No Battle Between the Sexes – Part 3
And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind. (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)
Before He ascended back to Heaven Jesus gave the Church the Great Commission. Men and women were called to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). At Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell on all the men and women who were gathered empowering them to carry out this task (Acts 2:17-18). The Holy Spirit also gifted women and men alike to serve in the Church and the world (I Corinthians 12: 4-14).
That men and women are to mutually serve in the Kingdom of God is born out in the Bible and history. In our first post (4-4-19) we looked at the story of creation in the Bible. Humans were created male and female as equals, with an equal image of God. They were to serve with mutual respect and authority and rule the earth together (Gen. 1:28).
In the second post (4-11-19) we followed what happened to humans in history. Complementarians tried to make a case from tradition that women are to be in subordination to men. But the truth in the Bible does not match complementarian teaching. What actually happened was that after Adam and Eve fell, men sought to maintain power and control over women. In spite of the fact that God clearly commissioned Adam and Eve as equal partners in the garden, throughout history women have been treated like second class citizens as men seek illegitimate rule over them. God was meant to be the ruler, but men began to interpose themselves in a hierarchy of leadership.
In this post we will look at the complementarian attempt to justify their position of the eternal subordination of women to men theologically. We will see that besides not having enough biblical or historical support for their doctrine of subordination of women to men, their theology is weak at best.
In the last forty years, several men, notably Dr. Bruce Ware and Dr. Wayne Grudem, have attempted to prove subordination of women theologically. Every time someone raises the question about women in church leadership, complementarians throw out the “equal but separate” doctrine. That is supposed to be the end of the discussion. What they mean is that women can be equal in their inner being, but they must always have subservient roles to men. One chief justification for their assertion of the subjugation of women is Ware’s monograph, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance.[1]In this work Ware asserts that the divine persons are not “co-equal” as Christian orthodoxy has always maintained, but that the Godhead is “hierarchically” ordered. The details of Ware’s work are too many for this short essay, but suffice it to say that he leaned heavily on verses such as I Corinthians 11:3: “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.” Ware says that this subordination of Jesus to the Father is true in all eternity.But the passage does not indicate that “head” describes an eternal state.Jesus reigns in Heaven with the whole Trinity – Father and Holy Spirit – now. and men will not still be “heads” over women in Heaven.
Another problem with Ware’s depiction of the Godhead is in the way that he used the illustration of the Trinity as a family with a Father and Son. Ware and Grudem forced a parallel between the Father and Son to a husband and wife.Besides the inconsistent notion in that relationship, in Ware’s theology the Trinity is compared to creaturely relationships. However, as Christians, we should be looking at the Scriptures for our understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as they truly are: equal in power, majesty, and glory. It is theologically incomprehensible to turn the proper hermeneutical principle of exegesis into a projection of human characteristics onto God. Humans reflect God’s image; not the other way around.[2]
In the Fall of 2016, a debate was held at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual conference. Grudem and Ware defended their complementarian positions. Drs. Millard Erickson and Kevin Giles challenged the complementarian position, demonstrating that eternal subordination of the Son to the Father contradicts the Nicene Creed, the Reformation and post-Reformation Protestant confessions, and the Evangelical Theological Society’s own doctrinal statement.Erickson and Giles clearly demonstrated several reasons why the complementarian theology of gender is incorrect. For one thing, neither Erickson nor Giles appeals to the doctrine of the Trinity to support their egalitarian position. A three-fold Trinity is not analogous to a twofold male-female relationship. Complementarian theology is an incoherent theology.
Many complementarian errors were pointed out during the debate, but the most serious one is the breach with the historic doctrine of the Nicene Creed. This doctrine has been held as orthodox since AD 381. A thorough analysis of the Nicene Creed is too lengthy for this essay. One point of departure from orthodoxy for Ware is over the term “eternal generation”. Ware says, that the “doctrine is highly speculative and not grounded in biblical teaching.”[3]He asserts that in spite of the fact that the vast majority of Christians acknowledges the Nicene Creed as biblical and orthodox. It is surprising that it took nearly forty years before someone could point out the incoherence in Ware’s theology. Along with biblical inconclusiveness and historical inaccuracy, the complementarian theology is less than coherent.
To many contemporary Evangelicals, the Trinity is a hierarchy with the Father at the top. The Father commands and the Son obeys. This patriarchal image of God is then used to supposedly prove how men and woman are to relate – husbands/elders command, wives/women obey. Complementarians have distorted the Bible, history, and theology in order to substantiate their claim that women were created to be eternally subordinate to men. However, in our careful study of the Bible and history we find that women are created to serve equally with men. Complementarians have departed from orthodox theology because male hierarchy is the most important factor for them as shown in how it dominates their thinking.
Why does this matter? While complementarians are limiting women to menial tasks the Gospel is not reaching as many people as it could. It takes the whole army of God to march out into the battle and defeat Satan (Ephesians 6:10-17). The apostle Peter affirms that women and men are “joint heirs of the grace of life” (I Peter 3:7,11). The body of Christ would be better able to further the Great Commission task if she took steps to overturn the destructive theology that limits women in ministry.
Christians, let us love one another and let us love others enough to follow Christ as He has called us. All Christians, women and men have spiritual gifts to be used to build up the body (I Cor. 12:13). It’s not about who get to be the boss; it’s about who gets to serve.
Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.(Matthew 20:28)
[1]Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005).
[2]Millard J. Erickson, Who’s Tampering with the Trinity? An Assessment of the Subordination Debate(Grand Rapids;, MI: Kregel Publications, 2009), 68-69.
[3]Ware, 162.
