The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
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You see, I knew that complementarian theology—biblical womanhood—was wrong. I knew that it was based on a handful of verses read apart from their historical context and used as a lens to interpret the rest of the Bible. The tail wags the dog, as Ben Witherington once commented—meaning that cultural assumptions and practices regarding womanhood are read into the biblical text, rather than the biblical text being read within its own historical and cultural context.
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I knew that biblical womanhood, rather than looking like the freedom offered by Jesus and proclaimed by Paul, looks much more like the non-Christian systems of female oppression that I teach my students about when we discuss the ancient worlds of Mesopotamia and Greece. As Christians we are called to be different from the world. Yet in our treatment of women, we often look just like everyone else. Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive ...more
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“In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.”33 And there it was—the biblical explanation for the birth of patriarchy. The first human sin built the first human power hierarchy.
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Patriarchy walks with structural racism and systemic oppression, and it has done so consistently throughout history.
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Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy.
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Instead of being directed toward men as the primary authority, the Christian household codes include everyone in the conversation. Instead of justifying male authority on account of female inferiority, the Christian household codes affirm women as having equal worth to men. Instead of focusing on wifely submission (everyone was doing that), the Christian household codes demand that the husband do exactly the opposite of what Roman law allowed: sacrificing his life for his wife instead of exercising power over her life. This, writes Peppiatt, is the “Christian revolution.”41 This is what makes ...more
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Did you know, I asked my students, that more women than men are identified by their ministry in Romans 16? We sat there, looking at the names of those women. “Why?” a student suddenly interjected, so involved in the lecture she didn’t even raise her hand. “Why have I not noticed this before?” Probably because the English Bible translation you use obscures women’s activity,
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I knew the reality that women who are praised in the Bible—like Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia—challenge the confines of modern biblical womanhood. As a historian, I knew that women were kept out of leadership roles in my own congregation because Roman patriarchy had seeped back into the early church. Instead of ditching pagan Rome and embracing Jesus, we had done the opposite—ditching the freedom of Christ and embracing the oppression of the ancient world.
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“No, the problem in the church is not strong women, but rather weak men who feel threatened by strong women, and have tried various means, even by dubious exegesis, to prohibit them from exercising their gifts and graces in the church.”
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Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband.
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Modern evangelicals denounce gender-inclusive language as a dangerous product of feminism. Medieval clergy used gender-inclusive language to better care for their parishioners.
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What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.” When we differentiate women because of their sex, we objectify them and deny them their humanity.32
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Evangelicals believe that biblical womanhood is the only option because we have been taught that it is tied to our trust in the reliability of God’s Word as well as embedded in the Godhead itself: women are subordinate because Jesus is subordinate. Gospel truth indeed.
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Complementarianism is patriarchy, and patriarchy is about power. Neither have ever been about Jesus.