I thank Suzanne McCarthy and John Hobbins for a two link chain leading me to Jeremy Pierce’s interesting post Ontological Equality and Functional Subordination. Here Jeremy examines the argument that both in the Trinity and in relationships between men and women eternal functional subordination, in either case a controversial doctrine, implies ontological or essential inequality, which in either case could be seen as heretical.
In his post Jeremy discusses a point made by Philip Payne, who wrote:
I believe that ontological equality is perfectly compatible with functional subordination as long as that subordination is voluntary and temporary, as was Christ’s voluntary and temporary subordination to the Father in the incarnation (e.g. Phil 2:6-11). It seems to me that if subordination in necessary and eternal, it is then an aspect of one’s essence.
Jeremy looks at this issue primarily from the perspective of the Trinity, which I will not consider in detail here. In his last paragraph he comes back to what for me is the more relevant issue, relationships between men and women. He points out that
Marriage relationships end in death, and there’s no reason to think elder-congregation relationships continue with any authoritative relationship post-death.
Therefore these relationships are not eternal, and so the argument that eternal subordination implies essential inequality, even if it is valid, does not apply here.
However, Jeremy had earlier argued that in the case of the Trinity the distinguishing issue which might make functional subordination ontological or essential is not that it is eternal, in the strict temporal sense of lasting for ever past and future. For indeed
Something’s being true at every time certainly does not imply that it had to be true.
Rather, as Jeremy suggests but does not explain in detail, what would make a particular type of subordination essential is that it is true in every possible world.
Is this true of the subordination of women, as taught by complementarians? Would they say that women are functionally subordinate in every possible world? That is an interesting question, and not an easy one to answer.
Now clearly God could have created a world in which women are not subordinate to men – in fact I believe that he did! He is able to do such things because he is able to create separate families of women and men who are ontologically different from our own human family. But the real issue has to be about whether subordination of women is an essential attribute of our own species, the notional descendants of Adam and Eve. The question is not about separately created species – any more than it is about animals, some of which naturally change their gender implying that for them gender is not an essential characteristic.
So the question really is this: are there, in the complementarian world view, possible worlds in which human women, related to us, are not functionally subordinate to human men?
Now I am sure that complementarians would hold that their rules on subordination of women would apply in any human colony in any other part of the universe which humans might in future be able to travel to. Indeed they probably already want to apply them on the International Space Station. So this subordination applies, on their view, in any world to which the descendants of Adam and Eve can travel by their own power.
But how about any world to which God might want to move them, or from where he might have moved them in the past? I know that complementarians generally hold that Eve was already subordinate to Adam in the Garden of Eden, basing this view on a misunderstanding of “helper” in Genesis 2:18,20. Do they hold that women will remain functionally subordinate to men in God’s eternal kingdom, or in the lake of fire? I guess I would accept that there is subordination of women in the place of eternal punishment, where the curse of the fall may apply with its fullest force. But in the new heavenly Jerusalem?
So, complementarians, if you want to show that women are essentially, ontologically equal to men, and that this equality is not compromised by the functional subordination you teach, then you need to tell us about a possible world in which truly human women, daughters of Eve, are not subordinate to their men, the sons of Adam. If it is indeed part of your future hope that in the coming kingdom women will fully enjoy their essential equality with men, then please tell us that openly. But if it is not, if you hold that women will remain subordinate in God’s eternal kingdom, then you are left with no possible world in which women are not functionally subordinate. And that, by Jeremy’s argument which seems convincing, implies that women are not essentially equal to men. If that’s what you really believe, admit it!
Thanks for the link, Peter.
However, I think the premise of your argumentation is flawed. Didn’t Jesus say that in the kingdom of heaven there is no giving or taking in marriage? That being the case, complementarianism, which bases itself on a plain-sense reading of Paul and Peter’s gender-specific advice in passages like Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and 1 Peter 3, is irrelevant in the world to come.
On the other hand, I see no reason why “in heaven” there will not be all kinds of examples of domain-based hierarchy. Free from the taint of sin, such functional hierarchies, no less than functional equalities, are extraordinarily life-enhancing.
John, when I referred to the subordination of women, throughout my post, I was not referring specifically to marriage. I was referring to the more general complementarian teaching that women are intended to follow and men to lead. If, according to complementarian teaching, in the eternal kingdom there are any domain-based hierarchies in which higher positions are reserved for men, I would see that as showing that women are considered subordinate in all possible worlds and so essentially so.
Peter,
Complementarianism as you define it is something of a straw man. It is not the kind of compism I see around me. Are you talking about something you see around you, or about your interpretation of things you read written with a different context than yours in mind?
I thought I read news items to the effect that your favorite theological opponents, people like Mohler and Piper, came out in favor of Sarah Palin. For them, one possible world they imagine with delight is a world with SP as the officeholder of the most subordinating position in the world.
I think you are working with an idiosyncratic definition of complementarianism.
Here’s a possible world:
Things go as in Genesis 1:1-2:3. Then God creates someone intrinsically just like Eve and then creates someone intrinsically just like Adam out of her, and she is given the responsibility to name the animals, along with any tendencies God might have worked into men to support male roles and the man given any tendencies God might have worked into women to support female roles. Then the events of Genesis 2-3 occur, with Adam first tempted by the snake and Eve tempted second by means of Adam. Then the “curse” verse occurs with the roles reversed.
How’s that? It seems perfectly consistent with complementarianism of the Carson variety or complementarianism of the Baugh variety, even if it’s not consistent with some versions.
As for this idea that women should always be passive and men always initiators, there are complementarians who hold that and indeed extend it to secular positions. But it’s not remotely definitive of complementarianism per se. I’ve consistently criticized the Grudem/Piper view that entails that a female president is somehow less ideal that a male president (but keep in mind that other moral issues may be more important than this one for Grudem or Piper, so they may support a particular woman, e.g. Sarah Palin, over a particular man just because the alternative, e.g. Obama, might be in their view so much more bad as to be worth the negative of a woman as president. So even on that view they might support a Sarah Palin. But complementarianism per se doesn’t require such a view. In fact, most complementarians I actually know do not extend it to anything but the marriage relationship and the relationship of a elder (who should be male) to all (male and female) members of a congregation.
If that view is right, then there should be unmarried women who are not subordinate to any men except the elders of their congregation, and the men in their congregation are just as subordinate to those men. So the idea that this is somehow all women subordinate to all men is just crazy-sounding to someone like me and not at all an implication of complementarianism as I understand it.
John, I am talking about a very real form of comp-ism which I see around me, and which I have recently been interacting with on this blog, in which women are not allowed to be, for example, leaders in a church, as well as being expected to submit unequally to their husbands.
I realise that some of these comp teachers, sometimes reluctantly, accept that women may be leaders in the secular world. But if they do offer a justification for not allowing women to lead in the church, beyond simply quoting Bible verses, it is generally along the lines of women being of their very nature (ontologically?) less equipped to lead. See for example this from Michael Patton, a couple of weeks ago:
Now you could object that in the heavenly kingdom there won’t be churches, any more than marriages. But if as you suggest there will be any domain-based hierarchies, then to be consistent comps like Patton should say that women cannot be leaders in them either – which to me implies that the subordination of women is ontological.
Jeremy, your pseudo-Adam created out of pseudo-Eve scenario falls by my argument that this couple would not be members of the human race as we know it. Of course God could have created anything he wanted (at least if logically possible and consistent with his character), but that doesn’t affect the ontology of the human race which he did create. What we need is a possible world in which the real Adam and Eve or their descendants are equal, or their hierarchy is reversed.
I wonder if one issue here is that US complementarianism is shallower, although also more widespread, than UK complementarianism. Here in the UK egalitarianism is now so much the cultural norm that the only people who are prepared to step out to challenge it are those who hold a relatively strong form of the opposite, including believing in its philosophical basis in real differences between the genders. By contrast in much of the USA it is the comp position which is socially acceptable and so people accept its outward manifestations, such as no women pastors, without believing in the fundamental inequality of the sexes which those manifestations spring from. The problem for us is that the voices of US comp-ism which we hear over here are from people like Patton, Grudem and Piper who clearly do hold to a stronger form of the teaching than you and John claim to be familiar with.
I appreciate your attempt, Peter, to allow for different cultural contexts. My problem with your UK – USA contrast is that you silently erase huge components of Britian’s population off the map. For example, UK Roman Catholics, many Pentecostals, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims are complementarian in terms of their “ecclesiology.” Correct me if I’m wrong. but some UK Anglicans are modified one-pointers (women cannot be bishops).
Complementarianism is not a peculiarly American phenomenon. Yet those same one-point and sometimes two-point UK complementarians have no issues, unless they are Muslim perhaps, with a female superior in the workplace. Right?
The concept of “all possible worlds” lends itself well to questions about God’s omniscience, but I don’t think it applies to the question of ontology per the issue of hierarchy between male and female.
If one is restricted in the scope of their activities based upon one’s flesh, that is a statement of ontology for this world. Hardly any believers today (that I’m aware of) would agree to restrictions based upon any other genetic quality, for the very reason that statements of being are always understood to apply in this life.
If we think about it, we actually have more scriptural support for supposing that racial distinctions (Jew, Gentile) will persist into eternity than we do for other distinctions beyond individual personality. We do have explicit statements that “in heaven there will be no marrying”, and in Jesus’ response to the Sadducees about the woman who had been widowed multiple times, that even existing marriages will cease to exist in heaven. We will ALL be “family”, and while it’s clear that we will have individual rewards, it is not at all clear that there will be rank differences.
But that is “another world”, and whatever statements are made about ontology should be restricted to the world they apply to. Just the way I see it. 🙂
“In fact, most complementarians I actually know do not extend it to anything but the marriage relationship … ”
And this is key. In the home, which ought to be a refuge, there are women who are virtually homeless. I used to think of myself as worse off than a bag lady. But wait … it all ends at death. What joy. I can find nothing at all here but incredible, but fortunately finite, misery.
I refuse to say anything academic about this miserable discussion. You blithely assign women to underling status in the home, but want to appear sophisticated enough politically to hold down secular jobs.
“In the home, which ought to be a refuge, there are women who are virtually homeless.”
So true. And this is what wears at the very soul of a person. Even slaves had a small place of refuge from their masters presence.
And telling such women that “it isn’t really ontological because there’s an imaginary possible world where you wouldn’t be subordinated” rings hollow at best.
For me, the bottom line is this: Jesus rose from the dead and promised freedom for all who come to him in faith. He said we are all brothers and sisters with one Father, and that we should remember not even he came to be served. There is no “lording over” in His Body, so any theological constructs that deny this must be in error. Everything else is secondary.
We need to learn that Christianity is meant to be a life to live, not a procedure to follow.
Peter,
I think you are misreading Michael Patton. Not just a little, but completely. That you would think that Michael holds to the kind of position you impute to him suggests that you need to read more of what he has written, and more carefully. What is it about this question that makes you so willing to overstate someone’s position?
Paula, Sue and TL, I appreciate your concerns. I was by no means trying to suggest that subordination of women is OK if it is only temporary, for this life. I was simply trying to show up as ridiculous the comp claim that for them women are essentially equal. Also of course if they accept that women will be equal in God’s eternal kingdom, then we can argue that the church is intended to be a foretaste of that kingdom and so we can claim that equality now.
John, it is clear from Patton’s words that I quoted that in at least one secular realm outside the family, the military, he believes that men are intrinsically “simply better equipped” for leadership. If he has said different things in different places, then he is simply inconsistent. But I would be interested in any evidence that he has anywhere else restricted subordination of women to church and family. I note that Mohler for example has quite clearly extended subordination further than this by purging his seminary of women teaching any subject.
John, you also asked about British complementarian views. I can’t speak at all for Jews or for Muslims, except to note that the kind of Muslim society imported from South Asia which is widespread in the UK involves strong subordination of women in all domains, not just family and mosque. RCs are of course comp in church by papal decree, but probably not in other domains. Pentecostals, and new churches like newfrontiers, tend to follow American trends.
But I can speak for Anglicans – and indeed have done quite a lot on this blog. I don’t know of any who actually accept women as “incumbent” priests but not as bishops, although some accept women as assistant clergy only. I suggest you read what the Ugley Vicar, an evangelical opponent of women’s ordination, wrote recently about this. I have never really got to the bottom of his objection to women in leadership, but he does write that
Peter, nothing personal meant. 🙂 I was aiming at what the argument seemed to imply.
An interesting feature of Islam is that at least officially women have authority over men in one context, the private home. So in an extraordinary way, at least officially, Islam is more truly “complementarian” than the “complementarian” section of the church, in that they see the roles of men and women as truly complementary and not merely hierarchical.
A foundation for a truly complementarian approach might be found in neo-Calvinism, particularly of the Kuyper brand. He argued for spheres of sovereignty in which different spheres of society, different bodies held sovereignty. Applied to the men/women issue in the church, men would have authority over women in some areas of the church and women would have authority over men in other areas. I am not at all comfortable with this but it would at least have far more right to be called complementarian than the current subjugation of women to men that apparently passes for complementarian at the moment.
Peter,
The trouble with generalizing from Michael Patton’s military example is that he chose it on the basis of the fact that it is relatively uncontroversial. A lot of military brass, rightly or wrongly, think along similar lines. If you want to know what kind of comp he is, and the kind of compism he believes in, read his posts on how and why he allowed his wife to overrule him on the toughest decision of their young lives: whether to live out Gen 12:1ff in the flesh and go off as missionaries to Africa.
For the rest, I take it then that finding UK proponents of one-point and two-point and even thousand-point complementarianism is not like looking for a needle in a haystack, and that very little of it is a US import.
You fail to take into account the widespread phenomenon of self-identifying egals who nonetheless are de facto complementarians by mutual consent in real life. Surely this is not unusual in the UK. It’s the kind of thing that feminists like to point out, but you may not have many feminists of that radical a stripe among your circle of friends.
That’s the thing about being in the US. Unless you have your head buried in the sand (admittedly a lot of people do), it’s far more cosmopolitan than being in the UK (now I’ve got your heart pumping!).
John: I’ve never heard this one-point, two-point terminology for this. I’ve definitely known people who would restrict women from certain ministry roles but who hold an egalitarian view of marriage roles, and I’ve know people who do the opposite (complementarianism in marriage but no restrictions on any ministry roles for women). The terminology makes it sound as if there’s a typical one out of these two ways of being one-pointers, but that’s not my experience. There are two one-point systems, and they’re exact opposites of each other.
On your last comment, John, I should point out that while my wife and I are complementarians, in most things you would see virtually no difference between how we live and how egalitarians might live. But that’s what you should expect from complementarians who take the biblical language seriously. It never says for husbands to make their wives submit (which in itself destroys one main objection against complementarianism, which is that it gives some power to men that it deprives of women). If a wife doesn’t submit, what is a complementarian woman to do? Love his wife, of course! That argument assumes complementarians are going to take the barebones statement of complementarianism and apply it in a secular, non-Christian ethical framework, and then men will abuse women. The reality is that this teaching by itself isn’t what does that. It’s the secular, non-Christian ethical framework that does that. A humble, loving husband is the only one who can consistently apply complementarianism, and that will generate zero abuse. Anyone else who takes just the comp. thesis apart from the Bible isn’t applying complementarianism itself but the gender structures that feminists have been very good at pointing out, gender structures that in many cases Christians of a complementarian stripe have been fighting against for years (e.g. Promise Keepers were very good at this sort of thing).
Paula: You’re assuming one way to do complementarianism and assuming the other two ways of doing it are nonexistent. One complementarian view does see the gender roles distinctions as based in already-existing factual differences between men and women, but most complementarians do not accept that anymore. In fact, I’m not sure it’s properly complementarianism if you do it that way. The usual way to do it is either (a) the decision to assign role differences is entirely based on God’s choice, which isn’t based on capacities or differences or (b) God made the decision without basing it on capacity differences but then worked different tendencies into men and women in order to fit with the already-decided role differences. In neither case do the role differences have a basis in anything intrinsic to men or women. The differences in the second case come only after the choice is made by God, and in the first case there need not be any significant differences to begin with. So your argument that it’s an ontological difference is based on a misunderstanding of what most complementarians now think. In any case, it’s not an argument against complementarianism but against one particular way of thinking men and women should have different roles.
Peter, you say:
John, it is clear from Patton’s words that I quoted that in at least one secular realm outside the family, the military, he believes that men are intrinsically “simply better equipped” for leadership. If he has said different things in different places, then he is simply inconsistent.
No, he may just have changed his mind. It doesn’t mean he’s inconsistent.
On the Muslim issue, I don’t think Muslims are complementarian by any means. Complementarianism’s whole point is to occupy a middle ground between egalitarianism and the more traditional views that explicitly treated women as inferior, in terms of intrinsic worth, rights, legitimacy of work outside the home, political participation, and so on. Islam generally occupies the extremist spot that complementarians have fastidiously avoided. It’s rare that you find any Christian who holds as extreme views on this issue as Muslims typically hold. There are the more progressive Muslims, some of whom are even as far to the left on these issues as egalitarian Christians are. But those are the vast minority in the Muslim world at large.
It’s a misrepresentation of what Mohler did to say he removed all the women from teaching at the seminary. There were certain teaching positions where they decided not to have women teaching, and some women lost jobs because of it, but it wasn’t every subject. Mohler’s view isn’t as extreme as you make it out.
Jeremy,
Rather than assuming anything about the myriad ways in which people choose to exercise some kind of hierarchy based upon the flesh, I’m only taking issue with the argument “equal in being, unequal in role”. My position is that it is logically impossible to separate an involuntary, lifetime “role” from one’s essence or being. To state that a woman is to play a role only because she’s a woman is to state that this role is an essential quality of her essence. That’s all I’m saying, and it has nothing to do with ability. Either women are equal to men, or they are not; and if equal, then there cannot be a lifetime role they must play. To be what one naturally is, is not a role. This is strictly a philosophical or logical argument; how people work it out is their business.
Jeremy,
You make many excellent points. Other comps among my friends, Marilyn who comments on my threads among them, makes use of the one-point, two-point terminology.
I usually make use of a trichotomy: traditionals. complementarians, and egalitarians.
I’ve caught hell from some comps because I defend traditionalism (not all versions) as compatible with the Gospel, especially (since I know them best) traditional Catholic and Lutheran love-obey frameworks. I’m not about to defend the Muslim frameworks, though I wish people would try to understand how they work in practice. Common grace kicks in to a surprising degree. I’ve posted on that before:
http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/12/what-i-learned.html
http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/12/what-i-learne-1.html
I’ve caught hell from many egals (including Peter and others on this thread) because I defend compism (not all versions, but the ones I see around me) as compatible with the Gospel.
And I’m waiting to catch hell from hard-line comps because I argue that egalism is compatible with the Gospel. So far though no hard-line comp has dared take me on. Pity. It’s more fun to get blasted from all sides.
Paula, I think it’s a misuse of philosophy to make the point you’re making. Philosophers distinguish between essential properties and accidental properties. Essential properties are those that you cannot lose. If it’s gone, you’re done, as in you don’t exist anymore. I can’t cease being the son of my parents. That’s an essential property. I can cease being related to my wife the way I am, since she might die, or I might die (in fact we both eventually will, unless Jesus returns first). So my role-relationship with my wife, whether egalitarian or complementarian, is not an essential property of mine. You can call it something else if you want to distinguish between long-term and short-term relations, but it’s simply not an essential property the way the term has been used in philosophy since Aristotle.
When you factor in that not all complementarians think the role differences are based in nature, you also can’t define it as “what one naturally is”.
John: I doubt you’ll find many complementarians who think egalitarianism denies the gospel. They do think that one way of arguing against complementarianism (i.e. that of Kevin Giles and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis) ends up denying a crucial biblical claim about the Trinity, and I think they’re right to think that. But I know of no one who considers it a central enough claim about the Trinity to make it a gospel issue. Besides that, I can’t see anything that would threaten the gospel itself unless you take statements that aren’t really meant seriously.
Jeremy,
The argument I’m making is not unique or unknown, with the best-known proponent being Rebecca Groothuis. To call it a misuse of philosophy is to say that those of her educational level are equally in error, and I would be most interested in any discussion you might have had with her about this.
A woman can never cease being a woman; it is an essential quality of her being. But while she may choose to enter into a marriage relationship, she cannot choose to play a leading role, because of who she is biologically. If the role is based upon an unchangeable quality of being, it is not a role. She is essentially a female; it is her natural flesh and she cannot change it.
But again, please let me know if you have discussed this with Groothuis, since she is better able to explain it.
Link to Groothuis’ chapter in ‘Discovering Biblical Equality’:
http://www.ivpress.com/title/exc/2834-18.pdf
Things go as in Genesis 1:1-2:3. Then God creates someone intrinsically just like Eve and then creates someone intrinsically just like Adam out of her, and she is given the responsibility to name the animals, along with any tendencies God might have worked into men to support male roles and the man given any tendencies God might have worked into women to support female roles. Then the events of Genesis 2-3 occur, with Adam first tempted by the snake and Eve tempted second by means of Adam. Then the “curse” verse occurs with the roles reversed.
And if evolution is true? If Genesis is not a factual representation of creation, but a myth representing the state of mankind, the relation of the divine to the earthly, a theory for why things are the way they are, an observationally-constructed sermon meant to explain the world we see around us? A parable? If Adam and Eve are not literal people and God brought mankind to fruition through any other means than breathing into dirt?
I guess the whole comp. argument falls to pieces.
There is a certain point where this argument reaches the heights of ridiculousness….such as in the comparison of marriage to the Trinity….a doctrine nobody really understands, and which generally consists of arguments for what it is not, rather than what it is, but an idea that everyone must hold in order to be considered “orthodox”.
We take the everyday concept of a man and woman having a relationship and building a family and turn it into a theologically esoteric representation of God which is itself not comprehensible in a practical sense.
It’s quite silly.
TC, I agree with you.
John, there are really rather few complementarians here in the UK, but some of them kick up a big stink e.g. about women bishops, while others vocally proclaim their support for Grudem and Piper’s CBMW version of complementarianism, which thereby comes to be thought of as definitive. I accept that many couples here choose to have complementary functions in their marriage, by mutual consent, but that is not the same thing as submission being enforced by the husband, as taught by CBMW. In the Church of England marriage vows there is an optional “obey” clause for the wife, but I understand that it is now very rarely used.
Jeremy, thanks for your as always incisive comments. Thanks especially for your definition of proper complementarianism as you see it. I can see that this kind need not imply essential, ontological inequality. The trouble is, that is not the kind of complementarianism I actually see among so many who claim to hold this position. It is not what CBMW teach, surely.
As for teachers at SBTS, it is well known that Mohler had several women removed, and there seem to be none remaining on the faculty of the school of theology or the school of missions and evangelism. At the school of church ministries there are women as Director of Women’s Leadership and her associate, and as professors of church music, and Mary Kassian is Distinguished Professor of Women’s Studies. Yes, women are allowed to teach other women, but apart from that it seems they are only allowed to teach music.
And then, in the complementarian teaching of CBMW etc or even the kind which John is more familiar with, can a woman lose the property that she is less equipped to lead and so supposed to be subordinate to men, at least in certain domains? If she cannot, then by Jeremy’s argument this is an essential property, she is essentially subordinate and unequal.
Paula, I agree with your position. I’ll read the Groothuis chapter when I have time.
Terri, you make good points. But I don’t think the link to the Trinity can be dismissed as easily as you suggest, not least because lots of people think they understand it, and then put forward contradictory understandings as the only true orthodox one.
@terri: I agree. It’s as if Christendom is fixated upon counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. 😉
@Peter: thanks… I hope I’m accurately representing Groothuis’ argument, although of course I’m only offering the simplest summary of it. I’d be interested in your assessment of her argument for that reason alone.
Oh, but I don’t accept the following inference:
(a) Women have differences in their capacities from men.
(b) Those differences are essential to being men and women.
(c) Therefore, men and women are unequal.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by unequal. But the usual meaning for that is the meaning in the U.S. Constitution, whereby we all have the same intrinsic value or worth. It’s compatible with thinking there are essential differences that we all have the same intrinsic worth. So suppose it turned out we found a sub-species of human being who had no opposable thumbs but in every other way functioned just like the rest of us, including all cognitive capacities. We’re certainly not unequal in every sense, but we’d still insist that we’re equal in the way that matters for moral status and intrinsic worth. Not having an opposable thumb might be an essential property of that sub-species, but it doesn’t make for inequality in the relevant sense.
So it depends on what the essential properties in question are. If it involved moral differences, maybe there’d be an argument. For instance, if it involved an inability to make moral choices, such as the difference between horses and humans, then perhaps there’d be a claim of (c). But if the difference in question just involves being slightly better or worse than each other in terms of teaching ability, intellectual depth, or whatever these people think the differences are (remember that I don’t hold to such a view), I don’t think any kind of inequality of the relevant sort exists.
Consider the people who hold the view that black people on average have lower intelligence than white people and that this comes from genetics. I think the evidence is actually significantly against such a view. There are better explanations for test-score gaps that don’t face the empirical problems that such a hypothesis faces. Nevertheless, some people hold such a view, and such a view does not justify treating black people as sub-human. It doesn’t justify preventing black people from teaching at all (even if it might be used to justify keeping black people from teaching white people, to keep the analogy constant). It would screw up complementarian analyses if a black man married a white women, because you’d have a problem figuring out which lower intellectual ability was supposed to justify the different roles. But it wouldn’t involve treatment of the group as a lower class morally speaking.
When I see a claim that complementarianism of the essentialist variety involves seeing women as unequal, that’s what I think of. Maybe you’re claiming that the view treats women the way Southern slaveowners treated slaves as sub-human because of sub-human intelligence. If so, then you’ve just misunderstood the essentialist claim, because the supposed differential is hardly that severe. But if you don’t mean so severe an inequality, then you’ve got a serious communication problem. You’re using the word “inequality” to mean something much less serious than it’s usually used for.
To be clear, I’m not defending this view entirely. I think it has serious problems, empirically, biblically, and morally. But I don’t think saying it leads to inequality is the best way to describe it, given how that’s usually understood. It seems to me to be a stronger claim than what follows.
Oh, but I don’t accept the following inference:
(a) Women have differences in their capacities from men.
(b) Those differences are essential to being men and women.
(c) Therefore, men and women are unequal.
Who is making this argument? I thought we were talking about authority, not ability, and by “capacity” do you mean “role”? I also thought we understood this wasn’t about worth as people either, but about whether a position of restriction based entirely on gender can be a role at all. The reference to slavery is significant though, because it made the same argument, but called it “separate but equal”.
At any rate, the article by Groothuis lays to rest the claim that my argument somehow is a misuse of philosophy. And I think it does a decent job of showing that if something is based solely, universally, and permanently on a person’s genetics, it is a statement of being and not a role being played.
But I’ve been around and around on this many times and only wanted to make the point, not belabor it. The important thing is that we serve a risen Savior and let the Spirit do the authoritative teaching, and then just go out and live the relationship. Jesus set us all free and His burden is light.
I’ve discussed this with both Rebecca Merrill Groothuis. She clarified what her argument was, but it still seemed to me to make the same mistake. Her claim was that eternal subordination that wasn’t voluntary is essential subordination, and I think that’s simply wrong if she means what the term has been used to mean in philosophy for 2500 years.
I’m not sure why you think it’s a problem to claim that someone of her educational level made a philosophical mistake. Philosophers regularly accuse each other of making philosophical mistakes. Otherwise they’d have nothing to say to each other when they discuss each other’s papers. If I present a philosophical argument, those who listen to my talk ought to point out any philosophical mistakes that they think I’ve made, or I’m not going to think they care enough about the truth to want to correct me. As Socrates would say, pointing out mistakes others make means you care more about them than the person who lets them go on thinking wrongly. In any case, it’s certainly part of the profession of practicing philosophers (of which I am a part) to point out philosophical mistakes in the work of people who publish philosophical arguments (and this is indeed a philosophical argument, even if her degree is not in philosophy).
As for the equation of a divinely-commanded role for those of a certain group and biological properties you can’t change, those are as different as two things could be different. One is divinely-commanded and not based on biology. The only thing in common is that you can’t change either this side of eternity. But that doesn’t make it essential in the case where it’s not based on your nature at all. It’s precisely not essential because it’s not based on your nature. It’s simply divinely-established. Only if it were based on her being female would it be essential. It’s not based on that but on a decree of God, a decree that itself is not based on her being female but based on something in the Trinity that God happened to want to have reflected among humans.
Paula, that comment was a response to Peter’s last comment. He said the following, which I don’t think follows from the CMBW view as he understands it:
And then, in the complementarian teaching of CBMW etc or even the kind which John is more familiar with, can a woman lose the property that she is less equipped to lead and so supposed to be subordinate to men, at least in certain domains? If she cannot, then by Jeremy’s argument this is an essential property, she is essentially subordinate and unequal.
Now you argue:
if something is based solely, universally, and permanently on a person’s genetics, it is a statement of being and not a role being played.
First of all, it’s not clear this is permanent, which was my original point. Second, it is a statement of being, but my point is that it’s not the kind of inequality that we usually mean when we say a group is unequal to another. That makes the claim misleading. I’m not saying it’s false. But there’s a sense in which any two people are unequal. That sense of inequality isn’t problematic, though. Anyway, this isn’t my view and isn’t the view being discussed here, as you say. I just thought Peter was drawing a conclusion that didn’t follow so clearly, at least not the way that conclusion is usually understood.
Terri, I think there are plenty of ways to make sense of complementarianism while even denying any historical reality to Genesis 1-11. As long as you retain what’s necessary for Paul’s statements and have a way to take them as true, you can maintain it. I don’t recommend such a radically unlikely interpretation, but here’s how it would go. When Paul says woman was created from man and man was created first, all he means is that this happened in the story as told in Genesis, one that’s not literally true. But the fact that God told the story this way reflects the deeper reality that God has assigned gender roles as described in the complementarian view.
So how does complementarianism fall if you deny the historical reality of Genesis 1-3? I just don’t see it.
The Trinity comparison isn’t just an invention. In I Corinthians 11, Paul gives the relationship between the Father and Son in parallel with the relation between the Son and a husband/man and then again in parallel with the relation between a husband and wife. There may be debates about how to take that, but it’s there in the Bible. As for seeing Trinitarian claims as crucial for orthodoxy, you do find that in the Bible. See I John, for instance. Those who denied that Jesus came in the flesh receive a pretty strong condemnation. There are other occurrences of such things as well.
One is divinely-commanded and not based on biology
Whether divinely mandated or not, a “role” cannot be based upon biology.
I’m not sure why you think it’s a problem to claim that someone of her educational level made a philosophical mistake.
That’s not what I said. I appealed to Groothuis to show that my view was hardly unique or new, and that if someone of her caliber makes the same argument I’m making, it can’t be as far out in left field as you were describing it. But I think her arguments are logical and reasonable, and the rebuttals I’ve seen are not.
First of all, it’s not clear this is permanent,
It is permanent in this life, so for this life, it is a statement of being. I already stated my disagreement with the “possible worlds” view, so this really doesn’t affect my point.
it is a statement of being, but my point is that it’s not the kind of inequality that we usually mean when we say a group is unequal to another. That makes the claim misleading. I’m not saying it’s false. But there’s a sense in which any two people are unequal.
As Groothuis pointed out in the article I linked to, equal is not the same as identical. Certainly people are each unique and thus not identical, but they are equal as human beings. They can form temporary inequalities that are not based upon genetics. But when one’s genetics are the sole justification for an alleged role, it is really not a role at all but a statement of essence or being. But we’ve gone back and forth on this enough times, I think.
Jeremy,
When you say that women have equal value and worth, you mean this in the same way that a foetus has equal value and worth. Is that correct? Do you mean that women are of equal value and worth as humans.
However, men have authority over women because of their instrinsic design. Since being in authority, does not exlcude you from doing things lower on the ladder, the leader, in authority, has more authority and broader powers. The leader is not excluded from anything.
I think in this case, the leaders have greater functions, and if this is by design, then women must have lesser functions, also by design. I do not think that women are considered equal in this system.
It also implies that a single woman cannot run a family as well as a single man, because she is not by design, the carrier of authority.
Jeremy, I would consider that any thinking person who was not inoculated against rationality by the doublespeak of certain complementarians would very clearly understand that if one group of people is, essentially and ontologically, in submission to another group of people, then that first group is unequal to and in a lower position than the second group. This is quite different from having a physical disability like lacking an opposable thumb, and indeed the suggestion that it is the same is probably offensive to disabled people as well as to women.
The inequality we are talking about is not some measurable physical or mental difference. It is the result of the proclamation by some complementarians (or, as they would claim, by God) that women are permanently not allowed to do some things. This is sometimes defended by anecdotal evidence that women tend to be less good in some tasks, but is certainly not fully justified by any such measurements.
More frequently this inequality is defended by an argument that God has made women different from men, i.e. spiritually if not mentally less able to hold authority. This argument depends not on empirical measurements but on a (mis-)interpretation of the Bible. Surely you are not saying that a difference cannot be essential if it is not empirically verifiable? Nevertheless it is a claim of a real difference between the genders, and because it puts one higher than the other, and restricts one in ways it does not restrict the other, it amounts to a claim of inequality. And because this claimed difference is permanent in all possible worlds (at least in the versions of complementarianism I am familiar with) it amounts to an essential difference.
I don’t suggest that complementarians are analogous to southern slave owners in that they treat women “as sub-human because of sub-human intelligence”. Rather, they treat women as sub-human despite the evidence that they are equal in intelligence and in nearly all relevant measures – and probably score higher in as many as they score lower. That makes things worse.
As I said, I don’t think this view has no problems. I just think that the sense in which we usually mean when we say two groups are in reality unequal (as opposed to when we say two groups are treated unequally, e.g. as during segregation there was an inequality but not one based in the right sort of difference) is stronger than the sense in which nature-based complementarian views involve an inequality.
It also implies that a single woman cannot run a family as well as a single man, because she is not by design, the carrier of authority.
I’m not sure that’s true, actually. It implies that a single woman cannot run a family as well as a husband-wife pair. It implies that a single woman will lack some capabilities that a single man might have. But she might also have some that he lacks. Most complementarians of the sort we’re discussing do think a woman will be better at raising children. So her running of a family will be better in some ways and less good in others. Whether it turns out as a whole that she’s better is not clear just from the fact that they think intrinsic differences involve capability differences.
Peter, I’m not saying that the view we’re discussing isn’t essential. On that view, of course it is, at least in an important sense of the term. Not all complementarians hold that view, and so I’m insisting that complementarianism itself doesn’t necessarily involve essentialism. But the essentialist version of complementarianism that we’re discussing is certainly essentialist.
I am disputing the “higher-than” terminology, though. Christian views of what authority, leadership, service, and so on make such language completely inappropriate. Jesus’ teaching on the last being first, Paul’s teaching on leadership being about service and on spiritual gifts being greater only because they have more potential to build the church and not because they’re more visible or prominent, and Peter’s teaching about how the apostles and local elders are on the same level as so-called ordinary believers requires us to do away with such claims.
I am disputing the “higher-than” terminology, though. Christian views of what authority, leadership, service, and so on make such language completely inappropriate. Jesus’ teaching on the last being first, Paul’s teaching on leadership being about service and on spiritual gifts being greater only because they have more potential to build the church and not because they’re more visible or prominent, and Peter’s teaching about how the apostles and local elders are on the same level as so-called ordinary believers requires us to do away with such claims.
I agree wholeheartedly. This is an overarching principle, a foundational tenet, and as such any interpretation of scripture that violates it (either in theory or in practice) is in error. So having a lifetime designated “tie-breaker” between two adult believers which is always and without exception the male overruling the female, would be an example of a teaching in violation of the principle of treating others better than ourselves. Likewise, the teaching that one or more elders have authority over other believers, as opposed to leading by example and persuading others to follow, or decreeing that one’s interpretation of scripture has authority, is in violation of that principle of not lording over.
How many degrees or flavors of complementarianism there are, or how egalitarian some may actually live in spite of their beliefs of hierarchy in the Body of Christ, is irrelevant. Whether in word or deed, it is impossible to put one believer in authority over another and still claim that the one with authority is NOT lording over the other, even if it is deemed to be benevolent (usually by the authority). The under-rower does not stand at the helm, and the waiter does not bark orders to the one sitting at the table. Likewise, the male does not have final say over the female, and the elder does not have ecclesiastical authority over the non-elder.
Either this is a Body with many parts of one substance, or this is a chain of command; it can’t be both at the same time, in the same world. But as long as we can’t agree that permanent subservience that is involuntary and based upon one’s essential quality of being, we’ll never come to any agreement, and the Body will remain split down the middle.
Jeremy, just to clarify, I am not saying that women are unequal. I am saying that they are treated differently by some people (and by God, according to those people), and that treatment implies that those people (and, according to them, God) believe that women are unequal.
The problem I see is when people who hold “the essentialist version of complementarianism” try to claim that their view is not essentialist, and so that according to it the different status of women is only functional.
The issue just gets muddied when these complementarians get confused with others who may call themselves complementarian but whose view is not essentialist. But I don’t think I have met any of the latter, unless John Hobbins would put himself there. I wonder, do these people have any philosophical basis for insisting on the subordination of women, or do they do it simply out of tradition, or because of their own thirst for power?
I see your point about “higher-than” terminology. But I think complementarian men are going entirely and hypocritically against Jesus’ teaching on authority when they teach from this that women should submit to men but refuse to apply the same teaching to themselves, that they should submit mutually to women. So perhaps Sue has a better way of putting it: women are excluded from certain functions which only men can do, but men are not excluded from any functions (there is of course the exception here of childbearing), and so this implies inequality.
Paula, I agree with you. To me the whole of complementarianism, as I see it, is fundamentally flawed and anti-Christian because it is predicated on a concept of authority which is completely opposed to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles. I don’t mean to say that all complementarians are anti-Christian, but I do say that their thinking has been taken captive by an anti-Christian worldly philosophy of authority, which has its roots more in Machiavelli and Nietzsche than in Jesus.
Wow, Jeremy has taken on the world! I must say that he is both brave and articulate and we all stand in his debt for his preparedness to dialogue here.
Having said that, I do not think he has understood my point about Muslims. Are Muslims is fact complementarians? Probably not for the most part. But OFFICIALLY many propound an arrangement in which man has authority over women in certain spheres and women have authority over men in other spheres. This is a real complementarianism. The complementarians of the church argue for no such complementarity. They argue for the submission in all things of women to men and for the authority of men over women in all things. This is not complementarity but hierarchy and I think is wrong for it to be described in any other way.
However, to move away from Muslim thinking, I think it good to clarify what complementarians mean by complementarity, if only for my sake as I may be confused here.
They are not saying that men should be in charge because they are more able in leadership than women. They are not saying that men have a special charism for leadership which complements the special charism of women for servanthood or submission or whatever you want to call it. They are saying, if I have got this right, that gifts and capabilities are irrelevant. The issue is that by men modelling leadership and women modelling submission, we have a model of the relationship of Christ and the church. If we muddy things by placing women over men, we muddy the model of Christian, both male and female, submission to Christ. Or am I talking nonsense? Jeremy may be able to help.
@Peter: Yes, that’s what it boils down to. There are kind and benevolent masters, but in Christ there are to be no masters.
@TC: you said, “The issue is that by men modelling leadership and women modelling submission, we have a model of the relationship of Christ and the church.”
But this is the opposite of the foundational principle that Jeremy expressed and Peter and I agree with completely: that in Christ we are not to model the world, which operates under chains of command, but to be like one Body with many parts of the same substance. The model of Christ and the church is this Body, not a business or army. And since the point of debate between complementarianism and egalitarianism is whether or not God ordained a hierarchy in spite of His other clear statements against it, one cannot assert this hierarchy as a premise. It has never been about ability or society, but about what God has decreed, and I see a hopeless contradiction between the “roles” taught by complementarianism and “not so among you”.
I should add that Jesus modeled submission to the Father for ALL believers, not just women, and He modeled servant leadership for ALL believers, not just men.
TC, thanks for the helpful comment. I see your point about modelling the relationship between Christ and the church – although I would see the gender point there, the church as the bride of Christ, as metaphorical and so not about real gender. Paula, you also answered this point well.
But I think some complementarians precisely are “saying that men have a special charism for leadership which complements the special charism of women for servanthood or submission or whatever you want to call it.” This is the implication of what Michael Patton wrote, including:
This is clearly a claim of an essential, ontological difference between men and women. I’m sure I could find similar claims from Grudem and Piper among others.
On my last point about Grudem and Piper: I am starting to read the chapter by Groothuis that Paula recommended in an earlier comment. She writes, in the first paragraph (p.301):
RBMW is of course the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, by Piper and Grudem.
Despite the vigour with which Paula takes me to task, I was not attempting to justify the idea that complementarians argue that men and women model Christ and the church in the authority over and submission to each other. I was arguing that this is what they think–but I may be quite wrong and Jeremy may be able to help here.
The ontological argument seems completely batty which is why I cannot believe that Piper, Grudem at al really hold such an idea. Such is the variation among men and among women that even if it could be established (heaven knows how) that men on average were better at leading than women, actual individual cases may fall way outside the average. This implies that there will be many cases where the leadership gifts rest with the woman and the submission gifts with the man but that would cut no ice with a true ‘complementarian”.
To return to the argument about the term complementarian, I draw my understanding of it from sport. In cricket two batsmen may be said to complement each other (perhaps one is left handed and the other is right handed creating problems for the bowlers, or one is attacking and the other more solid). Their skills complement each other. Or in rugby, a highly mobile flanker will be complemented by a bigger more muscular flanker to make the ‘hard yards’. But in neither case is it a question of one in authority over the other but of skills complementing each other. The language of ‘complementarity’ seems to me to imply this, to draw on the positive vibes of this, but actually to deny it. Here the actual skills or gifts are irrelevant; all that is relevant is gender.
TC, I agree that “The ontological argument seems completely batty”. But Grudem and Piper do hold it. On p.79 of RBMW they quote with approval Emil Brunner:
Concerning the secular realm they write (p.80):
– which clearly implies that there are differences in nature relevant also to secular life.
But I accept that in other places they seem to contradict this, e.g. this on p.67:
It seems to me that the language of complementarity has been adopted by some as a deliberate euphemism to cover up the fact that their view is a slightly mitigated patriarchalism.
Re: 1 Corinthians 11 and creation
Paul makes his arguments from his own presuppositions. I like Paul, but he will use any argument he can find to further his points….sometimes those work out brilliantly…at other times they fall completely flat.
Unless you think it’s obvious from Paul’s argument that all women should always have long hair and men should always have short hair, because as Paul puts it,”4Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him?”
What is this obvious “very nature of things”? It is a cultural argument….not a “true” argument. Is it obvious to us that the very nature of things dictates divinely approved hairstyles?
If you’re willing to admit that these directives are cultural and based on where society was at during Paul’s time….then you have to be willing to admit that there is carry over into Paul’s arguments about men and women here.
I’m not an inerrantist and do not see Paul as infallible….which is not to say that I don’t think there is truth in Scripture. The argument for complementarianism rests so heavily on the Creation story as historical reality, that if that pillar is removed, or interpreted in a different way, complementarianism loses its steam.
1 Corinthians 11:3 is a very scant reference and does not provide a clear enough comparison to suppose that Paul is trying to say that the Trinity is the model for marriage.
FWIW, I don’t think Paul is saying “Does nature not teach you” but “Nature does not teach you” and goes on to say that hair is a covering for both. There is an article about that here:
http://isv.org/catacombs/nature_doesn%27t_teach.htm
My take on the head covering issue is here.
Rebecca Groothuis (thanks to Paula for the link) says it all and more (and so far I have only got to the end of part 1 on p.322). I especially like the way she points out that the only distinctively female activities allowed by “patriarchalists”, i.e. childbearing, nursing and submission, are not distinctively human. I note that her “key representatives of evangelical patriarchy” are largely taken from RBMW, the Piper and Grudem volume.
Jeremy, I don’t understand your object to Groothuis’ conclusions, mentioned in comment 30 above. Do you dispute the following? (p.314)
Or with this? (p.315)
I was wondering why Jeremy commented today on a post I wrote nearly a year ago on this subject. Looks like it has re-ignited in the blogosphere. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis and I have worked on this argument for the last few years, and Jeremy does make some interesting points about the differences between roles flowing out of God’s decree or a woman’s nature but in the end I think we always have to come back to the fact that a woman’s subordination is ontologically grounded.
One thing that has to be understood is that there are not just two things to consider here: God’s decrees and a woman’s nature. There is also the matter of “womanhood” to consider. To be properly feminine is to be submissive to male authority. Thus, sexual identity and sexual function are not neatly seperate. The idea of proper function fuses them together, and in complementarianism they fit together in an asymetrical way where the man is the head of the woman. The problem, of course, is how the man and woman could be equal in any meaningful sense where both have spiritual (Gal 3:28) and ontological equality (Gen 1:26) in this scheme, and it would persist in another possible world where male and female roles were reversed.
Adam, thanks for your comment and for linking to what Jeremy wrote earlier, with your own responses. I’ll look at that now.
Jeremy.
I always come back to the fact that complementarians teach that men are to have authority over both sexes, and women cannot. AND this is according to the design of male and female.
Therefore, women are BY DESIGN, restricted in what authority they can have. They are simply NOT DESIGNED to do the things that men do.
There is only one other way to interpret this. Women are, in their design, and naturally, or in essence, equally capable of having authority as men. However, by God’s decree, as INTERPRETED by men, women cannot function according to their design, (nature, essence.)
So, are women not equal to men by design, OR are women not permitted by men to function according to their design.
I have looked at the old post by Jeremy quoted and commented on by Adam.
Jeremy makes a helpful distinction between three types of complementarianism. I agree with Adam that there is no real practical difference between 2 and 3. But I think it is 3 which Piper and Grudem express, and their various statements I quoted before are consistent with it.
But Jeremy then misses the point by supposing that the inequality Groothuis finds is something to do with “lesser or greater abilities”, whereas in fact it is to do with the assigned “roles” of leading and being subordinate, irrespective of whether or not they are linked to different abilities. That is, if women are permanently subordinate they are unequal (Groothuis argues), whether or not there is something in their abilities matching that subordinate status.
Interestingly, Jeremy writes:
But Paul the apostle writes:
Unless you want to force some distinction between “elder” and “overseer”, it seems that what Jeremy suggests is “immoral” even for men, and forbidden for women, is for Paul something to be encouraged – for “whoever”, male or female. Since for Paul being an overseer is “a noble task”, surely that implies that restricting it to women limits their “nobility” and so makes them inferior.
Anyway, Jeremy’s whole argument about eldership and inferiority involves preaching to women and egalitarians an entirely different view of authority from that which he presumably allows complementarian men pastors to hold and exercise. When those pastors stop claiming titles and salaries that are superior to those of the women in ministry in their churches, then I will believe that there is consistency, not hypocrisy, here.
On marriage, I think someone else has made the point that complementarian men do not usually need to use force on their women if they are able to enforce their will by implicit threats that God will punish any disobedience by the wife. Of course that does not stop a lot of men beating their wives into submission, and complementarian pastors telling fleeing battered wives to go back home to be beaten again.
On Groothuis’ supposed philosophical blunder, she doesn’t actually make it. She carefully distinguishes the subordination of women from the functional subordination of a man blind from birth to his guide dog: both are permanent, but only the former is essential. Groothuis’ argument is subtle and maybe not watertight, but it is not the one which Jeremy shoots down.
Jeremy.
I always come back to the fact that complementarians teach that men are to have authority over both sexes, and women cannot. AND this is according to the design of male and female.
Therefore, women are BY DESIGN, restricted in what authority they can have. They are simply NOT DESIGNED to do the things that men do.
There is only one other way to interpret this. Women are, in their design, and naturally, or in essence, equally capable of having authority as men. However, by God\’s decree, as INTERPRETED by men, women cannot function according to their design, (nature, essence.)
Thanks, Sue. You help to make Groothuis’ point about the blind man. It is not by design that he is subordinate to the dog, but because of some accident, whereas (on any complementarian view) it is God’s intention and design that women are subordinate. So the former is contingent but the latter is necessary.
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