Right now I’ve got two major series still alive that I will continue, one on the one Bible doctrine (parts one, two, three, four, five) and the other on the crucial explanation of belief in evangelism (parts one, two, three, four, five).  Feel free to click on the links and read these two series. I’m not done with them.  They’ll continue, but today I’ll talk about something else.  Enjoy.

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Terminology

When someone says equality and egalitarianism today, one most likely thinks of sex or gender, the relationship between men and women.  This corresponds to the primary usage of the terminology.  Egalitarianism became the contrasting word or philosophy to complementarianism.  This traces back to the late 1970s and the new women’s studies departments in secular universities, as a part of “social science,” which also redefines science.

Complementarianism as a terminology did not emerge from Christians, as church leaders began borrowing the term to describe God’s design for men and women.  It first arises in women’s studies to explain the dynamics of authority in a family, where complementarianism was also called conventionalism.  Naturalist feminists would characterize complementarianism as the inferior complementing the superior.

Christians did not use “complementarian” until the 1990s, when theologians began borrowing the term from feminist literature.  The theological writers used complementarian to project a Christian view of equality of roles between men and women.  They thought even egalitarians would appreciate men and women complementing one another.   At that point no one would claim that men and women did not complement one another.  The original idea of complementarianism was communicating equality to women, that they are free and equal to men as wives and mothers.

Emergence of Complementarianism

I never grew up hearing the word “complementarian.”  Such a term did not exist in churches.  The first I heard it was when the 1991 Grudem and Piper edited book, Recovering  Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, came out.  I bought it, read it, and used material from it.  Then I did not take the time to consider the history of this issue, which is important.  Complementarianism made sense and I took it as a historical biblical position.  It isn’t.  In fact, it is, as the sub-heading indicates, “A Response to Evangelical Feminism.”  Complementarianism is not historical biblical faith.

The original point of Christian complementarianism was not hierarchy in the family, but equality.  The appropriation of complementarian terminology from feminist women’s studies intended to give women more freedom than they already possessed in families and churches.  It emphasized equality.  Naturalists could agree that nature gave the sexes more variety than inequality, that both sexes are equally sensible but in complementary ways.

Complementarianism and Egalitarianism

Professing Christian writer Rebecca Groothius backs what I’m writing, albeit for different reasons, with this paragraph in her 1997 book, Women Caught in the Conflict:

The confusion that can result when tradition collides with social change is exemplified by the effort to retain the tradition of male authority (hierarchy) by couching it in terms compatible with contemporary psychological and theological ideas about the equality of men and women (complementarity).

Theologians and preachers repackaged biblical marriage roles in secular feminist and psychological terminology.  It sounded good, complementarianism, but it was actually deposing biblical patriarchy and sending a unique male role into oblivion.  Things have digressed much further than these earlier iterations of complementarianism.

Displacing God

Egalitarianism is a much larger subject than marriage roles and hierarchy within family.  It relates to complete elimination of a biblical or truly Christian view of authority.  At a root level, it displaces God Himself in society.

As a part of his plan to overturn God’s will and way, Satan intervenes and corrupts through the family, but as a means overall he attacks God like we see in the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind.  He targets God using God’s highest creation.  The world God created functions according to God designed hierarchy with God at the top of a gigantic flow chart.  God made the institutions and intends for His creation to operate according to them.

Unity or Oneness

Scripture doesn’t use the terminology equality so in a sense equality itself is a misnomer.  I started the title with Biblical equality.  Scripture communicates “oneness” or two or more “are one” (John 10:30, 17:22; 1 John 5:7).  The same idea comes with the expressions, “are one body” or “are one bread” (Rom 12:5, 1 Cor 10:17, 12:12).  The English word “unity” is found three times in the King James Version, twice in the New Testament, both in Ephesians 4.  It translates the word, henotes, which means, “a state of oneness or of being in harmony and accord.”

Perhaps you use or have used the words, “one in essence,” to communicate equality.  I say, “Man and woman are equal in essence,” and I take that from Galatians 5:28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

This is the only time this “one in Christ” idea is expressed, except for John 17:21, where Jesus prays, “that they also may be one in us.”  The position in Christ makes people “one,” which is unified.  God created both male and female in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27).

Hierarchy

The oneness is real, but it does not diminish the distinctions of rule, authority, and someone being “over you” (Hebrews 13:7, 17, 24).  Many references communicate this idea of another person “over you.”  The Bible expresses it in a number of different ways.  It declares obedience and treatment of the employer, the parent, the husband, the government, and the pastor.  In Genesis 3:16 God says, “he shall rule over thee.”  When Jacob blessed Jacob, who impersonated his son Esau, he said in Genesis 27:29:

Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

This was his mindset.  Jesus says in John 15:20:

The servant is not greater than his lord.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:3, “the head of the woman is the man.”  In John 10:29, Jesus says, “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all.”

Categories of Hierarchy

Oneness does not clash with the truth of authority, headship, obedience, submission, and subordination.  Actually, when someone understands his God ordained position, either made in the image of God or one in and with Christ, he can and will submit.  The security of the position gives confidence and strength to submit or obey authority or the head.  This is the will of God.

Scripture provides two important categories of hierarchy.  One, God places men in positions of authority that He lays out in scripture.  He rules according to these positions.  Rebelling against them rebels against God.  Two, God stays above everything through His truth, goodness, and beauty.  This is how we “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).  If it violates His truth, His goodness, or His beauty, we obey that rather than the person in the position.  This isn’t personal opinion, but the authority of the Word of God.

More to Come