I’ve become a piker in my old age – that is, someone who backs out of plans. My brains make plans that my anxiety can’t keep. That’s why last week, I was watching the inestimable Claire Smith (author of God’s Good Design) at Moore College’s Priscilla and Aquilla Centre seminar online, at home, instead of being there in person with my friend.
My lameness aside, the talks Claire gave were on the history of complementarianism – that is, the doctrinal position that men and women are created by God with equal worth and dignity but with different roles and functions. This has been a fraught area of debate for a few reasons. First, hardline complementarians err on the side of limitations of women (particularly in the US) which arguably pushes scripture further than it is intended to go. Second, a hardline position can provide fertile ground for the kind of traditionalism that can be a mask for sexism and worse – effectively treating women as “unequal and inferior” instead of “equal but different”. God did not ascribe any moral value to these differing functions – but humans did. Humans attached a negative value to these roles and to women themselves. This had led to a (in some cases extremely) poorly applied theology.
This became clear in Claire’s talks who was, she noted, a self-confessed feminist when she first became a Christian and so had a vested interest in complementarianism not being biblically correct. Spoiler alert – as a biblical scholar, Claire’s position was changed.
Since the term “complementarian” was only coined in the late 1980s in response to the rise of feminism, it begs the question “Before the rise of feminism, was everyone complementarian, and the term was only needed when feminism brought about its erosion?”
I cannot speak for the home life of individual Christian families. What I would say is I suspect the roles and functions of a man and wife were driven by traditional factors rather than biblical ones, or a traditional reading of biblical roles that didn’t require too much exegesis. These roles and the moral value ascribed to them, were baked in by the cultural and political frameworks that always surrounded them. This would include the non-criminality of beating or raping your wife until the 1990s, the lack of voting rights, the inability for women to have a credit card without her husbands’ permission, the lack of access to education, the banning of women’s sports until very recently, the inability to work once married, the gender pay gap and so so much more.
This (and more) precipitated 1st and 2nd wave feminism and the fight for rights under the law and a greater breadth of opportunities. Notably, those first waves were not about equality but about liberation (although waves 3 (in the 1990s) and 4 (from the 2010s) have been more about equality).
The feminist movement brought many good things that were nothing to do with complementarianism. Legal protections do not erode a complementarian position. Access to education, financial systems, voting and the same pay for the same work do not erode a complementarian position.
However, just as the traditional and hardline complementarianism can become a cover for sexism and misogyny, so feminism can become a cover for loose complementarianism. Loose complementarianism is taking the doctrinal position but making it very fuzzy at the edges because what the world tells us ‘sounds about right’ on so many things. So little by little our doctrinal positions become a little less salty.
This leads to a broad problem with application of complementarian relationships as well. What is it supposed to look like in practice? If there is no agreement on what the position should be, how are we to know what it should look like when we apply that theology? More and more, it feels like an impossible task. A husband and wife need to agree on what it looks like. But what if the husband takes it too far? Is the wife still to submit? What if the wife isn’t on board? What is a husband to do to live out his biblical convictions? What if the husband is not what you would call a spiritual leader and the wife is put in the position of leading those aspects of the house?
Isn’t it just easier to live as good Christians and forget all that? It all seems a bit too hard. Perhaps it is, after all now, irrelevant in this day and age.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I would argue not. Like Claire Smith, I too was a feminist. I don’t call myself one now mostly because I’m not 100% what it means any more. I am for equal legal rights and protections. I am against claiming the cover of complementarianism for things that are sexist. I am for the careful and wise application of complementarianism in the family and in ministry settings and, as far as I am able and as far as biblical warrant extends, in how I interact with the secular world. And here’s my reasons for believing that complementarianism is still very much relevant:
Human misapplication doesn’t mean we should get rid of the theology itself. The theology is good. God’s word is perfect. We humans are useless. If there’s one thing the Bible teaches us it is this surely – that God’s plans for us are perfect but our attempt to walk in his ways are pretty pathetic on every level. We are terrible at marriage a lot of the time, but we don’t get rid of that theology. We are also pretty terrible at caring for our neighbor but we don’t get rid of that theology. Complementarianism has been misapplied, misused and sometimes even weaponized. But humans did that. Not God. This should be a spur to get better at application, not deletion.
God’s plans for us are often communicated as things should be, not as they are. In so many cases, if you took us humans out of the equation, God’s plans would look amazing. Sadly, when we are in the picture it becomes very hard to conceptualise what God is saying. For example, when we read Peter’s words about wives submitting to their husbands (1 Peter 3:1-6), we might only be able to see how that could be weaponized against us. It might make us angry, scared, bewildered, sad, resigned, hopeless. Our learned behavior from a lifetime of interacting with humans is not the perfect picture that God envisages with this exhortation. But again, this should be a spur for prayer and honest conversation – sometimes assisted with trusted brothers and sisters – and working towards what God envisaged. We humans don’t do emotions or behavior as “set and forget”. We don’t pray for patience, get it, and then never have a problem again. We must constantly be reflecting and course correcting and communicating with our spouses.
We don’t get to cherry pick the bits of the Bible we want. The complementarian position is rooted in Genesis. Many dismiss it as Paul’s post-Jesus addition but there is a through-line from Genesis, to the disciples and Jesus’ teaching and to the pastoral epistles (I have written about this in other bits and bobs that you can find here). Which means whether we like it or not, it is something we need to live by. It is absolutely vital that we apply it correctly for the wellbeing and safety of marriages, spouses and children, but it’s not something we get to throw away because we don’t like it or because it’s too hard. Please note that when I say this, I absolutely do not believe that this means that a woman (or a man) has to stay in an abusive marriage which is affirmed strongly by the Doctrine Commission in my home diocese of Sydney.
Interestingly, when we look to the Bible for examples of complementarian marriages, we are hard pressed to find any. There’s Mary and Joseph but we know little of their actual marriage. There’s David (less said about his wives the better) and Solomon (the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree…). There’s Priscilla and Aquila but we only hear of them running a church together in their home. There’s the wife of noble character in Proverbs 31 but again, as part of wisdom literature, she is the ideal and not necessarily a real life person. There’s Ruth and Boaz who seem like they would fit the bill but we don’t see them after their marriage. Of all the couples in the Bible, we actually see very little of them.
1 Peter 3 gives us some kind of clue. In v 5, Peter notes that there were women who showed the beauty of their inner spirit and who adorned themselves with their hope in God. The example he cites is Sarah “who obeyed Abraham and called him her Lord.” Indeed this is so – Sarah in Genesis 18 when three visitors (one of them being God himself) visit. Sarah and Abraham’s relationship to this point had been far from perfect, and in this scene, Sarah was eavesdropping at the entrance of the tent. When one of the visitors prophesied that the following year, 90 year old Sarah would have given birth to a son, she laughed. This isn’t sounding very complementarianism-y. But then she thinks: “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” She called Abraham ‘my lord’. And this is in her thoughts where she can think what she wants. But even in her thoughts, the complementarity of their relationship is strong. It acknowledges her function and role in relation to his – a phrase which may grate with some readers. But look at the context in which it comes. She is not kneeling in obeisance while he rides rough shod over her. She is acknowledging this within a relationship in which both Abraham and Sarah have their place in relation to each other and in relation to God in what otherwise is (allowing for rather large cultural differences) a pretty normal marriage.
When you say ‘complementarian’ to me, I can’t help but have a view of relationships that looks a bit like the 1950s adverts. When I think about it in its biblical context, it actually reminds me more of several friends of mine who have complementarian marriages and who operate as a team, a partnership, in which each spouse has their role and they complement each other well. It doesn’t mean they are perfect, but it means they talk about it and pray and course correct and work out what it means in each new phase of life.
These examples aren’t proof of relevancy but they are proof of possibility. The relevancy comes from the living out of our biblical convictions. The relevancy comes from this being part of God’s word that we seek to faithfully follow.
I appreciate this can be a big deal for a lot of people and I am sure that when we get to heaven we will not be asked which position we hold. But when talking to my minister and his wife (the very friend I had piked on at Claire Smith’s seminar) he raised an important point – there is a level of culpability. If we read scripture and disagree on the meaning, that is different to reading the same scripture, agreeing on what it means and then deciding to disregard it. This is us putting ourselves in the place of God.
But how do we know when something is still rooted in theology and what is a cultural allusion that is not relevant to us in our modern age? That takes discernment, and asking curious questions. I heard John Dickson once say that it is not the job of the Bible to be relevant to all people at all times. If we take that approach, the Bible ceases to be relevant at all. It is the role of the Bible to be the fixed point of communication of our God to us. If there are things you struggle with, I encourage you to read and ask questions of your minister to see their view on whether it is a cultural allusion, or a pillar of biblical theology. Talk about it in your Bible study groups, ask your minister to join the group one night to help tease out the issue in depth – after all, we sit under the authoritative teaching of our ministers and we can seek their guidance on biblical matters.
This has been a very long blog and if you are still with me, I appreciate your forbearance! If you have questions, you can always contact me. I am always happy to write more on topics that people are grappling with. How we live out God’s ways faithfully and obediently is hard, but we can journey together, supporting each other along the way, and under his hand.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)