Category Archives: Gender and Leadership

Complementarianism according to John Piper

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I happened to come across some comments which I myself originally wrote in July 2006, on this post on Better Bibles Blog. I repeat them here to preserve them and bring them to a wider audience.

The context is a discussion of John Piper’s Vision of Biblical complementarity, chapter 1 of the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood which he wrote with Wayne Grudem. In the post Suzanne McCarthy had highlighted some of Piper’s practical teaching on which roles in the church and in the workplace were not suitable for women, such as this:

There are ways for a woman to interact even with a male subordinate that signal to him and others her endorsement of his mature manhood in relationship to her as a woman. I do not have in mind anything like sexual suggestiveness or innuendo. Rather, I have in mind culturally appropriate expressions of respect for his kind of strength, and glad acceptance of his gentlemanly courtesies. Her demeanor-the tone and style and disposition and discourse of her ranking position-can signal clearly her affirmation of the unique role that men should play in relationship to women owing to their sense of responsibility to protect and lead.

In response to these words I made this comment:

Are these rules supposed to be Christian and derived from the Bible? It sounds to me as if they come from a 19th century manual of etiquette. That doesn’t make them necessarily wrong, but nor does it make them right. Piper, Grudem and friends need to distinguish between Christian values and old-fashioned conservative cultural ones. A good course in cross-cultural evangelism, or some in depth first hand experience of a very different culture, would do them a world of good.

I took the matter a bit further in this comment (reformatted):

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Giles and Sunlyk head to head on the Trinity

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Already this month Nick Norelli has posted about the Trinity at least a dozen times, mostly in connection with his Trinity Blogging Summit. I have not yet had time to read most of these posts. But I have read one of the first of these dozen posts, Giles’ Reply & Paulson’s Response, which I quote in full here:

Following Matt Paulson’s critique of Kevin Giles’ Trinitarian theology came a reply from Giles and a response from Paulson. I have not yet read either of these but will probably post some thoughts when I have done so.

Now Matt Paulson is apparently the real name of Phantaz Sunlyk, whose discussion of the eternal subordination of the Son I recently critiqued. I did not respond earlier to Nick’s post quoted above as I was waiting for him to read and post his thoughts on the reply and the response. But he has not yet done so, although some of his commenters have, and Nick’s own contribution to the blogging summit is relevant. So now I am myself reading the reply and the response, and the comments, and posting my own thoughts here.

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Calvin: "God shall cease to be the Head of Christ"

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This is a follow-up to my recent post on the doctrine of eternal subordination within the Trinity and the related discussion at the Complegalitarian blog. This doctrine has recently become popular among complementarians, many of whom also call themselves Calvinists and so presumably value the teaching of John Calvin. Recently at the CBMW Gender “Blog” (in fact not a real blog because there is no opportunity for discussion) Calvin was listed among ten theologians who, it was claimed, held to this doctrine. Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology (as quoted by Molly), takes this further, claiming that

the idea of eternal equality in being but subordination in role has been essential to the church’s doctrine of the Trinity since it was first affirmed in the Nicene Creed, … it has clearly been part of the church’s doctrine of the Trinity (in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox expressions), at least since Nicea (A.D. 325).

But can this claim be substantiated? I will not attempt to discuss all the ten theologians’ views. But in a comment on Complegalitarian Suzanne (apparently not Suzanne McCarthy) found a quote from Calvin which clearly shows that he did NOT believe in the eternal subordination of the Son. I have verified the quote from my own copy of Calvin’s Institutes, 2.14.3 (vol. 1 p. 486 in my copy, in the translation by Battles), and here I quote part of what Suzanne quoted with some additional text to introduce it, with my own emphasis:

That is, to [Christ] was lordship committed by the Father, until such time as we should see his divine majesty face to face. Then he returns the lordship to his Father so that – far from diminishing his own majesty – it may shine all the more brightly. Then, also, God shall cease to be the Head of Christ, for Christ’s own deity will shine of itself, although as yet it is covered in a veil.

In other words (and this is confirmed by reading the context), it is clear that to Calvin the distinction in honour between Christ and God the Father is only a temporary one which will cease when Christ has “discharged the office of Mediator”, that is, completed his saving work by bring his people to glory. Thus Calvin clearly shows that he believes in the temporary rather than eternal subordination of the Son.

If, as Calvin teaches, God shall cease to be the Head of Christ, that means that 1 Corinthians 11:3 is only a temporary teaching. So, if this verse is given the weight that many complementarians put on it, the “headship” of a husband over his wife (whatever that might mean) is also only temporary and will no longer be applicable in the eternal kingdom of God.

The Bible overthrows the hierarchical worldview

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Molly Aley at the Complegalitarian blog offers a robust (and award-winning) criticism of CBMW’s claims about the doctrine of eternal subordinationism in the Trinity. In her own comment there she describes how at Bible college she was taught a strongly hierarchical worldview, which she has now rejected, which linked subordinationism within the Trinity with a strong concept of non-mutual authority in church and home.

Nick Norelli may reject this kind of link, but it was clearly made at Molly’s patriarchal Bible college, as well as by the moderate complementarians of CBMW and the egalitarian Kevin Giles. Molly shows that the link goes beyond 1 Corinthians 11:3 on which I disagreed with Nick, to encompass fundamental issues of one’s worldview, in which there is a clear division between hierarchical and egalitarian presuppositions.

My contention is that the Bible deliberately rejects the dominant hierarchical worldview of the ancient world and teaches a fundamentally egalitarian viewpoint. This criticism of hierarchy undermines the basis of both patriarchy and complementarianism in gender relations as well as of the eternal subordinationism in the Trinity.

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Subordinationism, the Trinity, and gender relations

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Nick Norelli offers a thoughtful review of Kevin Giles’ book The Trinity & Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God & the Contemporary Gender Debate. I have not read the book, but this makes me want to.

But I cannot accept the way that Nick seeks to dissociate the two issues which Giles links in this book, subordinationism within the Trinity and complementarianism in gender relations. I cannot comment directly on the arguments Giles uses to link these matters. But the counter-arguments which Nick comes up with are to me very unconvincing.

Nick claimed that my first comment on his blog pointing out the weaknesses of his argument “completely lacked merit”. To be fair, I had accused him of “expound[ing] bad theology”, so I can’t complain at receiving a robust response. But here I bring my comments to a wider audience for it to judge between us.

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Some are more equal than others

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In George Orwell’s book Animal Farm, the animals who took over the farm from their human owner initially proclaimed

All animals are equal.

But later this was altered, by the pigs who emerged as the rulers, to this:

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Orwell’s book was written as an allegory about Communism. But in many ways it can also be taken as an allegory about the church. Continue reading →

Complementarianism: Sola Scriptura or Sola Traditio?

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I don’t often read materials from the so-called “Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” (CBMW). They promote a complementarian position, that is (to put it rather tendentiously), that whereas men and women are supposedly equal in status, all of the roles in the church and the family which are generally considered to be of high status are reserved for men only. As my regular readers know, this is not my position. Authors associated with CBMW, such as Wayne Grudem, often try to justify their position from Scripture, but in my opinion, explained further below, their arguments are generally seriously deficient.

But my attention was drawn to a series of posts on the CBMW blog in which David Kotter, Executive Director of CBMW, responds to my blogger friend Molly Aley. See also the discussion here, and Molly’s response to the series (which includes an excellent account by Elijah McKnight of how he moved from complementarianism to egalitarianism when he learned a proper approach to the Scriptures).

In part 2 of the series Kotter seeks to root CBMW’s complementarian position in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura:

The complementary nature of manhood and womanhood and its implications for the home and church can only be defended from the Scripture alone.

But in fact neither his logic nor CBMW’s arguments for complementarianism support this conclusion.

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Australian Archbishop: equal in Christ but not in church

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John Richardson, the Ugley Vicar, reports these words of Archbishop Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, who is a leading conservative in the worldwide Anglican Communion – the subject is women bishops:

You know that I am opposed to this innovation on scriptural grounds, believing as I do in the equality of men and women in Christ, but our complementarity in church and home.

Let’s look at the last part of this sentence. We have “equality … in Christ, but … complementarity in church and home” Hold on, does this mean that there is a contrast between “in Christ” and “in church”? When we are “in church”, or for that matter at home, are we no longer “in Christ”? Are churches in Australia so non-Christian that they are not even to be considered “in Christ”?

I’m sure that the Archbishop does not really want to teach this. But without this his argument falls apart. If men and women are equal in Christ, logically that equality must apply to everything they do in Christ, which should certainly include everything that happens in church, and in a Christian home. But if they are denied equality in church, then logically either the church is not in Christ or they are being denied the equality in Christ which is being preached.

The Archbishop continues:

I believe that the way that God has ordered our relationships is demonstrably for the best.

But the way he seems to think that God has ordered our relationships cannot be the real way if it is self-contradictory as I have argued.

Provinces, dioceses and parishes: relics of mediaeval Christendom which must go

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Diocletian (reigned 284-305) was the last major non-Christian Roman emperor and the last great persecutor of the church in ancient times. Ironically, it was also him who divided up the Roman Empire into new administrative units called “dioceses“. As the Empire became Christianised, and then its administrative structures crumbled under the pressure of barbarian invasions, the bishops of the Catholic church became the only effective local authorities, and gradually dioceses became the areas within which a bishop had authority over all the churches. These dioceses became subdivided into parishes, which were generally the geographical areas associated with an individual church building and priest. Although under late Roman administration a province was a subdivision of a diocese, in the mediaeval western church the term “province” came into use for a higher level unit than a diocese, led by a metropolitan or archbishop.

This geographical division of the church into a hierarchy of different territorial units, although originating in late antiquity, fitted well with the feudal system of mediaeval Europe. Continue reading →

Bishops without borders, including women

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Anglican Mainstream reports these words of Bishop Don Harvey, leader of the Anglican Network in Canada which is breaking away from the official Anglican Church of Canada:

There is no reference in the Bible to a diocese, border, or boundary.  I have heard ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel’. We have lawyers and doctors and engineers without borders. We are launching bishops without borders.

But it is not just in Canada that bishops are soon going to be operating without borders. Last night I attended an open meeting the synod of my deanery (local group of Anglican churches) to discuss the issue of women bishops. Continue reading →