Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate

by Michelle Lee-Barnewall

Timothy George calls for the pursuit of truth in a context that recognizes individual fallibility and the potential contribution from those of the opposing position.

In searching for a “way beyond the polarization,”10 George discusses three questions for those involved:11 “What do I owe to the person who differs from me?” While we are not obligated to agree with that person,

we do owe him or her love. As a result, we are to be good listeners, seeking to understand the person’s aims and asking whether there is anything valid in his or her position.

“What can I learn from those who differ from me?” In recognition of his or her own fallibility, each interpreter should be prepared to learn that he or she is wrong and the other person is right. Seeking after truth is more i...

“How can I cope with those who differ from me?” We must remember that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Consequently, our goal is not to demolish our opponent but rather “to win him or her ...

Many complementarians have shifted their position so that the emphasis is on male headship not so much as a position of authority but rather as one of servant leadership.

We may gain more not from merely asking what rights a person has or who has power but by seeing why unity matters and how it is accomplished by power manifested through weakness (2 Cor. 12:9), such as was exhibited through the cross.

Consequently, Paul’s answer does not concentrate on a rationale for a prohibition as much as it fundamentally reorients believers to view their lives in a different way. His concern is not simply on behavior (to stop sinning) but for them to be people who see sin for what it truly is and how Christ has freed them from its merciless grasp.

On the other side, the gospel redefines considerations of power and authority in terms of humility, sacrifice, and suffering, not simply as qualifiers but as essential components, even starting points.

In the cult of true womanhood, women became associated with virtues such as “purity, piety, and domesticity.”12 In comparison the highest Puritan virtues for women included industry, modesty, and good stewardship.13

However, they do not fit neatly into twenty-first-century categories of leadership and equality. In many aspects, women were considered to be the moral and spiritual “leaders” of the home and society since

they were the ones with the superior moral and religious nature. They were to be the primary reformers in a world in which men were viewed as having succumbed to the temptations of the marketplace, which caused them to value individual success and competition over community and virtue.

However, Israel failed, and in the New Testament, the church is to accomplish what Israel could not. Once again God has created a people of his own (Deut. 7:6–8; Titus 2:14), but now it is the church that God calls “my people” (Rom. 9:25; 2 Cor. 6:14–16).

Israel was called to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” in Exod. 19:6, even before the institution of the priesthood was established. Thus the point of 1 Peter is not the priestly role of individual believers but the “priestly identity of God’s people” and the “role of the community of believers in the world-at-large.”9 As a holy nation (1 Pet. 2:9), the community is set apart for God, as Israel was.10

As with Israel, the believers are to realize the way in which they are distinct because they belong to him.16 When they realize how they belong to God, this will impact the way they live. God demands holiness of his people because he is holy (Lev. 11:44–45; 19:2; 20:26; 1 Pet. 1:15–16). Furthermore, when others see their holiness in their worship and daily lives, they will be drawn to God’s holiness.17

However, holiness requires obedience. Stephen Barton describes the two main components of holiness as being worship and obedience. The community celebrates God’s holiness not only in worship but also “in lives devoted to doing God’s holy will.”25

There were other aspects of holiness as well. J. Ayodeji Adewuya argues that Israel’s holiness is “first and foremost, relational.”30 Israel’s

Gordon Thomas observes that “a holy God among a holy people in a holy place” is “the enduring eschatological hope of the Scriptures.”34 The

make clear that God is the one who delivers Israel. Thus these reversals of expectations often teach a larger lesson of God’s sovereignty and human inadequacy.

Thus Jesus makes pronouncements such as “many who are first will be last, and the last, first” (Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30; Mark 9:35; Matt. 20:16); “whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (Matt. 23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14; cf. Matt. 18:4); and “the one who is greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant” (Luke 22:26).

The ethic of Jesus “spells an end to self-assertiveness and self-glorifying and the beginning of the self-forgetfulness that already submits to God’s sovereignty and serves the neighbor.”40

Several scholars have demonstrated that Jesus’s concern was not to establish an egalitarian community.5 Instead it may be more important to understand the issue according to the idea of

“inclusion.” We will see that Paul also affirms a kingdom community characterized not so much by equality as by a “oneness” in which all could be included, regardless of factors such as gender, race, or socioeconomic status, and, even more, could love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ despite these traditional barriers.

The key to Paul’s ethic is the “mutual upbuilding” of the members of the body, so individual rights are ultimately subservient to love, because one may need to sacrifice a right in order to help another.7

What Jesus promotes is inclusion in that he made it

possible for all people to become disciples and members of the new covenant community.

Although Gal. 3:28 is often used as evidence of an egalitarian theology,15 the passage does not speak of equality as much as unity, of being “one.” Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, are not isos, “equal,” but heis, “one.”

In other words, “universal integration into a new single community of Jesus followers is its point, not equalization of all members.”16

Their unity should be so profound that they can share in one another’s suffering and rejoice when others are honored (1 Cor. 12:26).

Thus what characterizes the community is the way in which the people of God love one another in their differences, not an overlooking or erasure of distinctions.

Love, not equality, leads to the true unity that Paul describes in which the members “may have the same care for one another” (1 Cor. 12:25). Equality speaks to one’s personal privileges and rights, whereas love describes one’s willingness to prioritize others.

The presence of hierarchies in the kingdom, and even more so their reversal, should also cause us to question the centrality of equality as a biblical theme.

Michael Wilkins notes two essential prerequisites for disciples: “paying the cost and committing themselves to the cause.”43 The teacher-disciple relationship required both learning the content and living out the teaching, in other words, a “total personal demand.”44 Thus,

In sum, women can be disciples, and thus like men are called to learn and to follow their teacher. The principal distinction in regard to discipleship is not male versus female but responding to the gospel versus rejecting the gospel and being concerned with the affairs of the present life.

However, since the New Testament turns ideas of power and identity upside down, we should consider carefully the impact of kingdom ideas such as unity, love, and reversal.

As a result, we will also demonstrate that “servant leadership” as it is commonly understood by complementarians does not sufficiently capture the New Testament understanding of leadership, and then we will present some possible ways of expanding the discussion.

The New Testament often depicts leadership, including its relationship to authority, in a way that runs counter to traditional understandings.

servant/slave and leader is intimately tied into the larger New Testament ideas of sacrifice, unity, and love.

In this context, “servant” would seem to do more than qualify “leadership.” Instead it provides an essential component so that one must be a servant before one can be a leader. In other words Christ indicates that servanthood is a prerequisite for being a leader. Thus, rather than considering how servanthood modifies a type of leadership, it may be better to ask how servanthood forms a necessary basis for leadership, even authority, and how a kingdom perspective of reversal explains this paradoxical notion.

“What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants [diakonoi] through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one” (1 Cor. 3:5) and then, “Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants [hypēretai] of Christ and stewards [oikonomoi] of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). The focus is not on themselves as leaders but on the one on whose behalf they serve and proclaim the gospel.

The former term refers to those who take orders from someone else and whose significance is in connection with his or her master.20 In the context of the household, an oikonomos was a slave who was responsible for overseeing the household, including other slaves.21 As such, oikonomoi had to follow the master’s instructions and were continually aware of their dependence and need to give an accounting.22 In various ways Paul sends the message that the attention should be given not to the apostles but to the one who appointed them and the task for which they have been commissioned.

A significant contribution of leaders as servants/slaves lies in the example they set for others.

In both Philippians and 1 Corinthians the reason for imitating Christ, and so Paul, is that their examples lead to unity, which we demonstrated earlier is a critical kingdom theme.

Throughout the letter Paul points to his own example of not seeking the privileges of his position but rather demonstrating the willingness to suffer loss and to give up one’s rights for the sake of another (e.g., 1 Cor.

8:13; 9:1–23). Love causes someone to focus on the benefit of others (1 Cor. 13). As a result, as mentioned previously, someone will seek the gift that edifies the entire church rather than oneself only (1 Cor. 14) or decide not to use his or her right for the sake of helping another believer (1 Cor. 8:13).

The irony is that this reversal of traditional expectations leads to unity. Rather than stability obtained by each part living according to its worldly status, unity is achieved by the self-sacrificial behavior of...

Peter says that the elders are to be examples of Christ’s suffering on their behalf (1 Pet. 2:21) and humility (1 Pet. 5:5), rather than “lording it over those allotted to [their] charge” (1 Pet. 5:3).50

For Paul the new age is based on the cross, which means that a believer lives like Christ, that is, sacrificially and with a willingness to suffer and serve.

Christ’s example of leadership as servanthood illustrates how God worked through the cross, not just in the humility that led Jesus to the cross. Through servanthood, then, leaders exemplify the way in which the new age is based on the cross and weakness and create a community whose members relate to one another in this way.

if servant leadership is “sacrificial,” it would be good to ask what is being sacrificed.