Introduction

A MOVE IS AFOOT in the worldwide church in favor of appointing women to recognized positions of leadership and ministry in the church. In addition to this, there is a shift among Christian married couples to embrace the idea of equality in marriage in opposition to notions of male headship and authority. This move is coming not just because of pressure from the world to conform to new standards of equality but also from thoughtful and deep engagement with Scripture. Although there have always been pockets of resistance to the idea of male dominance in Christianity, the widespread nature of this current movement marks a historic transition in the way the Bible is being received, interpreted, and applied. Quite frequently now, and in many different quarters, old patterns of interpretation are being disrupted and new insights are emerging, encouraging people to see that male authority and female submission is not the prescribed pattern of gender relations in the Bible.

This move is growing among the clergy and the laity, the theologically minded and the uninitiated, leaders and followers, men and women, and is leading many to assert that the Bible does not, in fact, endorse male predominance but instead tells the story of a God who challenges and subverts the rule and domination of men in many and varied ways. There is a growing assurance that the Bible tells a story of God releasing women alongside men into all forms of ministry, leadership, work, and service on the basis of character and gifting rather than on the basis of biological sex. And not only this, but there is an increasing conviction that the Christian faith, rightly understood, contributes to the overturning of an entrenched patriarchal order in the world, offering hope for a society freed from the damage and destruction of a world where the pattern of relationships for men and women are shaped by the expectation that men should lead and women should follow.

This book explores this movement, explaining why this is not simply a response to a cultural shift or an innovation but is a valid and ancient reading of Scripture and tradition. I explain why and where it is right to question certain interpretations, why and where there are a number of possible interpretations of Scriptures, and where, in some cases, what have come to be accepted readings of certain Scriptures are either too problematic to be useful or are simply erroneous. My aim is to demonstrate through careful study and exegesis of Scripture that when we receive the same words with the knowledge that is now available and in a different spirit, we will see a different world altogether.

SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES

This book is about the interpretation of the Bible and Christian practice. It asks whether we can read the Bible in such a way that allows us to claim (1) that Christian women are given the freedom to lead in the church in any and every capacity, and (2) that married women should take equal responsibility with their husbands for the management of the household and family.

The process of interpreting what the Bible is telling us about what we should be like and how we should live should be familiar to all Christians; it is a way of life. However, it is not a simple process. God has put us in a context where, in order to discover how to live well as Christians, we need to interpret his words and learn to apply them in different circumstances. In a life of discipleship to Jesus, we soon discover that there are not really clear-cut rules laid out for all of us to refer to as to precisely how we should run our day-to-day lives. Instead, Jesus left us with just two commandments: love God with every fiber of your being, and love one another as you love yourself. In many ways, he left the outcome of his short ministry remarkably open-ended.

As a result, church history is formed and shaped by people attempting to work out these commands as they seek God’s purposes for their lives and the lives of those around them. These attempts have mixed results in the reality we know as church. The church can be a place of astounding hospitality, freedom, transformation, and hope. There are millions of testimonies of women, men, and children through the ages whose lives have been saved by God through the church, whose deepest friendships are found there, and whose communities are the means of their healing. But it can also be a toxic place, and the damage done can be worse because of all we initially hoped our church community would be. Leaders can be sinful, abusive, manipulative, and cruel. Fellow Christians can be unkind, divisive, and hostile. The church reflects the best and worst of humanity. It both glorifies and betrays its Savior.

This larger context is relevant to the question of women’s place in the church because this whole topic resides in a deeply contested space. Even raising it in some spheres causes anxiety, hostility, defensiveness, and pain. When you study church history, though, you realize that there really is “nothing new under the sun” (Eccles 1:9).

Christians have been in disagreement over deeply held beliefs since the beginning of the church, and anxiety and disagreement should not be a reason not to engage with ideas and to discuss and debate with one another. As a Christian scholar, my desire is to engage with the questions surrounding what the Bible says about men and women in leadership and marriage, how it says it, and to explore the implications of some of the answers.

A RANGE OF VIEWS

In reality, there is a remarkable range of views on what place women should occupy in the church, and this takes many different forms depending largely on denominational differences. On the whole, those who limit the role of women (whether in a pastoring, teaching, or priestly role), base their beliefs on a fundamental conviction that God has ordained a pattern in this world where men should take a lead in an authoritative capacity and women should follow and be led. This is classically defined as patriarchy—systems in which men hold authority, power, and leadership, and women are either excluded from these roles or included if they are under male supervision. This comes in two different forms in the church. Briefly, and probably a bit too simplistically, this can be categorized by the difference in what is called low church and high church. The former, which either has no formal structures of ordained priesthood (or claims not to respect traditional ecclesial hierarchy), affects the role of women as pastors, teachers, and elders in the church. The latter, high church structures, tends to affect the role of women as priests and bishops.

In the low-church version, many hold these views because they believe that the Bible tells us, in different ways, that this is the order established and preferred by God himself. They believe, therefore, that this system will be the most beneficial for men, women, children, and society as a whole. In their eyes, this order is godly, healthy, life-giving, and protective. As a corollary, they often teach that Bible-believing and tradition-loving Christians will conform to this pattern, and those who do not conform to this are out of step with the teachings of their faith.

In the high-church version the traditions of a particular denomination (say Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglo-Catholic) dictate that the ordained priesthood is an office for men only. These views also claim to be rooted in Scripture even though these traditions may be rooted in different texts and stories. It is quite a complex picture, and it would be wrong to assume that all people everywhere hold the views they do about male leadership for the same reasons, but I believe it is true to say that the role of Scripture in all views is somehow deemed to be central. What this also shows us is the differences in the method and process of how people move from Scripture to doctrine to tradition to practice. In other words, how we take the series of steps by which we move from what we read in the Bible to accepted practice via the process of interpretation and application in any given context.

Despite denominational differences, and differences in approach to the Bible, it is true to say that patriarchal views have held sway over much of the worldwide church for hundreds of years, unquestioned by many (but certainly not all), and have shaped the lives and ministries of millions of men and women both within the church, in the home, and in the world. Thus, in this book I argue that those of us who see the overturning of male dominance in the Scriptures are rediscovering an ancient message that has been overlaid and distorted by years and years of reading, teaching, preaching, and writing by those who assumed that the patriarchal world they lived in, which they sometimes saw reflected in the Bible, was the one that God had ordained.

MAPPING THE PATHS

In order to do this, this book considers the main questions under discussion that affect our thinking. I begin in chapter one with the question of how the male-dominated Christian story affects our assumptions about men and women and their place in the church. I consider the following questions: (1) How does the male-centered nature of Christianity affect women, and what does it tell us about the nature of God? (2) Does the Trinity tell us anything about how men and women should relate?

I then move on in chapter two to consider the role of women in the salvation story and what that tells us of how God appoints women to certain roles. In chapter three we examine the creation stories and how different readings yield radically different results in terms of how we perceive a woman’s natural place in creation, the family, and society. Chapter four explores the question of headship. Chapter five outlines a traditionally hierarchicalist view of marriage and the problems that arise therefrom. Chapter six offers a reading of the household codes that demonstrates the radically redefined role of the Christian husband as self-sacrificial in order to empower others. Chapter seven deals with portrayals of women in the Epistles and how mistranslations, misinterpretations, and misunderstandings have led us to ignore the evidence in front of us for the prominent role of women in the early church. And finally, in chapter eight, I look at 1 Timothy 2, outlining some contemporary readings of the text that overturn the view that Paul prohibits women teaching in all churches for all time.

As we progress, we will see how the texts support the idea of women serving in all capacities alongside men. Moreover, they are able to support this without embarrassing twists and turns, without ignoring difficult passages, and really without that much effort for those who choose to see.

REDEFINING COMPLEMENTARIANS AND EGALITARIANS

It has become common, especially in the United States, to refer to those who believe in male authority and clearly proscribed roles for women as complementarians, and for those who believe that women should be able to hold roles and offices equal to men as egalitarians. Unless I am quoting someone else who uses these terms, I am not, myself, going to use them. First, I believe that these terms do not best describe each perspective, and, second, I believe that both are applied somewhat erroneously. It seems to me that it would be beneficial to rename these perspectives or groups with words that describe what they represent better than these two terms are able to do. As we are referring to terms that describe the way that men and women relate in concrete ways in the world, I have chosen to designate those currently known as complementarians as hierarchicalists and those currently known as egalitarians as mutualists.

The term complementarian should describe a view where two different entities enhance one another in a reciprocal, harmonious, and interdependent fashion. Although complementarians claim to hold to a view that describes the relation of men to women as such, my opinion is that this represents a sleight of hand. As I hope all Christians would do, complementarian Christians claim to endorse the equality of men and women before God. As beings made in the image of God, we are equal in status before our Creator. However, as Stephen Lowe points out, a complementarian’s view “regarding the role of women in the Church is that a distinction must be maintained between one’s status or position soteriologically and one’s function or role sociologically.”1 In other words, complementarians believe that men and women stand before God as equally saved, but their view of the relations of men and women sociologically is predicated on the subordination of women to men, where men hold positions of authority and women do not unless they are under male authority.

And whereas a complementarian would claim that he or she sees men and women coexisting and working together in reciprocal, harmonious, and interdependent relations, the conditions of this reciprocity, harmony, and interdependence are grossly imbalanced because the conditions of the relations have been established on unquestioned notions of male authority and power. The complementarity of these relations will only endure for as long as a woman agrees to renounce authority, power, and autonomy in favor of a man, for the common good. This is a precarious harmony where the flourishing of both men and women depends on an unequal submission of one to another—of women to men—and not best described as complementarity.

More seriously, these views also affect the nature and implications of the woman’s salvation. If we were to ask a hierarchicalist what a woman is saved from, saved to, and saved for, they would explain that despite the fact that her spiritual status is one of coequality with a man, her actual status is one of subordination. To drive a wedge between a spiritual reality and patterns of concrete relations (or soteriological and sociological, as Lowe calls it) calls into question the very nature of what we are claiming has been won for her in Christ in the first place. There is, literally, nothing to show for the claim that she has been saved into coequality with a man.

Unequal distributions of power are not always wrong or unable to function for the common good. We see this in politics, the army, schools, businesses, and many organizations. Hierarchy exists and often serves a purpose to get things done. It has its place. However, these unequal distributions of power and authority are not identified with the essence of a person’s being but with a job or function that a person takes up and puts down as jobs come and go.

Complementarians speak about the roles of men and women as if they fit into the category I have described earlier, something we can slip in and out of. This again, though, is not fully honest. We shall see in our studies that they believe that the God-given structure for the world is to have men permanently at the top of the structures by virtue of being men, and women below them by virtue of being women—literally as their sub-ordinates. These are not roles but God-given static positions, and this is the primary defining feature of the system. It is better then to think of this perspective in regards to men and women as hierarchicalist.

Egalitarianism is a term taken from the world of political philosophy where political, social, and economic equality is deemed to be the goal for society, entailing the removal of all forms of inequality, including unequal power structures. I do not think it describes precisely what is at the heart of Christian egalitarianism. Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), a flagship organization for egalitarians in the United States, has the following mission statement: “CBE exists to promote biblical justice and community by educating Christians that the Bible calls women and men to share authority equally in service and leadership in the home, church, and world.”2 They use the phrase, “Leading Together, Serving as Equals.”3 Clearly, this places an emphasis on equality and is a great mission statement, but I am not sure it is best described as egalitarianism, which connotes flat structures in all systems. Someone might find that they are able to sign up for CBE’s mission and values but may not particularly be an advocate of egalitarianism as an organizing principle across the board in all circumstances. If this term is to refer to the relations of men and women and their places of service, then egalitarians, in my view, are best described as mutualists.4

For mutualists, all interactions of men and women in church governance and the home are shared equally and expected to be for the mutual benefit of both men and women. Power and authority are both shared and adopted as either sex sees fit, with no fixed structures based on gender. Christian men and women are called to live in reconciled, renewed, and Christlike relationships with one another that subvert patriarchal patterns in all spheres.

With this in mind, let us turn to our first question, which is how we understand an androcentric (male-centered) and patricentric (father-centered) story.