Men and Women in Christ

Fresh Light From The Biblical Texts

Andrew Bartlett

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781783599172
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783599189
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The debate about men and women in the church and in marriage continues to cause division among Christians. Most books on this issue are written from a firmly partisan point of view - complementarian or egalitarian. This one is unique. Andrew Bartlett draws on his theological learning and his skills as a judge and arbitrator to offer an even-handed assessment of the debate. His analysis is thorough but accessible. He engages with advocates of each view and all the key biblical texts, weighing the available evidence and offering fresh insights. He invites the reader to move beyond complementarian and egalitarian labels and seeks progress towards healing the division.

1. REVISING TRADITION, SEEKING UNITY

How good and pleasant it is

when God’s people live together in unity!

(Ps. 133:1, niv)

What is this book about?

Bible-based Christianity is threatened with a needless schism. Devout believers line up under rival banners emblazoned ‘complementarian’ and ‘egalitarian’. The champions of each group claim that they alone are being faithful to God’s word as given in the Bible. They are passionate about the cause of Jesus Christ; they are also passionate about the dangers of the competing opinion.

Some complementarians say that their rivals are disobeying God’s design, undermining both family and society, and giving encouragement to sexual confusion and immorality. Some egalitarians say that complementarians are opposing God’s purposes, damaging Christian witness, and pouring fuel on the fires of domestic abuse, pornography and the denigration of women.

These far-reaching claims may seem out of proportion with the actual points of divergence. The debate is over the place of men and women in marriage and in church leadership, as portrayed in the Bible. Complementarians say that men must be leaders of their wives and that church roles involving authoritative teaching are reserved for men. Egalitarians disagree on both points. The purpose of this book is to encourage progress towards reducing and resolving these disagreements.

How did these issues become so divisive?

The loudest voices have been raised in the USA. Despite the vigorous life and growth of the church in South America, Africa and the Far East, the USA remains dominant as regards publications and resources. The discussion reached a turning point in 1986, after the winter meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Since that time the division has become more firmly entrenched.1 The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) was set up in 1987 to promote the complementarian teachings of what became known as the Danvers Statement (because it was adopted in Danvers, Massachusetts).2 The CBMW soon published a book called Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (RBMW).3 In 1988 Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) was begun (based in Minneapolis), in opposition to what it called ‘the shallow biblical premise used by churches, organizations, and mission groups to exclude the gifts of women’. It adopted its own, firmly egalitarian, statement in 1989.4

A process of polarization has ensued. Organizations which had previously allowed liberty of opinion started drawing red lines. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, which had previously allowed women pastors, revised its statement of faith in 2000 to add the words ‘While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.’ When The Gospel Coalition5 was set up in 2005, it included an explicitly complementarian position in its Confessional Statement.6 In 2012 a team leader in a campus ministry refused to allow female staff to teach Bible studies to mixed-gender audiences, and was demoted as a result.7

An insistence on adopting one view or the other is not, or not yet, reflected widely across the world. Four thousand Christian leaders from 198 countries gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2010 at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. They stated in the Cape Town Commitment:

We recognize that there are different views sincerely held by those who seek to be faithful and obedient to Scripture. Some interpret apostolic teaching to imply that women should not teach or preach, or that they may do so but not in sole authority over men. Others interpret the spiritual equality of women, the exercise of the edifying gift of prophecy by women in the New Testament church, and their hosting of churches in their homes, as implying that the spiritual gifts of leading and teaching may be received and exercised in ministry by both women and men.[96] We call upon those on different sides of the argument to . . . accept one another without condemnation in relation to matters of dispute, for while we may disagree, we have no grounds for division.[97]8

But despite the Cape Town Commitment, the polarization is becoming more visible beyond the USA. For example, in the UK the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) re-confirmed its prohibition on women pastors and elders in churches in 2011 by adopting a formal Women in Ministry Statement, expressing its understanding of Scripture.9 Although less prescriptive than what it replaced, it took a firm position, which meant that some pastors and churches, which had not been acting in line with long-standing FIEC policy, had no option but to leave.10

The Vice Principal of a UK theological college commented in 2018: ‘The tone of the debate has become more strident in the past couple of years. . . . Women . . . sit in a classroom with men who don’t think they should be there!’11

The obligation to maintain unity

This polarization is disturbing. There is ‘one body’. Through the apostle Paul, God commands the church to ‘make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph. 4:3–4, niv). Jesus prayed for his followers ‘that they may be one’ (John 17:11). Some clear principles for handling disagreements are set out in Romans 14:1 – 15:13. It is no light matter to insist on a complementarian or egalitarian red line when fellow Christians, who are not ignoring Scripture but doing their utmost to follow it faithfully, are not of the same mind on it.

In practice, it is not always possible to maintain full unity. Some matters are so important (for example, whether a church holds to the full humanity and deity of Jesus Christ) that boundaries must be drawn. There can also be practical reasons which make unity difficult to maintain. For example, considerable graciousness and ingenuity would be needed to enable churches which believe that they should be governed by monarchical bishops (single leaders over each geographical area) to be in the same organized grouping as churches which reject that belief. Nevertheless, if a church or other Christian association ties membership to a particular interpretation of Scripture which is not generally shared, this needs clear justification.

Organizations which have insisted on dividing over this issue have sometimes published explanations of their position. Such explanations do not always address the question of how such insistence is consistent with the command of Ephesians 4:3–4 to make every effort to maintain unity, or with the principles for handling disputed matters set out in Romans, both of which they regard as no less authoritative than the texts relied on in support of their interpretations of gender relations.

We will return to the topic of unity in the final chapter. Before then, we must examine the debated texts to see God’s good purposes, and how far one or the other position can be supported. First of all, it is necessary to say something about the history of interpretation of a woman’s place, and then about how biblical interpretation ought to be carried out.

The traditional ‘Christian’ view of a woman’s place

The traditional majority Christian view was robustly patriarchal. Women were inferior to men, both in rank and in nature. Men were the leaders in all spheres of life. As compared with men, women were regarded as inherently defective, being less intelligent, more prone to sin and unfit for the kinds of leadership which men were able to provide. They were not in God’s image in the same full sense as men. Some teachers believed that this was the way God originally created them, while others understood women’s defective nature to be a result of the fall.

The traditional majority view is found in the writings of Christian teachers through the centuries, including some of the faith’s best-known luminaries such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin:

Clement of Alexandria (about 190):

The mark of the man, the beard, by which he is seen to be a man, is older than Eve, and is the token of the superior nature. (The Instructor 3.312)

Augustine of Hippo (about 418):

The woman together with her own husband is the image of God, so that that whole substance may be one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of God; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman is joined with him in one. (The Trinity 12.7)

That a man endowed with a spiritual mind could have believed this [the lie of the serpent] is astonishing. And just because it is impossible to believe it, woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by the superior reason. (Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.42)13

Albertus Magnus (about 1258):

For a woman is a flawed male and, in comparison to the male, has the nature of defect and privation, and this is why naturally she mistrusts herself. And this is why whatever she cannot acquire on her own she strives to acquire through mendacity and diabolical deceptions. Therefore, to speak briefly, one must be as mistrustful of every woman as of a venomous serpent and a horned devil. . . . the female is more prudent, that is, cleverer, than the male with respect to evil and perverse deeds. . . . In this way, the woman falls short in intellectual operations, which consist in the apprehension of the good and in knowledge of truth and flight from evil. . . . sense moves the female to every evil, just as intellect moves a man to every good. (Questions concerning Aristotle’s On Animals, Book 15, Question 11: Whether the male is better suited for proper behaviour [mores] than the female)14

Thomas Aquinas (1273):

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbe...

Table of contents

• To all scholars, whether complementarian, egalitarian or unaligned, who with sincere hearts and true faith have laboured to understand and explain God’s word concerning men and women
• PREFACE
• ABBREVIATIONS
• Bible acknowledgments
• 1. REVISING TRADITION, SEEKING UNITY
• 2. HUSBAND AND WIFE, MEN AND WOMEN: 1 CORINTHIANS 7
• 3. HIERARCHIES, SUBMISSION AND LOVE: COLOSSIANS 3 AND EPHESIANS 5
• 4. MARRIAGE PORTRAYS THE SAVIOUR: EPHESIANS 5
• 5. CREATION AND LIFE: GENESIS 1 – 3 AND BEYOND
• 6. SUBMISSION AND HONOUR: 1 PETER
• 7. VEILED MEANINGS? 1 CORINTHIANS 11
• 8. HAIR THAT DISHONOURS: 1 CORINTHIANS 11
• 9. SILENT WOMEN? 1 CORINTHIANS 14
• 10. SILENCE ADDED? 1 CORINTHIANS 14
• 11. TEACHING AND 1 TIMOTHY 2: DIFFICULTIES
• 12. TEACHING AND 1 TIMOTHY 2: CONTEXTUAL KEYS
• 13. TEACHING AND 1 TIMOTHY 2: PAUL’S REASONING
• 14. WOMEN CHURCH LEADERS? A BIBLICAL SURVEY
• 15. WOMEN ELDERS? 1 TIMOTHY 3
• 16. TAKING STOCK AND MOVING CLOSER TOGETHER
• APPENDIX 1 (CHAPTER 1) METHODS OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
• APPENDIX 2 (CHAPTER 4) ADDITIONAL ARGUMENTS DEPLOYED AGAINST MUTUAL SUBMISSION
• APPENDIX 3 (CHAPTER 13) USES OF AUTHENTEŌ IN OTHER WRITINGS
• APPENDIX 4 (CHAPTER 13) THE STRUCTURE OF 1 TIMOTHY 2:12
• APPENDIX 5 (CHAPTER 13) INTERPRETATIONS OF 1 TIMOTHY 2:15
• APPENDIX 6 (CHAPTER 13) SHORTCOMINGS IN COMPLEMENTARIAN ANALYSES OF 1 TIMOTHY 2
• APPENDIX 7 (CHAPTER 16) TAKING STOCK OF TRANSLATION ISSUES
• REFERENCES
• SEARCH ITEMS FOR Names
• SEARCH ITEMS FOR Scripture References
• Search items for Sources before 1900
• Notes