Gender roles

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The relatively young debate over what roles are appropriate, permitted, and forbidden to men and women by the Bible, with particular emphasis upon the church and the home. More generally, what does the Bible say that is particular to our masculinity or femininity?

The two primary positions are complementarianism and egalitarianism. Each manifests itself in moderate, chastened, and hyper- forms. Each has proponents who love Jesus. Each also has proponents who act out of sinfulness, selfishness, humanism, and simple ignorance.

There's far more to be said about this issue than can fit in a single article; see these other resources on the site as well:

Contents

Pertinent Scriptures (a study guide)

(Work in progress)

  • Genesis 1:26-27
  • Genesis 2:18, 22-25
  • Genesis 3:6, 9-20
  • Genesis 21:12 -- Sarah
  • Ruth (entire book) -- Ruth
  • Judges 4:4-5:31 -- Deborah
  • 2 Kings 22:14-20 -- Hulduh
  • Proverbs (wives and husbands)
  • Proverbs 31 (the "wife of noble character")
  • Acts 2:16-17 -- Giftedness (parity?) of both men and women ("sons and daughters")
  • Acts 9:36-43 -- Tabitha/Dorcas
  • Acts 12:12-17 -- Mary
  • Acts 16:13-15, :40 -- Lydia
  • Acts 18:18-28 -- Priscilla as teacher
  • Acts 21:9 -- Phillip's four daughters

The Egalitarian Argument

Nutshell version: "There is no scriptural or theological argument which is sufficiently compelling to justify the categorical exclusion of women from aany roles of church leadership, and neither is the case sufficiently strong to relegate wives to a role in marriage which is in any way inferior, subordinate, or functionally subservient to that of their husbands."

/TODO/

Caricatures and Strawmen of Egalitarianism

It is a common practice in debate to misrepresent the position of your opponent and then debunk that altered form of their position. Here we present a few such "straw man" forms of egalitarian arguments.

  • /TODO/
  • Egalitarians do not believe that "Paul doesn't have the right to tell me what I can and can't do". (Those who do so are beyond the pale of biblical theology, and whatever their system of belief, it cannot rightly be called Christian.)
  • More generally, egalitarians do not have it as their goal to undermine the authority of scripture or its normalizing and regulative role.
  • Scholarly egalitarians no longer regard Galatians 3:28 as the linchpin of their argument. (In the popular literature, however, this meme remains popular.)
  • /TODO/

The Complementarian Argument

Nutshell version: "Scripture anticipates and endorses male headship in both the home and the church. While the particular ways this is embodied are tempered by culture, scripture excludes women from the office of 'elder' and normalizes the husband's role as the leader of the home."

/TODO/

Caricatures and Strawmen of Complementarianism

Egalitarians are not the only ones frequently misrepresented by their opponents.

  • /TODO/
  • Complementarians do not endorse "traditional gender roles" in the sense of "the traditional modern family" or even "the traditional western family". They endorse the gender roles embraced by scripture, which sometimes happen to correlate with cultural traditions and sometimes do not.
  • Complementarians do not assert that men are superior to women in terms of their intrinsic worth, value, or nature as people.
  • Complementarians do not assert that women are incapable of teaching, more prone to deception, less intelligent, less wise, less discerning, or otherwise lack any skill or gift requisite for any form of ministry.
  • Complementarians are not misogynists any more than egalitarians are misandrists (although some misogynists and misandrists endorse positions superficially resembling complementarianism and egalitarianism, respectively).
  • Complementarians do not believe that God is a Male, and reject Mary Daly's fallacious universal conversion that therefore the Male is God.
  • /TODO/

The Complementarian critique of Egalitarianism

  • /TODO/
  • It is ludicrous to accuse Jesus, Paul, and Peter of compromising on the issue of gender roles to appease their contemporaries. Jesus touched leppers, touched dead bodies, dined with tax collectors and prostitutes, and called the religious leaders of his day hypocrites andd vipers. Paul said those who would trade a little bit of their freedom in Christ for acceptance in the eyes of the Jews should castrate themselves. Both endorsed women as witnesses, prophets, and teachers, contrary to the day's cultural norms. Thus, the assertion that gender role passages arose out of any sense of cultural accommodation is baseless speculation.
  • Egalitarianism commits a categorical fallacy in asserting that a person's roles cannot be diminished or restricted without simultaneously decreasing their value as a human being.
  • Egalitarianism rests upon exegetical and hermeneutic uncertainty, ambiguity, and speculation and not upon clarity.
  • Egalitarian arguments are often willing to read a broader description or endorsement of leadership and authority into scriptures describing women than is actually present in the text. This is sometimes done in the name of "correcting" a perceived chauvinist "bias" of the text, but this is a means for arguing around scripture rather than rightly interpreting it.
  • Egalitarianism too readily dismisses the particular imperatives of scripture (Paul's restrictions upon female ministers) which contradict their preferred hermeneutic (Jesus' equalizing ministry), preferring to dismiss difficult passages rather than allowing these difficulties to "push back" against their interpretive framework.
  • Egalitarian lines of thought have a demonstrable track record of leading to liberalization of views on the authority of Scripture.
  • /TODO - refactor below to fit here/
  • Any time a theology is proposed which is suspiciously agreeable to the secular academy and popular whim, and is simultaneously contrary to the historic majority position of the church, it should be approached with caution. It is not necessarily false, but the presumption must be against it. Egalitarianism's agreement with moderate secular feminism (in practical objectives if not necessarily in motivation) thus renders it suspect (but not necessarily false).
  • I am a fan of wikipedia:Occam's Razor as a guiding principle when constructing a Biblical world-view, meaning that we should be suspicious of a theology which attempts to explain away the plain and unambiguous reading of a fairly substantial number of Biblical passages. Egalitarianism's construction of a rational model for God's view of gender based upon extrapolation and inference from some passages and then applying this model over and against passages explicitly mandating distinct gender roles within the church and the home also renders it suspect (but not necessarily false).
  • Most decisive for me, however, is the relative weakness of egalitarianism when held up against its chief competitor, complementarianism. Basically, egalitarianism's rational coherence rests upon a long list of contingencies: "if the greek word cephas should be understood as "source" rather than "head", and if source should be understood as having no connotations with respect to authority (which is unlikely), and if Paul in 1 Timothy was addressing a particular group of deceived women and not women in general (which is unlikely), and if his reference therein to Genesis was for emphasis and not theologically significant (which is unlikely), and if the householder passages are descriptive and not perscriptive (which is unlikely)," and so on. Should any of these contingencies falter, their case's credibility diminishes; if several falter, their credibility collapses. That they are able to continually append new contingencies is of no help; there is nothing in the position that rests upon exigetical or hermentutical certainty or clarity, only conjecture and uncertainty. (That some of its most vocal proponents of these lines of argument accompany them with transparently humanistic hermeneutics and agendas is also not helpful, although we will not ascribe those to all egalitarians.) The complementarian position has no such contingencies - it can honestly embrace the plain reading of these and many other scriptures that egalitarians must arm-wrestle into submission to their position.
  • /TODO/

The Egalitarian critique of Complementarianism

  • /TODO/
  • Complementarianism disqualifies more than half of Jesus' disciples from formal ministry roles.
  • Complementarianism can't see the theological forest (Jesus' equalizing ministry) for the exegetical trees (Paul's temporary restrictions upon female ministers).
  • Complementarians are rushing in to impose ecclesiastic restrictions on the basis of texts with unclear readings. A more prudent approach would be to take the most permissive approach while the textual issues are resolved.
  • /TODO/

In Principle and In Practice

/TODO/

Hanging in the Balance

It is a lot easier to leave this issue unaddressed than to formulate a clear Biblical theology and corresponding polity. /TODO/

Political and Social Pressures

The political and cultural tide runs strongly in favor of egalitarianism and strongly against complementarianism, and there is growing evidence that non-Christian and anti-Christian organizations are happy to align themselves with egalitarian Christians in an attempt to demonize and otherwise denigrate ministries and ministers who hold to complementarian theology; for example, see the buzz surrounding a protest of Mark Driscoll's church and ministry.

The ecumenical climate militates strongly against complementarianism because of its implicit illegitimating of the female pastors who are now commonplace (even prevalent) in mainline and liberalized denominations.

Academic theologians are under strong pressure toward egalitarianism for reasons ranging from the financial (availability of federal education dollars) to the intrinsic liberalization of the academy (see Over-education).

Implications for Hermeneutics

... Hermeneutics ...

... Liberation theology implications ...

... The "I can't believe in a God who X" argument ... (Karl Barth wrote brilliantly on the complete disconnect between any god we parameterize and the one true God who reveals Himself)

Wayne Grudem and Mary Kassian have argued that egalitarianism and evangelical feminism contribute subtly but directly to liberalization of our theology and weakening of or regard for Scripture's authority. (See Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? and The Feminist Mistake, respectively.)

"Slaves, women, and homosexuals"

Practical Implications

... cultural/evangelistic implications ...

... human resource implications ...

Personalities

Organizations

Allied Organizations

Bibliography

Overview

Egalitarian

Complementarian

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