The Complementarian view of Gender Roles – male authority and female submission. He created them in God’s image, the Trinity? Say it isn’t so.
In September 2015 The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference (TGC) had a discussion panel on how Complementarianism was arrived at. In June 2016, Dr. Liam Goligher wrote a blog post answering the question “Is it Okay to Teach a Complementarianism Based on Eternal Subordination” of the Son (ESS). Several other blogs discussed this topic. I’m not sure if this was in direct response to 2015 TGC Women’s Conference, or to ESS in general.
I want to respond to parts of the transcript of this video from TGC Women’s Conference 2015, and to the doctrines being taught by Don Carson, John Piper, Kathleen Neilson, and Tim and Kathy Keller.
Don Carson, the president of The Gospel Coalition, starts off the discussion by asking each person on the panel how they arrived at holding to Complementarian beliefs.
1. Kathleen Neilson (1:23) says that this is how her parents lived out the Gospel in her home growing up. Her father was a loving head (defined as authority). Her mother was strong and intelligent, and “submitted to him in wonderful ways.” Kathleen had “great modeling in the home and in the church surrounded by saints who acted out the Gospel.”
It would be more accurate if she had said, “acting out the Law” instead of “acting out the Gospel”. One of the foundational category errors is this belief that we are to “live out the Gospel”. This is a confusion of the categories Law and Gospel. Law and Gospel distinctions are vital to the Christian faith. The Law gives instructions on what we are to do. The Law increases sin in us, and it demands perfect obedience always. The Gospel is Jesus obeying the Law on our behalf, because we cannot. Marissa Namirr, “If we hear the Law and think we can keep it, we are misreading it.” The Law leads us to Christ, and Christ releases us from the Law to live spontaneously in the Spirit. To confuse these two categories of Law and Gospel is to lose the Gospel. The Gospel is defined exclusively to the person and work of Jesus Christ, for you and on your behalf for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus is the only person, begotten Son of the Father, who lived the Gospel. You and I do not “act out” or live the Gospel, but we do live in light of the Gospel.
The Gospel defined is Jesus, and all the things pertaining to His life. His perfect obedience to the Law, death and shed blood on the cross. His taking away the Law by nailing it to the cross, His burial, resurrection, ascension. His mediation with the Father, absolving us of our sins. In light of the Gospel we live in the good news that our sins are forgiven and we are holy (sanctified) for Jesus’ sake. To say that “we live the Gospel” is saying that we, not Jesus, died on the cross, were buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance to the scriptures, see 1 Corinthians 15. As John Fonville says, “Nowhere in Scripture are we told to live the Gospel”. We are told to believe the Gospel, and we are to announce, proclaim, and preach the Gospel.
*Gender Roles in the home and the church is not the Gospel. It’s Law. After Christ’s resurrection, commands are turned into appeals to a freed conscience.
Tim Keller (8:34) says, “we do not believe that gender roles is one of the Gospel, one of the doctrines, that make up the core of the Gospel. We do not believe that you have to believe that in order to be saved or believe the Gospel.” He makes a good effort to try to clarify that gender roles is not the Gospel. By saying that it “doesn’t make up the core of the Gospel” he leaves some confusion for people who don’t know about the categories of Law words and Gospel words. People still believe that gender roles is somehow, in some way, a part of the Gospel.
2. For John Piper gender roles are based on memories from his childhood of his parents marriage, and he believes these things are stamped on a man’s heart and a woman’s heart. He had to cut ties with his seminary, Fuller Seminary, when they came out with a book that held to a different view of 1 Timothy 2:13. He says that the women’s conference is flying under the banner of complementarianism. He, and others on the panel, use flattering words about the women’s appearance and intelligence. I make a note of this, because I understand that this is a form of grooming women into these beliefs.
John Piper (18:29) “looking at you makes me astonished because this conference wherever you are in your own personal convictions about this, this conference is flying under the banner of complementarianism, and I just look at you and say you’re …assume you’re beautiful, but I can’t even see you. You’re smart, I mean you’re intelligent. You’re thoughtful. You’re educated. You’re young. You’re not stupid. You’re not back water. There you are at least willing to think about these things, and I say thank you God. Thank you that those battles and you’re taking the hissing and, and have born significant fruit.”
If these gender roles are your personal convictions, and are a good fit for your gifts and personality, it is easy to hold to them. Unfortunately, gender roles is much broader than women can’t be elders or pastors. People have been stripped of their voice, personhood, agency, spirit, gifting, etc. If these roles are a yoke of slavery, you may be frustrated that you are not free in Christ to use your gifts, abilities, vocation in the home, or in the church. You have permission to be set free from strict gender roles. In the new covenant, we have permission to “Believe in Jesus, and be yourself.” – Matt McMillen.
3. Tim and Kathy Keller (27:07) “Tim: How do we still maintain the idea that there are some things that, that Paul is forbidding something to women (Kathy: “Something has to be obeyed.”) As long as you say that there is something that women can’t do in the church, as her way of embracing her role, then I think you’re a Complementarian. Even if we can’t always agree on how many things that is, …oh, and the same thing in the home. Yes.”
What you and I are commanded to do falls under the category of Law. Gender “roles” falls under the category of Law. When we live out these “roles” we are living under the Law, not under grace. Galatians 5:18 “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.” Jesus sets us free from gender role laws to use whatever gifts the Spirit gives us, our abilities, and vocation to help our neighbor out as we are willing and able to without Moses accusing us of all that we have left undone. The list of gifts given in Romans 12:3-8 are not gendered.
The conversation moves into the idea that headship is defined as authority. Valerie Jacobsen has study notes answering, “What is the Ministry of Christ as Head?”. “This note is mostly selections from the Bible, from the Westminster Standards, and from church history. I have added a few comments of my own and some emphases through bold type or italics wherever I thought it would be helpful for me as I use this note for my reference.
When we define “head” as “authority” that women are forbidden from having. (See my article on 1Timothy 2+3). Women can easily become infantilized or marginalized in the home/ church body depending how seriously these roles are practiced. The message received is that women’s voices, and personhood, have lesser value than a man’s. Thinking about this I decided, no. I have authority. It was a decision where I took back my agency, and became comfortable and settled that I can trust the Holy Spirit to lead me. It wasn’t about me having authority over others. It gave me permission to live independent of a legalistic yoke. It’s about being free in Christ, and having authority to use my gifts, abilities, and vocation to help others as I am willing and able to.
4. Kathleen talks about how women have a desire to control men. The ESV bible translation changed Genesis 3:16 text which used to say, “your desire will be *for your husband” to “your desire will be *contrary to your husband”. The ESV suspicion that women’s “desires” are contrary to men’s pits one gender against the other. The solution to this revision of the fall is gender roles of male authority and female submission are written more firmly into the ESV text. “He will rule over you” is indoctrinated in male gender roles. Rachel Green Miller catalogs the changes made in the ESV, “Saying Farewell to the ESV.”
Kathleen Neilson (35:57) “beautiful because the commands in Ephesians 5 to submit and to love really do overturn by means of the Gospel the results of the fall that are expressed in Gen 3:16 “your desire shall be to control” no not that, let’s submit, that’s the Gospel answer to that and not to rule that would be more like Patriarchy.” I believe the ESV is in error on these changes, and it creates an environment of suspicion and distrust.
5. Tim Keller (36:39) “the difference in role, of course I don’t want to get into this, but there is this thing called the Trinity. In which you have the Father and the Son being equal and the Father sending the Son.”
Don Carson: “In what sense does a rich theologically evocation understanding of complementarianism reflect God Himself?”
Kathy Keller (38:12) “I think it’s foundational actually. The thing that took the sting of submission and headship away from me was Philippians 2 where Jesus was equal with the Father but he laid that aside and took on the role of a servant to accomplish our salvation and therefore my submission is modeled on Jesus.” In Kathy’s book “Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles” she puts in a footnote that no one teaches ESS, but here is ESS gender roles modeled after the Trinity. (38:11) “For me it was the whole foundation of all of it.”
And Kathleen says, “I would agree with that utterly.”
Yes, Jesus submitted to the Father to accomplish salvation. We need Him to do that because we need Jesus to submit perfectly on our behalf, because we cannot and we will not. Romans 7 says how Christ released us from our dysfunctional relationship to the Law. The Trinity is not the foundation of gender roles though. Eternal Subordination of the Son and Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology. Children supposedly model the role of the Holy Spirit. Remember we are all transformed into the image of Christ. According to Galatians 3:27 “For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. 28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Men are not being conformed to the image of the Father and His “role of authority”. Now that Jesus has submitted Himself to the will of the Father for us. God’s will for you is that your sins are forgiven and you are holy entirely on account of Christ’s merits of obedience and shed blood for the remission of sin.
Tim Keller (42:05) “I would say that I feel very much that I reflect more the image of God better that I have been shaped and renewed in the image of God by submitting to my role, and it’s submitting to being responsible not just having power responsibilities that I don’t really want and Kathy has felt the same way so in some ways we have been renewed in the image of God by embracing our gender roles. I don’t think you can get much more theological rich than that.”
John Piper does not correct the error of modeling gender roles after the Trinity, and I have wondered if he holds to this error himself.
I would caution that perhaps we have wrongly read gender roles into the text, as they have been defined as “authority” and “submission”, and added them to God’s Law. These roles have become a form of legalism. There is now the ESV Bible, a coalition, a council, and a journal dedicated to the topic of gender roles. The Journal For Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 11.1, Spring 2006 wrote that these roles will continue into eternity. “Relationships and Roles in the New Creation” by Mark David Walton. “There is every reason to believe then that male headship as the divine order will continue in male-female relationships.” And “such relations will bring to each true joy, and to God, more glory than before.” This sounds more like Mormon doctrine than Christianity.
About a year after we moved to our current church I read their statement, “The foundation for right relationships in the family is submission, one to another, out of reverence for Christ.” It was a shock to read that, and it took me a while to accept that, because what I had been hearing for 20 years was one-sided submission, “wives submit to your husbands”. I was indoctrinated with the belief that women’s voices don’t matter, and that thought still lingers. Ephesians 5:21 has been more gracious for relationships in the home and in the church. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” We are brothers and sisters in Christ. If we are married or not, mutual submission out of reverence for Christ is more gracious for the church than gender roles.
Todd Bordow writes, “The question concerning marriage revolves around the meaning of the husband as head in Ephesians 5:22. Does this mean that the husband has authority over his wife? The Old Testament can help us here. If I asked how many times in the Old Testament that the Lord commanded a husband to have authority over his wife, what would you answer? Would you be surprised to find out that the answer is zero? In the entire Mosaic Law, husbands are never once told that they possess authority over their wives. Wives are never once commanded to obey their husbands. And wives are never once commanded not to teach their husbands. The only mention of obedience to authority in the home is found in the fifth commandment (Ex. 20:12), where it commands children to honor both father and mother. According to the fifth commandment, husbands and wives have equal authority in the home.” Women in the Church – a Redemptive Historical Approach
“The Making of Biblical Womanhood: how the subjugation of women became Gospel truth.” Is written by medieval historian Beth Allison Barr. Medieval history shows women were preaching, and that this history was written out of the text at the time of the reformation. Renewing the mind “What Does Ephesians 5 Really Say About Women”. In the Christian faith we are all at different levels of freedom in Christ.
In this life we turn away from the Law for righteousness and turn to Christ as our righteousness. A daily repentance. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4. Christ is the end of gender “roles” for righteousness to everyone who believes. I will leave you with the absolution: Your sins are forgiven, and you are holy, as a gift, for the sake of Christ, crucified and resurrected.
Related Topics:
Sarah Batdorf 
Leave a comment