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

by Michelle Lee-Barnewall

I saw a slightly distinctive role for men in the home and church, but it was something that gave them not added privileges but added responsibilities—to love their wife or their congregation in sacrificial ways as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it (Eph. 5:25).

Sumner believes that the debate has been inappropriately reduced to one of roles when it is more fundamentally one of relationships.

Evangelicals in America followed the general movement toward an increasing individualism and preoccupation with personal over corporate concerns. This rising individualism, along with changing conceptions of the boundaries and value of the family, helped to shift evangelicalism from being driven by a core concern for the good of the larger society to the quest for personal fulfillment as seen in the immediate family and then the acquisition of individual rights.

Examining the head metaphor in its ancient context will reveal that the passage should be understood according to a reversal that follows the example of Christ. While the head is the “leader,” it unexpectedly forgoes the privileges and benefits of headship and instead loves the body by sacrificing for it. This humility is key to the desired unity between husband and wife, as well as between Christ and the church.

The focus on authority, leadership, equality, and rights tends to lead to yes or no answers that do not prompt deeper questioning.

These views shifted from seeing the entire world as a woman’s home and so her sphere of influence, to a narrowing to the immediate household of the nuclear family, to finding a sharp distinction between home and work that identified a woman’s “role” as including the world of “work” beyond home and family.

While complementarians and egalitarians may argue over, for example, whether women’s place is primarily in the home or whether they should have equal opportunity for public leadership roles, this era saw a blurring of the private versus public distinction precisely because women’s domesticity meant that they had a duty to bring their domestic values to influence the corrupt larger society. Women did not argue for their “right” to public ministry as much as they felt compelled and were urged to act because of their superior moral and spiritual nature.

In speaking about female evangelists, Fredrik Franson noted that the need to save souls took precedence. “Brothers, the harvest is great and the laborers are few. If the ladies want to help out in the fields during the harvest time, then I think we should let them bind as many sheaves as they can. It is better that women bind the sheaves, than that the sheaves get lost.”

Growing individualism and changing conceptions of what constituted a home and also the value of the home in terms of women’s identity would exert a profound influence on how evangelicals viewed gender.

The economic prosperity of the 1950s also made it possible for women to stay home and rely on their husbands economically. As a result, “the idea that women and employment are by nature not meant to mix became the ethos of the decade.”9

One of the major considerations that second wave feminism contributed to the biblical feminists was an understanding of what they came to view as the influence of cultural patterns and attitudes in an unjust subordination of women. The feminists helped evangelical women identify prejudice against them as the result of a “patriarchal social system” rather than legal inequality, the focus of the earlier feminists. Groothuis asserts, “The most helpful insight of the modern (late twentieth century) feminism is that patriarchy—that is, culturally rather than legally instituted male domination of women—is at the root of women’s traditionally subordinate place in society.”41

At the turn of the century, the woman’s domain was not merely her immediate household but the entire world, reflecting the corporate assumptions and values of the period. The duty of the church and the women (and men) within it was to exert a positive Christian influence on the world. In the 1950s the household was that of the immediate family, and the priorities of its inhabitants likewise centered on this limited sphere. In this period the church was not so much the instrument to bring Christian good into the world, but rather it existed to serve its members. In the 1970s the home became something from which women needed to be freed so that each woman could take her rightful place in the world and not be limited to the confinement of domestic duties.

a robust application of God’s purposes for his people as a whole, his church, which is to glorify him and be his bride in the eschaton, provides a better overall perspective from which to understand how women and men fit into his plans. In this way we may find a larger point of view that includes insights from both positions yet does not fall neatly into either side in structure or rationale.

Thus the concept of reversal speaks to issues of identity found not in oneself, one’s position, or personal power, but in dependence on God. It refers to a profound willingness to sacrifice what gives people status and meaning in their current context for a value that comes from God alone.

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.”

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.

the reversal of hierarchies is a prominent way in which the power of God is displayed in the kingdom as well as a vital means to promote unity in the community.

Not only were women accepted and presented as exemplary disciples, but in a surprising reversal, they are even portrayed as being more faithful than the Twelve.

The revelation to the women may exemplify the reversal of the old order not so much in terms of the validity of the women’s testimony as in the implications of their social status.

Furthermore, the women’s unique role as initial recipients of cherished testimony was an additional challenge to the old, male-oriented order. Richard Bauckham explains: It may be not so much their supposed unreliability as witnesses or their susceptibility to delusion in religious matters, but something even dearer to patriarchal religious assumptions: the priority of men in God’s dealings with the world. In these stories, women are given priority by God as recipients of revelation and thereby the role of mediators of that revelation to men. Is this not part of the eschatological reversal of status, in which God makes the last first and the first last, so that no one might boast before God?68

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 the entire body, and especially the high-status members.

Conspicuously absent in Genesis 1–2 is any reference to the divine prescription for man to exercise authority over woman. . . . The total absence of such a commission indicates that it was not part of God’s intent. . . . Any teaching that inserts an authority structure between Adam and Eve in God’s creation design is to be firmly rejected since it is not founded on the biblical text.2

Rather, we can note that from a literary perspective, the narrative is crafted in such a way as to draw special attention to Adam’s special relationship to and responsibility for keeping the command.

Because she is “like” Adam in that she is another human being, his female counterpart made in God’s image, she is in a sense his equal. However, more fitting terms to describe her relationship with Adam would be “sameness” and “unity” rather than “equality.”

Instead of using kinship language to describe her relationship to him, he now speaks of her impersonally as “the woman” and as one who was given to him by a third party. His words no longer reflect an intimacy with Eve. As Alan Jon Hauser remarks, “She has become an object, not a companion.”63 Adam’s objectification of Eve is even more striking because only Adam receives any explicit instruction about their unity.

As a result, the issue is not a clear-cut one of whether the husband has “authority” over his wife as the head as opposed to the wife’s being an “equal” partner in the marriage. Rather the passage is shaped by ideas that are more immediately relevant to kingdom priorities, such as reversal, sacrifice, love, and unity.

The normal expectation for the metaphor is that the head is the leader and provider of the body. Consequently, it is the head’s responsibility to ensure its own safety, and the body’s responsibility to sacrifice itself for the sake of the head. As a result, we would expect Paul to instruct the wife, the body, to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of the husband, the head. Such instructions would be the most logical since, according to common reasoning, the body could not survive without the head. But that is not what we find; rather, Paul states the reverse. The husband as the head is called to give himself up for the wife as his body, just as Christ gave himself up for the church, which is his body.33 Furthermore, where normal expectations would have the body being the one to love the head, Paul states that the husband as head is to love his wife as his body as Christ loved the church.

If Paul had intended only for believers to submit to one another in an equivalent way, there would be no need to give these specific instructions. As a result, we should consider the nature of the wife’s submission.

Headship, thus, is centered on, not just qualified by, the defining event of the crucifixion. As Christ brings greater unity to the body, Paul likewise calls the husband to fulfill the one flesh union through love and sacrifice.

Instead, gender in the Bible may relate more fundamentally to the holiness of God’s people and the impact of grace on relationships in the family of God, so that the focus is on God and the good of the other rather than oneself.

This self-focus contrasts Christ’s overriding concern for others, and we must ask whether our striving for equality highlights individual gain rather than a willingness to suffer loss for someone else.

The corporate identity of the church, not individual rights or personal power and position, provides a more fitting perspective for understanding gender. The goal of the church as Christ’s body and bride is to be wholly dedicated to him and through the Spirit to live in holiness and in loving and sacrificial relationships with one another.