letters notes a processive and dialectical pattern to its
use. The head is involved in a far richer theological metaphor of life’s processive (I/thou) organicism from its source rather than a monarchic authority of status in space.[18]
Translations
of 1 Cor. 11.9 often render the preposition dia with the same sense of
“advantage” for the male by the company of the female that is as noted, a mistranslation of Gen. 2.18c. The KJV’s mistranslation of that verse
fragment conveys an advantage for Adam occasioned by the creation of the woman.
Yet when taking the genitive, the Greek preposition dia means “through” and
the context of v. 12 introduces a circular processive image, so that this preposition
in v. 9 (with the accusative of reason) picks up the circulatory image of v. 12.
The processive rather than a unidirectional sense of advantage also seems to
fit better with the difficult application in v. 10’s use of dia. In the dia
of both vv. 9 and 10, situated in this circulatory context, seems best
translated as “because” or “for reason of.”
Any instrumental sense of the nouns in these verses is precluded by the
preposition dia taking the accusative, as opposed to the genitive, case
(Aubrey 2020, loc.cit.).
Col.
2.19 contextualizes kephale in process rather than preeminent anatomical
status—indeed, the process is framed in terms of “nourishment.” The processive
nourishment completes the body, and as nourishment is mediated in the blood,
the male and the woman are involved in a circular process: Adam gives rise
to the body of the woman, and Eve gives birth to new males (and, of course,
females.) Male kephale-ship is only part of the source and flow of life
nourished (Col. 2.19) by the circular flow of blood.[19] The
location of life in the blood (Lev. 17.11 etc.) ties
together anatomical members by circular flow in the wholeness (shalom)
of life of the Church (Eph.4.15-16) redeemed through Christ’s blood. Christ is
the blood-source of the Church (Col. 1.8)—the kephale binds the whole
together as both source of and necessary way station (the mind's conscience) in life’s flow (cf. Eph.
2.21; Heb. 9.22). It follows that males and females share in the processive
circular flow in the blood of regenerated and redeemed life. There is no
anatomical privilege or preeminence in a male kephale over that of the
woman, rather the mutuality of their sources in each other is the completeness
of the flesh followed by shalom in the sharing of Spirit.[20]
This
exegesis of the blood source of redemption is supported by another sense of the
Greek word kephale. Silver (1992, 22) notes:
in the ancient Near East [ANE] and
Greco-Roman world, 'capital' or, more specifically, 'money' are well-attested
meanings of words whose primary meaning is 'head'. These [languages] include
Sumerian, Akkadian (East Semitic); Hebrew (West Semitic) rö'sh; Demotic djadja;
Greek kraros and kephale (kephalion); and Latin caput.
Paul’s
use of kephale for Christ could also encode a financial theme that he
proposes elsewhere as Christ’s redemptive work.
The redemptive function is part of an atonement theology that purchases
humanity from the Satan (Job 1.17) pictured as roving “huckster” trader in
search of coin/capital=blood (Ibid., 144-145). Silver (ibid., 23) notes that
treasuries and temples were linked in ANE cultures. Currency often bore the
head of the ruler as guarantor. Picturing Jesus as the kephale/caput of
the body that is the new temple and whose value is contrasted with that of
Caesar’s coin (Mark 12.17) and supports the “source” theory of kephale’s
meaning codes in Paul. Capitalist systems of mammon operate on the
circulation of such coin, while the New Temple in Christ operates by the
circulation of Jesus’s Spirit conceived according to his plan (the kephale’s
Logos).
This source coding is extended
by (the cognate word) kephalion’s sense of “sealing” (Silver 1992, 24).
Rather than delivering a service according to the payment of coin, God’s
covenant blessings are guaranteed and delivered by their sealing in blood (Exod.
24:6-7; 1 Cor. 10:16-17, 11:25; Mark 14:22-24) and then by Spirit.
From this analysis of the coded
aspects of kephale, I understand it to contrast with hierarchical codes of
cult finance—the linkage of treasury (Caesar’s head) and Temple which is the
foundation of Jesus’ critique of Herod’s establishment that got him crucified
upon Golgotha.
Codes of “head” as life-delivering,
redemptive values are reworked negatively at the place of the dead
skull—Golgotha—where the redemption through Christ’s head brought forth his
death at the hands of the establishment on the Cross. Golgotha images the
deadening nature of coin/head commerce carried out in the context of
religion--the effects of buying and selling that bring forth exploitations and
lead to death-dealing cults and clientele economics. The human blood of the
Sinless One is shed at the Cross, emptying a skull to assuage demons, while the
Spiritual force is there unspent.
Picturing and proclaiming Christ’s
head as a hierarchical anatomical authority to be applied to relations between
the sexes is a categorical error that attributes static human images for how
God brings about redemption functionally and supernaturally. It mistakes the
anatomy of client-relations capitalism for the Divine Economy circulating by
life-giving grace.
Milgrom (1991) notes that anatomical
distinctions follow from (un)cleanness, none of which are spatialized. Israel
"make(s) a distinction between the unclean and the clean (Lev 11.47)...
Creation was the product of God making distinctions (Gen 1.4, 6). This divine
function is to be continued by Israel: the priests to teach it (Lev 10.10-11)
and the people to practice it." However, distinctions based on physical
cleanness are mooted in the NT (Acts 10.28; cf. Matt. 9:20–22, Mark 5:25–34,
Luke 8:43–48).
An
implication of locating the kephale in the Logos rather than in the human body is that the Logos not the Body is the
image of anthropological completeness—the wholeness of shalom in the NT
era. Biblically, this completeness is manifested in Jesus’s updating of the Shema’s
enjoinder to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might
(Deut. 6.5) while Jesus’ directive adds “with all your mind” (Mk. 12.30). In
Christ is the eschatological fulfillment of anthropological wholeness where kephale
completes the organic metaphor of the Body’s wholeness, connected in its
members by the circulation of purifying blood. Extending this metaphor: the
eternal heart beats out its continual praise in the circulation of life in the
blood and is central to the Shema’s anthropology. It would be hard to
argue that this centrality found in the foundational statement of Torah has
been reformed in NT anthropology. But it has been added to in the Spirit.
These metaphors of the head as source befit the I/thou organicism of Christ’s role as the Logos and as the redeemer
of our blood by his blood that institutes the new birth succeeding that of the
flesh (John 1.13). These organic metaphors fit the male and female together
in the circulatory sequence of life in the beginning of flesh in Adam and then in
the female womb, calling attention to the follow-on, integrated nourishment and
function of the Body of Christ under the head (the source of the redeeming
plan/Logos) of Christ and the new birth. To the extent that readers presume
anatomical authority in the head, such needs to be extended to relationships
between men and women in terms of this primary organic metaphor of
circulation--of circularly processive functioning.[21]
Assertions
that headship entails gender roles import secular ideologies of “dominion” to
favor complementarian submission by women to men and the institutions of other
gender tropes. In contrast to the life-giving, sacrificial Word that brings
peace, freedom, and humble creativity, the self-assertive word brings God’s
distancing (Pss. 138.6; 5.5), sin, and leads to death.
The
Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) models companionable dialogue (as
processive circulation) with Jesus that elicits from Jesus a new Gospel message
for her life force. She is a woman, like certainly Mary his mother, who nurtures
his humanity by calling forth his grace. These women exemplify the virtue of
hospitality acted out in the presence of our Lord and Savior, the foundations for
the inner circle of discipleship (Byrd 2020, Session 8) and eternal communion.
Ontological complementarians make much of marriage for the
structuring of sexual distinctions:
In the home when a husband leads like Christ and a wife
responds like the bride of Christ, there is a harmony and mutuality that is
more beautiful and more satisfying than any pattern of marriage created by man.
Biblical headship for the husband is the divine calling to take primary
responsibility for Christlike, servant-leadership, protection and provision in
the home. Biblical submission for the wife is the divine calling to honor and
affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her
gifts. This is the way of joy. For God loves his people and he loves his glory.
And therefore when we follow his idea of marriage (sketched in texts like
Genesis 2:18-24; Proverbs 5:15-19; 31:10-31; Mark 10:2-12; Ephesians 5:21-33;
Colossians 3:18-19; and 1 Peter 3:1-7) we are most satisfied and he is most
glorified. The same is true of God’s design for the leadership of the
church. The realities of headship and submission in marriage have their
counterparts in the church (Piper 1991).
However,
marriage is temporal and not ontological. It is mooted in the eschaton (Mt.
22.30). The OT circulatory pattern of the blood’s being in becoming one
flesh through marriage and children is merged into the NT circulatory
pattern in which both married persons and the unmarried have an equal
participation and equal dignity in the Spirit. The literature on Christian marriage I’ve
consulted that is arrayed against egalitarianism does not express awareness of the
ontological unity processed by circulation of the Spirit. It applies itself instead
to the functional distinctions of reproductive householding in the post-lapsarian Old Testament
economy of this earth.
NOTES:
Byrd (ibid.) suggests
that Jael in Judges 4 functions as a “type” of Eve’s promised seed by crushing
the head of Sisera, recalling (?) the messianic prophecy of Gen. 3.15. She is not explicitly acting in the Spirit,
though she is termed “blessed among women” (Judg. 5.24).by the grace of God to
act first in the regeneration of
the human race. In this, the story of Jael demonstrates Biblical leadership,
according to Byrd. Both Jael and David as Christic “types” pursue
violence that will be made obsolete by the Rod and Sword of God’s spoken Word
in the realized Kingdom, so that neither David nor Jael are vanguards of the
ontology of peace Moreover, Jael is not
an Israelite, and her motives go unremarked in the text. She is not explicitly acting in the Spirit,
though she is attributed to become (yiqtol) “most blessed among women” (Judg. 5.24).
Ike Miller (@Ikefmiller) May 12, 2021 on Twitter wrote:
WHY 1
TIMOTHY 2:12 DOES NOT EXCLUDE WOMEN FROM TEACHING/PREACHING
In this
passage, Paul was not limiting women's teaching, reasserting patriarchy, or
establishing male authority.
In
context, Paul was dismantling all notions of gender hierarchy in the Christian
community.
1.
Ephesus, where Timothy was when Paul wrote him this letter, was the home of the
Temple of Artemis-The great Mother Goddess.
The
Artemis cult elevated women above men because in their mythology, Artemis
(female) was born first, then she helped birth her brother, Apollo.
With
Artemis born first, it fed a spirit of female superiority in Ephesus-an
aggressive feminism-that led to women teaching in such a way as to exercise
domineering authority over men, possibly even within Timothy's church.
2. This
historical context is important b/c the Greek word translated
"authority" here (authentein) does not occur anywhere else in the NT.
Sources outside the Bible used the word to refer to violent crimes such as
murder, rape, or situations of exercising aggressive control.
The
authority Paul is referring to is an aggressive, domineering kind of authority,
not the healthy kind of authority spoken of when 'katakyrieuo' or 'exousia' are
used in the NT. This was provoking an unhealthy, destructive seizing of
authority by women, esp. through teaching
3.
Without going too deep into Greek syntax, the structure of the sentence
"neither to teach nor exercise authority" can also be translated such
that the 2nd part is an emphasis & clarification of the 1st.
(Lk.
18:13 is an ex. of the 'ouk...oude...' construction used this way)
In 1
Timothy 2:12, the kind of teaching is clarified by the 2nd part-teaching with
an aggressive, domineering authority.
Paul is
essentially saying, "I do not permit a woman to teach in such a way as to
exercise domineering authority over men, but to have a quiet demeanor."
4. Paul
goes on to talk about Adam being created first, not Eve. The fact that the
Artemis cult exalted women above men because they believe Artemis was born
first (before Apollo) makes incredible sense why Paul would make this
clarification.
5. In
the face of aggressive feminism, Paul also clarifies it was the woman who was
deceived, not the man. Unless Paul is entirely blaming women for the fall, it
makes more sense that he is simply arguing a counterpoint to the cult claim
that men are intellectually inferior.
6.
Finally, this context makes the most sense of vs. 15. The Artemis cult believed
Artemis was the protector of women in childbirth, so Paul reassures that that
women will nevertheless be saved (preserved) through childbearing.
Conclusion:
What Paul says here is a truth that stands for all time—any teaching that is
intended to exercise aggressive, domineering, and coercive authority is to be
condemned & disallowed.
This is
not a cultural dismissal of the vs, but a historically accurate application
For
example, in my mind, this passage applies far more directly to *some*
expressions of modern feminism that attempt to elevate women as the “superior”
gender. Any teaching that elevates one gender above another is condemned by
Paul’s words here.
A final
note. If the context is the Artemis cult, why is it not stated explicitly?
1. The
Artemis cult and Timothy in Ephesus are discussed in Acts 19:21-41.
2.
Unless we take Paul’s command to women in vv. 9-10 to not braid their hair or
wear jewelry as unconditional we must be willing to acknowledge a contextual
reason for the command, namely, that such prohibitions of braiding hair and
wearing jewelry were common to ethical prohibitions at the time—a context that
is not fleshed out for us here.
If we
are willing to acknowledge the context behind vv.9-10 which are not clearly
stated, why should we not acknowledge the context (influence of Artemis cult)
behind vv.11-15 which also are not clearly stated?
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