HUB SEPT / OCT 2022 ISSUE 047
MINISTRY OPPORTUNITIES | JOBS CONFERENCES | TRAINING | EVENTS EVENTS
What Is the Scope of the Bible’s Teaching on Gender Roles? The Narrow View Some authors and teachers have said that God only specifies gender roles for certain areas of life, namely marriage and church leadership, and that the Bible’s teaching does not extend to other areas, such as the secular workplace. So complementarianism shouldn’t try to be all encompassing; it should stick to those specific roles. This can be thought of as a “narrow” view of gender.
The Broad View Meanwhile others have said that we are male and female across all of life, 24/7, and so gender differences permeate everything. If we limit gender differences to specific roles, then we’re in danger of saying, “I am now a man/woman” only when those roles are in play. This “broad” view of gender sees God’s specific commands in Scripture about marriage and church leadership as the tip of a gender iceberg; they are the most obvious manifestation of it, but there’s lots more going on under the surface.
Pros and Cons of Each View In the “specific roles only” camp, there is a tendency to downplay the shaping of “gender” at large, and less concern to detail what masculinity and femininity might comprise. The focus is on getting the specific roles right. They are also less likely to connect these roles with any innate differences. By contrast, in the broad “all of life” camp, the tendency is to play up gender and its influence everywhere. This group are more likely to try to define male and female characteristics, and may start to say that men are “like this” while women are “like that”. So, for instance, you expect male engineers and female nurses, and you don’t try to change that because you’d be fighting nature. Gender is innate and flows out everywhere. The strength of the “specific role” narrow group is that they are most clearly working directly from Scripture: God gives some specific commands, so they say we should simply stick to those and not extrapolate from them to any where else. The weakness is that those commands seem to be isolated islands that have little to do with being men or women generally. The strength of the “all of life” broad group is that they see the specific commands as the tip of the iceberg: they represent the most obvious
0333 123 0880
part of a substructure of how God has designed gender. So, the commands God gives aren’t arbitrary, but are more of a piece with creation at large. The weakness of this group is that they seem to make some generalised statements about gender that the Bible doesn’t.
Single copy £9.99 £8.49 50 copies £6.00 each 100 copies £5.50 each
Unbalanced Complementarianism? This discussion within the complementarian camp has involved other concerns as well. The first concern is that traditional complementarianism has been overly focused on the authority of men and submission of women, to the harm and detriment of women. The “broad” view above could end up saying that all women should submit to all men; or even that leadership and submission are the very substance of gender differences. That is very different to saying that God intends for there to be leadership and submission within particular relationships. 1
A second concern is that the patterns of interaction between men and women in churches today are simply traditional rather than biblical. Sometimes complementarians are only reflecting, and defending, cultural norms from a bygone era, and the result is overly restrictive and limiting of women.
discussions, such as unity, interdependence, and service. As we do, we will strengthen our vital relationship as co-labourers in Christ.” 2
Why does God command what he does? Is God’s concern with gender differences limited to the roles of church and family, or should we take a broader view? Is the concern with authority and submission unhealthy and unbiblical?
Embracing Complementarianism In our new book we want to go wider—wider than the usual discussion of contested passages and arguments that establish the complementarian position. While these have their place, we also need to consider wider issues such as gender itself, the nature of church, and the components of ministry. You can think of these as bigger pieces of a jigsaw into which complementarianism fits. But they aren’t often discussed very much, or even at all. We also want to go deeper: deeper into what “equal and distinctive” means in practice; deeper into how the issues of equality and distinctiveness are fleshed out in real church life; and deeper into the different practical decisions that have to be made. As a result, this book will basically assume a complementarian position rather than argue for one, although we will look at some of the key passages on the way through. We also want to be positive. Much talk around complementarianism can be negative in tone, only really emphasising what women cannot do. At other times, the discussion is tinged with embarrassment about placing any limit on the role of women, and so it emphasises that limits only apply to a few areas of church life and moves quickly on. We want to strike a different tone: to embrace complementarianism as God’s good design and spend some time exploring what it looks like.
Rachel Green Miller reflects on both of those concerns:
This article is an excerpt from Embracing Complementarianism by Jane Tooher and Graham Beynon. Available 1st October 2022. Pre-order now.
“As theologically conservative Christians, we must acknowledge where extra-biblical and unbiblical ideas about women and men have permeated, weakened, and confused our teachings. We need to move beyond a focus on authority and submission in order to incorporate equally important biblical themes into our
References 1 That is where men were assumed to be superior and so should hold power over all women. 2 Rachel Green Miller, Beyond Authority and Submission: Women and Men in Marriage, Church, and Society (P&R, 2019), p 14.
thegoodbook.co.uk/the-hub