The Question of Consistency: Part 1

It appears that the major organizations promoting the patriarchal-complementarian (PC) view—namely, Focus on the Family, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood—either support Sarah Palin unequivocally or, at least, allow that voting for her would not necessarily violate Scripture. However, a number of PC voices have arisen in protest against a woman serving in any position that would have her exercising authority over men. The dissenters base their view on what they see as a universal biblical principle of exclusively male authority throughout all of God’s creation, which God established at his creation of humanity. They regard the patriarchal practices of the Old Testament—along with the New Testament proof texts—as a clear indication of God’s mandate for male rule in all things. They see the PC view that mandates exclusively male rule only in the church and in marriage to be inconsistent with clear biblical teaching.

One such dissenter speaks of this view as a “complementarian compromise,” and of certain representatives of CBMW and SBC as “semi-complementarians.” He defines complementarians as “those who believe that men and women have different but complementary roles according to the revealed will of God.” Given that this dispute seems to be about the “true” meaning of gender “complementarity,” I would like to begin by considering this fellow’s definition of such. Besides co-opting this view as the only possible account of biblical truth, he also invokes the standard euphemism of “different but complementary roles.” This phrase—taken literally, apart from the implicit coding of the language—is also true of biblical equality (BE). The PC view is not rightly distinguished from the BE view merely by its affirmation of different but complementary roles, because biblical egalitarians also recognize and affirm different yet complementary roles for women and men.

Difference in gender roles can be universally true or only generally true. The universally different roles of men and women are (a) the different reproductive functions of male and female, and (b) the creationally ordained pattern of marriage, whereby a man marries a woman and a woman marries a man for as long as they both shall live. This may seem overly obvious and thus unimportant; but the point is that these are nonetheless “roles,” which are affirmed by the BE view of gender. In our sexually confused culture, these “obvious” roles are being abrogated right and left, what with reproduction occurring in various inventive ways and, of course, the notion of marriage expanding into assorted arrangements other than one man and one woman for one lifetime.

Most of us have also noticed gender differences that obtain generally but not universally. For example, women tend to be more inclined than men to nurture young children at home. In addition, men and women typically exhibit different communication styles (women tend to process ideas in a more holistic and relational fashion, are more readily engaged in personal conversations, etc.). Also, there is a general difference between conceptual processing in women and men (women tend to have a more integrative way of thinking, while men seem more inclined to focus on single issues). Differences such as these are truly complementary, and demonstrate why it is usually beneficial to have both men and women working together in various projects, churches, and organizations, according to each one’s gifts and callings.

However, it is not possible to ascertain which of these general differences between men and women may have been established by God in the original act of creation, and which have developed as a result of the fall. PC advocates of “Mars and Venus” views of gender difference routinely confuse “what is” with “what originally was.” For example, the male inclination to pursue a woman and then, after the conquest, to hunt for someone new, has seemed so ingrained to so many that it is sometimes viewed as “the way God made men to be.” But this much, at least, we know is untrue. The way God set things up with regard to romance and marriage is succinctly but certainly set forth in Genesis 2:24.

Similarly, it is impossible to decipher which generally apparent gender differences are due to nature and which are due to nurture, or what mixture of nature and nurture there may be in these generalizable differences. Because of the powerful and pervasive influence of environment on human behavior, innate gender differences cannot be isolated and then manipulated and controlled in scientific experimentation. Yet it is evident that in every culture there are general behavioral differences between women and men, some of which seem to be more or less consistent across culture; but even this does not necessarily show these differences to be ordained by God. Between us and God’s creation there stands the fall, by which the world suffered significant disruption of God’s original desire for human life. Nonetheless, wherever there are generally consistent differences in expertise or inclination between women and men, there is gender complementarity.

Although the points of difference between men and women can vary from time to time and culture to culture, the consistency of complementarity (in the true sense!) is indicative of God’s creationally ordained differentiation of male and female humanity. This we can know to be God’s design! What is not warranted from either nature or Scripture is a flat-footed stance on what men and women ought and ought not do in terms of ministry and vocation in order to be truly feminine or truly masculine in accordance with what God “clearly” ordained at creation.

This issue of nurture and nature—or, more to the point, culture and creation—bears on the question of mandating unilateral male authority on the basis of the patriarchy of Old Testament culture and social structures. Those who consider themselves fully complementarian invoke the universal expectation of male rule in ancient Israel as proof that God explicitly commands civil leaders to be men.

Yet the idea that we can derive God’s ideal for human culture and behavior from a world in which sin is imbedded in every social structure is naïve at best. The fact that God did not directly rebuke patriarchal culture, but rather worked within it, does not indicate that these structures were his ideal for human culture. No, God’s ideal culture would have to be discerned from pre-fall culture—of which we have little information (although we do have God’s pre-fall account of marriage in Genesis 2:24, which exactly reverses patriarchal culture).

In patriarchal culture, a woman leaves her parents’ home and is taken into the extended family of her husband. She becomes a part of her husband’s family, under the rule of her husband and the family patriarch (typically her husband’s father). But in Genesis 2, after God created the woman and before the man and woman fell into sin, God decreed a very different picture of marriage: the oneness between woman and man would come from the man leaving his own family and cleaving to his wife. The two would then become one unit, one flesh.

It is also telling that nowhere in the OT is male rule specifically mandated. It is simply assumed, given the culture of the times. In ancient agrarian societies, patriarchy was the only game in town. This was the culture of all societies, including the heathen nations.

Because God is sovereign, he orders and directs all that occurs in this world. However, this does not entail that everything that occurs is in accordance with God’s specific design and perfect pleasure for his people. This is a fallen world, and sin pervades every aspect of human social structures this side of Eden. We cannot conclude that patriarchy was ordained by God simply because it was there.

It is true that God did not treat patriarchal culture as intrinsically evil—as he did, say, idolatry. God regarded the patriarchy (and concomitant polygamy) of ancient Israel as simply the culture of the time. Although patriarchy was not the offense to God’s holiness that idolatry was, this is no reason to conclude that it was entirely pleasing to him. God regulated the culture of the Israelites, reforming it in various ways. God certainly regards some cultures as more sinful than others, and he also desires his people to seek to renovate culture according to biblical ethical principles. However, God’s rule in this world is not directed primarily to transforming human culture to his divine standard, but rather to transforming the hearts of his people.

A number of the dissenting PC commentators intoned the argument that the OT prophets saw the rule of women as God's judgment against Israel (Isa.3:12), and that the example of Deborah (Judges 4 & 5) was actually an anomaly that highlighted the failure of Barak to lead. So let us look specifically at these instances.

In Isaiah 3:12, the rule of women is presented as an indication of God’s judgment against Israel. Why was this seen in such a light? Fundamentally, it is a picture of the total breakdown of ordered society (by the standards of society in the ancient near east). Reference is also made in Isa. 3:4 to boys and children in official governing positions. In the entire near east—including the pagan and idolatrous nations—government by women or youngsters was an indication of extreme political instability and social disarray. By definition, patriarchal culture is ruled largely or entirely by men. When there are no men in leadership in such cultures, it is an indication that the social structures are disintegrating. This is precisely the situation described by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 3. The allusion to boys and children and women ruling is a telling metaphor (they were not actually ruling) of the ruinous state of anarchy that the prophet was predicting would come upon the nation of Israel.

If Isaiah’s picture of Israel’s ruin in 3:12 were indicative of the errors and terrors of female leadership, then this would flatly contradict the account of Deborah’s godly, beneficial, and victorious leadership of Israel (Judges 4 & 5). The biblical narrative here offers only praise for Deborah. The nation of Israel cried out to Deborah, their national leader, and she delivered the people from twenty years of being oppressed by a Canaanite king. Deborah, who was also a prophet, began her military campaign with a prophetic word for Barak: God was commanding him to take the troops to Mount Tabor. This was not just a clever idea that Deborah had come up with; it was the word of the Lord. Barak should have recognized it as such and offered unconditional obedience to God’s call upon him; but he did not. He was willing to obey God’s command only if Deborah went with him. Barak evidently did not believe that God would go with him unless Deborah—upon whom God’s hand obviously rested—would go with him as well. There is no indication in the text that Barak was rebuked because he failed to exercise his God-given male leadership. There is not a hint of even the concept of God-given male leadership. What is quite evident from the text is that God had commanded Barak to do a thing, and Barak had agreed to it only under his conditions. This is not wholehearted faith and obedience; this is faint heartedness—a failure to trust wholly in the Lord. And this is a sin whether it is committed by a man or a woman.

In the end of this story, everyone is a hero—Deborah, Barak, and Jael—but God alone is given credit for the victory. What a lovely picture of men and women serving God as leaders together!

Rather than being an object lesson on the failure of male leadership, the remarkable story of Deborah’s leadership of Israel single-handedly refutes the notion that God has ordained that leadership authority is the sole province of men. As I noted in Good News for Women, page 190, proponents of male-only leadership “often try to explain that a ministry of such power and prominence as Deborah’s was an exception to the rule of male authority in the Bible. But exceptions to rules occur in the natural and social realms; they do not occur in the realm of God’s moral law. If God called Deborah to her ministry, female leadership cannot be said to violate moral principles ordained by God.”

This can be boiled down to a simple modus tolens argument (the argument form “If P then Q; not Q, therefore, not P”). The following construction of the argument is taken from notes by Doug Groothuis. (1) If men have universal and God-mandated authority over women in the church, then we should find no divinely authorized woman leader in the Bible. (2) Deborah was such a leader in both spiritual and political capacities. (3) Therefore, there is no universal and God-mandated authority by men over women in the church (by modus tolens).

So then, who is the true complementarian? And which sort of “complementarity” is the most consistent?

More to come in Part 2.