When the WHY behind the WHAT changed Part 3

So what is the why now?

In the past two posts, I have tried to map out the historical argument around the debate concerning women in the home, church, and society. First, it was sharing the eye-opening appendix from Dr. Doriani in a book written to bolster the complementarian position. As I mentioned before, it is missing from the current third edition. His summary admitted the change in the interpretation of the scriptures.

Nonetheless, the complementarian position has developed. Assertions of the ontological inferiority of women have become rare…Vital to the shift toward creation order and away from ontological arguments is a reinterpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14.

Two clear examples, as noted in part 1 of this series, are the gullibility of women and their not being made in the image of God as an individual, prior to or outside of marriage.

The following week, we looked at the actual things written by church fathers and others throughout history. In short, in the past, women were viewed as less rational, inferior to men, more easily deceived or gullible, not fully in the image of God, and not equipped with the intellectual or moral capabilities to lead. Conclusions drawn or inferred from scriptural interpretation.

These arguments have all gone by the wayside. Other reasons have risen to explain the why behind the practice. For example, while creation order has played a part throughout history, the degree of use has definitely increased in the last century. Dr. Doriani admits this is saying the following concerning the 1 Timothy 2 passage,

Recent conservatives, therefore, maintain that the text describes or illustrates what happens when men abdicate and women usurp leadership.

It still uses the creation order argument, but the reason behind its use is less on the intellectual capacity and gullibility of women and more on the “plain reading” of the creation account as then described by Paul.¹ He states it matter-of-factually,

For Adam was formed first, then Eve.

The seemingly plain reading shows Adam was made first. Eve was made “for” Adam. And Adam named Eve. It is worth noting, as in other places, that Paul does not give us a why behind the illustration.

Over the course of the last century, other reasons that have entered the debate include only men being priests, only men being the apostles, and the Trinity serving as a model for the male/female relationship.

I am not going to tackle the male priesthood and male apostles just yet.² I want to focus on the introduction of the Trinity as a reason for male-only leadership.

In 2016, you saw a firestorm start that had been brewing for a while. After all, if we are not going to make the same arguments that the church fathers had made for male-only leadership, how will we continue to ground this practice in scripture? What will be the new (A) and (B) to maintain the outcome of (C)?

Somehow, there needs to be the ability to claim ontological equality and yet functional difference of authority and submission. After all, remember, the distinction between the two positions is not that there is no complementarity between the genders or that there are no distinctions between the genders. The distinction, at its core, comes down to leadership, responsibility, and authority.

Enter the Trinity. Our attempt to describe the Godhead: three distinct persons, one being. And so it would seem that 1 Corinthians 11:3 maps the Trinity on the marital relationship.

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.³

This also opens up a can of worms around the word and concept of “Head.” Foundational to the traditionalist/complementarian argument is the understanding of this word to mean authority or leadership. For example, a CEO is the “head” of the company. They hold a position of leadership.⁴ There is another way of understanding that word, but for now, understand that this interpretation is critical for the position to maintain the view of male-only leadership.

The basis of the claim is that within the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), there is ontological equality but functional or role differences. Within these differences is the idea of authority and submission. Specifically, the Son submits to the will of the Father. This does not, however, negate their equality in being. This means that Jesus is God, the same way the Father is God. This is where we find the introduction of the oft-used phrase by the complementarian position, “Equal in being, different in function.”⁵

Assuming the complementarian position, that head implies authority, and that 1 Corinthians 11:3 is talking about the Trinity and the male/female headship structure, the argument would go something like this: Just as Christ submits to God (the head of Christ is God), so a wife is to submit to her husband (the head of a wife is her husband).⁶

So, up to this point, what is the problem? It comes down to whether or not Jesus submits to the Father and for how long. To put it another way, is Jesus always, eternally, in submission to the Father? The phrase used in this debate comes from this idea, the “Eternal subordination of the Son (ESS). Or was his submission only for a period of time, during his incarnation? The underlying question is attempting to understand the passages of Scripture that state Jesus’s submission to the will of the Father versus the passages that state all authority is now his. Think of John 6:38 as one example,

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but of the one who sent me.

Compared to Matthew 28:18 as the other example,

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Others could be brought up. My point is to show there is a potential paradox here, and so the church has sought to understand some in the light of the other. A matter of interpretation again. By the way, I am on the same page about a lot of this. Scripture clearly shows that Jesus submitted to the will of the Father and claimed equality with God. In some circles, we would call this ontological equality and economic difference. Jesus had a different purpose than the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The rub comes back to two main challenges: the eternal concept and whether we should even apply the mystery of the trinity to relationships between men and women to the degree most complementarians aim to.

As far as I can tell, while the church fathers and tradition did affirm women’s subordination, it was not appealing to the Trinity to make their argument. This is no small statement, that no church fathers in history ever made this connection. However, other scholars can and do attest to the fact that this connection is a distinctly modern development.

It actually seems to have begun in 1977 with George Knight III, when he published The New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women. Knight was also the one to introduce the word “role” in this whole debate. Prior to this, we do not see that language in the debate. Secondly, he distinctly links the permanent subordination of women with support in the Trinity, that Jesus is eternally subordinated to the Father in “role.”

Citing 1 Corinthians 11:3, he writes,

“For the basis of man’s headship over woman and woman’s submission to man, the apostle Paul appeals to the analogy of God the Father’s headship over Jesus Christ, his incarnate Son…the Son—though fully God ontologically—is eternally [emphasis added] subordinate in function to the Father.”

This groundwork allowed the argument to develop, resulting in the phrase, “Equal in being, different in function/role.” Wayne Grudem took up the mantle and expounded on these ideas even more. In his widely used Systematic Theology, he affirms that the Son and Spirit are eternally subordinate to the Father in role.

Grudem wrote,

“While the persons of the Trinity are equal in all their attributes, they nonetheless differ in their relationships…the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal in deity to God the Father, but they are subordinate in their roles. Moreover, these differences in role are not temporary but will last forever…Just as God the Father has authority over the Son, though the two are equal in deity, so in a marriage, the husband has authority over the wife, though they are equal in personhood. In this case, the man’s role is like that of God the Father, and the woman’s role is parallel to that of God the Son.”

Over time, the conversation added more nuance with the affirmation of the Son’s subordination in role or function but not in essence or being. So terms like “Eternal Functional Subordination” came out as a response to ESS. Still, these arguments had to root this subordination or submission in the eternal relationship of the Trinity.

But even this began to be problematic for theologians, many of whom were complementarian. Millard J. Erickson published Who’s Tampering with the Trinity: An Assessment of the Subordination Debate in 2009. He expresses concern that this position distorts the doctrine of God and goes against historic creeds like the Nicene Creed. The book echoes the main critique that eternal role subordination logically carries with it an ontological inequality. If the Son’s identity is to eternally obey, and the Father’s identity is to eternally command, it would seem to make this subordination a defining property of the Son, a defining identity of the Son.

Along the way, others began to raise their voices about the problems with this view of the Trinity. In 2016, through the websites of Rachel Miller and Amiee Byrd, complementarian scholars like Dr. Liam Goligher, Pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and Dr. Carl Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City, joined the fray to draw attention to the topic. Not too long after that, Christianity Today published Gender and the Trinity: From Proxy War to Civil War by Caleb Lindgren, mapping out the conflict unfolding in complementarian circles. Eventually, those trained in the patristic fathers and the historic church creeds jumped into the debate.

All of this came to a head in November 2016 at the Evangelical Theological Society conference in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Kevin Giles, an Australian theologian and Anglican pastor, gave the opening address to the group. Dr. Giles laid out how Grudem and similar ESS proponents' current explanations run completely counter to the historic faith and creeds.

“There can be no denying that we have starkly opposing doctrines of the Trinity. Dr Grudem and Dr Ware argue on the basis of creaturely analogies for a hierarchically ordered Trinity where the Father rules over the Son, claiming this is historical orthodoxy; what the church has believed since 325 AD. I argue just the opposite. On the basis of scripture, I argue that the Father and the Son are coequal God, the Father does not rule over the Son. This is what the church has believed since 325 AD. You could not have two more opposing positions. There is no middle ground.”

You can read the whole address if you are interested. You can also read his own take on the whole debate in his book The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity. This story is also mapped out in various places by varying degrees of authors, some of whom still hold to the complementarian position.

In the end, most agreed that the eternal nature of Jesus’ submission was not biblical and historical. The concept of his submission is voluntary and temporary, linked to his incarnation. Not only that, but to try and link the male/female relationship to the Trinity is ill-advised, if not dangerous, to the whole debate.

Jesus temporarily made the choice to submit during his time on earth. This is not because of anything in his identity or being. The problem with complementarianism is that there is no getting around the fact that the submissive position of wives and women is based upon something innate to them, their gender. It is not voluntary or temporary.⁷

Dr. Carl Trueman, a complementarian, wrote it this way,

Complementarianism, as currently constructed, would seem to be in crisis now. But this is a crisis of its own making—the direct result of the incorrect historical and theological arguments upon which the foremost advocates of the movement have chosen to build their case and which cannot actually bear the weight being placed upon them.

What I found most interesting, and why I place this as part of this “Why Behind the What” series, is that this new why behind the what was eventually shown to be problematic. It was new to the conversation because the old reasons were seen for what they were: poor and incorrect interpretations of scripture. Yet, to maintain the outcome, something had to be done to argue for why it is a good thing to the church and world that we maintain male-only leadership or male headship. In fact, some even seemed to double down in the aftermath of the 2016 debacle.

“Personally, I’m quite optimistic about the fallout from the whole debate. (More optimistic than Carl Trueman? Who knew?) I think correctives are good. I think robust challenges to faulty formulations of doctrine will, in the end, produce health rather than decay. Admittedly there is a certain type of complementarian argument that, in all likelihood, will be either gradually jettisoned, or refined and nuanced until it can no longer be recognised as the same thing, and this, I suspect, is what Carl means by “complementarianism as currently constructed.” But the overall effect of that change will be positive, rather than negative, for complementarianism as a whole, let alone the church as a whole.”

I used to think the egalitarian position and interpretation of the scriptures to be more complex, but as I dig more and more, I realized the complementarian is just as complex, if not more, because the why shifts and shifts, all for the sake of the what. It is more complex because, as admitted in the quote above, there is still a firm belief in the outcome (C) of male-only leadership, even as (A) and (B) are shifting and changing.

And so, I return to my conclusion of part 1. It sure seems one position is willing to shift to maintain a practice that could, in and of itself, be wrong. The other position is willing to suggest that if we got the equation wrong, perhaps we also got the solution wrong.

Could we have been basing a practice off of faulty interpretation but be so normalized to that practice that we will now look for whatever reasons we need to maintain that practice to the detriment of half the church? And then claim that this “corrective” is actually good? However, I ask again, if we have rightly adjusted our view of the value, dignity, and worth of women, is it time we adjust our view of our roles in the church, home, and society?

It seems, as mentioned in part two, that we are seeing the slavery debate happen again. I say this knowing how triggering such a sentence and idea can be. As I was one deeply embedded in complementarian circles, I was unable to see the connections between the debates. I couldn’t see the connections. I had to argue that they were different. Admitting the similarity was giving too much ground. And so enter the response that slavery was the effect of the fall, but male headship was in the world before the fall. Enter the male apostles, male priesthood as spiritual authority as more “evidence'‘ of the position. There is just too much to lose when a person’s identity and livelihood are bound up in the position. And so I would prioritize other interpretations that maintained an outcome, despite the shifting sands upon which it was built. I realized in the last year that I could no longer do it.

Let me close, though, with a different thought. I reach out to the reader of sorts. I understand the difficulty in thinking differently about this topic. I understand the tension of feeling like you’re going against scripture. I understand the fear of loss. I also can understand and see how you get to the complementarian position. I am not saying that it is not a scripturally based interpretation. Even as I draw an illustrative connection to the story of slavery, I am not suggesting you would have been in agreement with that. I am asking that you weigh the arguments and also the possible biases at play. It takes both acknowledgments, I believe, to see a different perspective.

And in the end, should you choose to continue to believe the complementarian position, I will still be with you and for you. While I believe there is a deep impact these theological beliefs have on the practical outworking of the kingdom of God in the world, I also believe that disagreement here does not divide us on the unifying life and teaching of Jesus. The unity he calls us to in John 15-17 is unity in him, because of him, and by him.

These debates are not new to the history of the church. Even in the scriptures, like Acts 15, we see the tension between theological beliefs and their outworking. And we see the unifying theme is the good news of the resurrection of Jesus.

1. In the coming weeks, I want to type up and walk through the creation account to show the interpretative differences. I will make the case that complementarians make inferences from the text based upon their interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:13 and 1 Corinthians 11. As I have said before, if that is how you choose to interpret the text, then admit that it is an interpretation. It is not the interpretation. Secondly, I plan to do the same with 1 Timothy 2. I hope to show the larger context and how both sides approach the passage of scripture. Both are applying interpretative principles, and both are holding scripture in the highest regard. However, there are others I am connecting with that are writing through these topics also. See Bobby Giles’ recent post about Genesis 2-3.

2. The short answer I would give is that there is nowhere in the NT that any writer makes the connection between the spiritual authority of the OT Priesthood and the pastors/elders/deacons. Nowhere speaks to a continued application in the way of the priesthood. The only references to the OT priesthood are focused on Jesus being the final great high priest, therefore abolishing the Temple priesthood and the references to the people of God (Male & Female) being the new priesthood of believers. If anyone really wanted to make this connection, do you not think Paul and the other writers would have done that? Even when discussing paying your elders that teach, in 1 Timothy 5:17-18 Paul does NOT reference any of the OT passages about the priesthood receiving a portion of the donations and sacrifices to the Temple. Rather, he quotes a civil law about not muzzling an ox. More could be said about the requirements to be a priest and the Jewishness of the apostles. Yet the argument often only rests on gender, not on ethnicity, physical capabilities, and other such reasons why a person could not be a priest.

3. I am choosing to use the ESV choices here, not because I believe it to be a better translation. Rather, it tends to be the translation used by most complementarians, as Piper and Grudem were heavily involved in creating the ESV version.

4. At its very simplest, head literally means head. The Greek word is not some coded word that means something else. It is used as an analogy. The debate centers around does the analogy or illustration of head carry connotations of authority or not. For now, just remember that head means head. How the word is interpreted is the debate.

5. This is a logically flawed statement. Or, at a bare minimum, it adds to the confusion in the debate around gender and identity. There are a few authors, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis being one, who have done a masterful job outlining the flaw in this statement. In short, how can you claim equality in being but difference in authority and submission based on a part of someone’s being, gender?

6. Here is a fun footnote for you: Pull up some side-by-side transitions of this passage, and you will see some interpret the relationship as husband/wife and others as man/woman. The Greek word behind these choices is the same Greek word. In Greek, the words for husband/wife are the same words used for man/woman. So context has to be the determining factor in knowing whether they are talking about the marital relationship or general male/female relationships. This adds a layer of complexity to this whole passage, and it adds layers to the application. Is the authority structure in ANY male/female relationship or only the husband/wife relationship? The text is not terribly clear. Depending on your flavor of complementarianism (hard-complementarianism or soft-complementarianism) will affect whether you see this chapter applying ONLY to marriage or every male/female relationship. Briefly, “Hard complementarianism” is the stricter application of the complementarian principles. Male-only leadership in home, church, and society. Women do not preach or teach. Husbands are not JUST the tie-breaker. “Soft complementarianism” tends to function more egalitarily in many aspects but still holds that the husband is the head of the family, the spiritual leader, and the tie-breaker. Some will allow women to be leaders in churches, and most support women being leaders in the workplace.

7. Analogies made to officers and recruits or employers and employees are poor illustrations. Those positions of leadership are based upon skill. They are also voluntary and temporary. This means those in those positions can change. An employer can sell the company and become an employee again. Sadly, these analogies are plentiful in complementarian writings. This is because the actual examples that would fit the position are deeply problematic. The examples that fit best are ones of class and race distinction.