So I thought it might be helpful to give twenty examples of these myths, ten for each side, with a view to clarifying things somewhat. My aim is twofold: to debunk bad arguments on both sides, since they often lead to caricature and muddle, and to challenge some of the prejudices that can prevent loving, open and humble discussion. Articles with a similar agenda have recently been written by Krish Kandiah and Steve Holmes, from a more egalitarian perspective, but the focus of mine is to identify (and hopefully debunk) some of the myths that you often come across. I’ve paired them together, for reasons which I hope will be obvious; E stands for egalitarian, and C stands for complementarian.

E1. All complementarians are chauvinists who dishonor women.
C1. All egalitarians are liberals who dishonor the Bible.

This shouldn’t need too much explanation, really. Elisabeth Eliot and Tim Keller are not chauvinists, and do not wilfully dishonour women. Gordon Fee and Chris Wright are not liberals, and do not willfully dishonor the Bible. Countless complementarians have beautiful marriages, and countless egalitarians have a wonderful knowledge of and submission to the Bible. There are some bad examples too, of course - I wince at some of the stereotyping, and exegesis, that I’ve heard over the years in this conversation - but we mustn’t let them lead us into crass generalizations.

E2. Complementarians do not believe men and women are equal.
C2. Egalitarians do not believe men and women are complementary.

To be honest, the labels “complementarian” and “egalitarian” are not that helpful. (Even less helpful are the preferred terms of disparagement on both sides: “hierarchicalists” and “feminists”.) The vast majority of complementarians you come across firmly believe that men and women are equal (as Genesis 1 puts beyond doubt, and John Piper argues here). The vast majority of egalitarians you come across firmly believe that men and women are complementary (as Genesis 2 puts beyond doubt, and Tom Wright argues here). The question is, though: what does that look like in the church, and in marriage? Does equality imply identity? Does complementarity imply restrictions in ministry? And so on.

E3. “Headship” and “submission” always communicate the inferiority of women.
C3. “Headship” and “submission” never communicate the inferiority of women.

Because of my complementarian theology of marriage, I was recently asked by a fellow Christian what the difference was between me and the Taliban. Rhetorical flourishes notwithstanding, this sort of question reflects the assumption that headship and submission always communicate superiority and inferiority - which is obviously untrue, if you consider the relationship between Jesus and God the Father during Jesus’ earthly ministry (Heb 5:7-8), when Paul was writing (1 Cor 11:3), and on into eternity future (1 Cor 15:28). On the other hand, complementarians can use this observation (that Jesus was equal with God yet submitted to him) to argue the opposite, which can be just as unhelpful: that headship and submission don’t imply superiority and inferiority at all. This is also nonsense, both biblically (Eph 1:21-23; Col 1:18; 2:10) and practically (just ask a random sample of women from complementarian church backgrounds whether they’ve ever felt like second class citizens). The reality is that the language of headship and submission can connote superiority and inferiority, but it doesn’t have to.

E4. Complementarianism is analogous to supporting the slave trade.
C4. Egalitarianism is analogous to supporting homosexual practice.

Bunk. (If that’s not quite detailed enough, maybe follow the links to our posts on slavery and sexuality.)

E5. The differences between men and women are entirely a result of the Fall.
C5. The differences between men and women are entirely a result of creation.

Maybe this is obvious, but some differences between men and women are creational, and some differences between men and women are results of the Fall. Before the Fall happened, Adam and Eve were given different physiques, different appearances, different sexual identities, different ways of thinking and feeling, and different jobs to do (working and keeping the garden for Adam, helping and childbearing for Eve). But we do no justice to Genesis at all if we imagine that all the differences between men and women since that time have been creational and God-given. They haven’t: that’s why the curse is so important, and so tragic (Gen 3:16-19), and why the gospel is so important, and so glorious (Gal 3:28). Careful exegesis, both of the Genesis story and of other biblical passages which refer to it, is needed to establish what is creational and what is lapsarian.

E6. Women were clearly foundational apostles in the early church.
C6. Women were clearly not apostles in the early church.

We now move on to slightly more prevalent “myths”, some of which have somewhat bigger and more prominent advocates. Tom Wright connects being an eyewitness of the resurrection and being an apostle so closely that he happily calls (say) Mary Magdalene an apostle, despite the fact that she is never described as such, and on occasion Luke conspicuously omits to identify her as one (Luke 24:10; cf. Acts 1:21, in which the final member of the twelve needs to be a man). James Dunn argues from Romans 16:7 that the Greek word Iounian (Junia/Junias) clearly refers to (a) a woman, who is not only (b) an apostle, but (c) a foundational apostle at that, when all three are, to varying degrees, questionable. On the other hand, complementarians are frequently overconfident in their response: Iounian clearly does not refer to a woman apostle, since it might be (a) a man, or (b) someone who is known to the apostles, or (c) an apostle in the “messenger of the church” sense rather than the “foundational apostle” sense, even though all three of these are highly questionable, and the first two are no longer supported by most complementarian scholars (this article articulates well the standard complementarian view today). It would be representative of the scholarly consensus, as far as I can tell, to argue that Romans 16:7 probably refers to a woman, and probably refers to her being “of note among the apostles” rather than “well known to the apostles”, but that the nature of her ministry, given Paul’s varied usage, is impossible to establish with certainty. Complementarians who also believe in apostles today, however, should note the hostages to fortune this view might provide!

E7. New Testament scholarship has concluded that the Greek word kephale (literally, “head”) means “source”.
C7. New Testament scholarship has concluded that the Greek word kephale (literally, “head”) never means “source”.

As with the identity and ministry of Iounian, overstatements proliferate about the scholarly consensus on the meaning of kephale, the Greek word for “head”. A generation ago, the debate was framed in a binary fashion: did kephale mean “source”, as Cervin and the Kroegers argued, or “authority over”, as Grudem argued? Today, however, the scholarly consensus, as such it is, is that kephale can, and occasionally does, mean “source”, but that its most likely meaning in 1 Corinthians 11:3, Ephesians 5:23 and so on has to do with preeminence, with authority part of the picture but not the central point (thus Thiselton, Fitzmyer, Ciampa and Rosner).

E8. 1 Timothy 2 is entirely circumstantial, and reflects no creational principles.
C8. 1 Timothy 2 is entirely creational, and reflects no circumstantial principles.

Of the many false dichotomies in the gender debate, this one is perhaps the most intractable. Some egalitarians argue that Paul’s instructions in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 are entirely circumstantial, driven by the peculiarities of first century Ephesus, Artemis worship, the New Roman Women, and so on, and have nothing to do with the way men and women were originally created, despite Paul’s immediate appeal to Genesis in verses 13-14. Complementarians, often, can do the exact opposite, and argue that because Paul grounds his argument in creation, local circumstances in Ephesus, such as those described by Bruce Winter and Craig Keener, are either speculative or have nothing to do with Paul’s point, and we need not take them into account in our exegesis. Responsible exegesis, however, involves acknowledging that both circumstantial and creational factors contribute to what Paul says here, as they do throughout his letters, and avoids making the whole discussion a zero-sum game.

E9. Narrative trumps doctrinal instruction: women in the early church taught and exercised authority over men, so Paul could not have prohibited either.
C9. Doctrinal instruction trumps narrative: Paul prohibited women from teaching or exercising authority over men, so women in the early church can’t have done either.

All kinds of questions are begged in this sort of discussion. For some egalitarians, the fact that women clearly exercised teaching and leadership gifts in the early church - so, Priscilla taught Apollos (Acts 18:26), and Phoebe quite possibly read Romans to the church (Rom 16:1-2) - prove that Paul could not have intended to restrict women from teaching or having authority over men, almost irrespective of what he actually says. For some complementarians, the fact that Paul told women not to teach or exercise authority over men (1 Tim 2:12) proves that women cannot ever have exercised teaching or leadership gifts in the early church, almost irrespective of what the various passages actually say (even though a structurally similar argument is used to show that 1 Cornthians 14 cannot be prohibiting all speech on the basis of 1 Corinthians 11). Both positions are problematic, because they constrain the exegesis of one passage - say, Acts 18 or 1 Timothy 2 - by the exegesis of another, rather than interpreting all the passages on their own merits, and then bringing the conclusions together. The latter is easier said than done, mind you.

E10. Scholars agree that the Greek word authentein means “to usurp, domineer or assume authority”, with negative connotations.
C10. Scholars agree that the Greek word authentein means “to exercise authority over”, with no negative connotations.

The problem here is that scholars do not agree on either of these things, despite confident assertions on both sides to the contrary. There have been some very thorough studies of the word’s meaning, particularly that of Baldwin, as well as of the grammatical construction in which it is found (ouk + infinitive + oude + infinitive), such as that of Köstenberger, both of which would favor the more neutral meaning (“have authority over”). But consensus is almost unattainable, both because the word is so rare in pre-NT Greek, and because context plays such an important role in reconstructing what any individual Greek word or construction means. So you end up with Moo, Mounce, Knight, Schreiner and Köstenberger on the neutral side, largely on the basis of lexical and grammatical studies, and Towner, Marshall, Fee, Belleville and the Kroegers on the negative side (to varying degrees), largely on the basis of the reconstructed context. A good argument can be made that the former is less speculative and more persuasive – and this has been conceded by several egalitarian scholars (Webb, Schüssler Fiorenza, Hartenstein, Jewett, Keener) – but neither side can claim that scholarship universally supports their position.

So there you have it: twenty myths in the gender debate, debunked. My hope is that, if we clear these twenty “arguments” out of the way, then both egalitarians and complementarians – or whatever we decide to call ourselves! – could have more fruitful, less acrimonious and more balanced discussions than we have sometimes had in the past.

This post was originally published on What You Think Matters.

Within evangelicalism, four main lines of interpretation can be discerned. (Outside of evangelicalism, the response can be all too simple – Paul was a sexist simpleton who didn’t know any better; we’ve been enlightened now, so we should ignore him – although one wonders if the catastrophic track record of post-1960s white people when it comes to marriage will cause this approach to lose its lustre). Sketched briefly, they go something like this:

Submit to each other

Wives and husbands are called to submit to each other, in exactly the same way. Verses 22-33 should not be read apart from v21, which establishes the context: Paul is giving examples of how wives might submit to husbands, but assumes that husbands will also submit to wives (he doesn’t tell wives to love their husbands, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t want them to!) ‘Head’, in Paul, means ‘source’, and has nothing to do with ‘authority’ or (worse) ‘power’; these ideas have been imported into his thinking by patriarchal cultures, and fly in the face of everything Jesus said about leaders being those who serve. The husband has no greater responsibility to lead his wife than the wife does to lead her husband, and sex-based hierarchy has no place in the gospel. (A good statement of this view would be Gilbert Bilezikian in Beyond Sex Roles).

Substitution and Love

Paul taught wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives, in ways that made their roles and responsibilities in marriage different – but that doesn’t mean that we should do the same today. Yes, headship connotes pre-eminence, and possibly authority as well; yes, Paul understood mutual submission to involve different things for women and for men. But Paul was writing from within a highly patriarchal culture, and gave the broad framework of Greco-Roman marriage a Christian twist by insisting that husbands loved their wives as Christ loved the Church. In doing so, he applied the egalitarian shape of the gospel into his world, and we are now called to do the same, which may well mean doing things (as we did with slavery) that Paul himself did not teach. To do so, however, is simply to see the redemptive shape of God’s story, and apply it to marriage. (This is the argument of Howard Marshall in Discovering Biblical Equality).

Husbands submit?

Paul taught wives to submit to their husbands, and did not teach husbands to submit to their wives. Submission in this sense is one-way, and Paul’s instruction to ‘submit to one another’ does not mean ‘all submit to all’, but rather ‘some submit to others’ (wives to husbands, children to parents, and slaves to masters). Husbands are never told to submit to their wives in Scripture, and ‘mutual submission’ is a Trojan horse inside which all sorts of unbiblical assumptions tend to get smuggled. The husband has the leadership role in a marriage, and speaking of the wife ‘obeying’ her husband, following the example of Sarah, is entirely appropriate. (Thus Wayne Grudem in Systematic Theology and Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood).

Not identical submission

Wives and husbands, along with everyone in the church, are called to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, but not in identical ways. The church submits to Christ by recognising him as head, and following his leadership. Christ submits to the church by loving her, taking on the form of a slave, giving himself up for her, and presenting her holy and blameless. So when Paul compares the wife to the church and the husband to Christ, he is saying that the ways in which their ‘mutual submission’ is expressed will be different: the woman will follow her husband’s lead, and the man will exercise his leadership by serving his wife, as Christ-like leaders always do. (This view is very simply expressed by Tom Wright in Paul For Everyone: The Prison Letters).

Let me point out four surprising things about this debate, one for each view. With #1, it is strange that (in Bilezikian’s words) “by definition, mutual submission rules out hierarchical differences”, since Bilezikian recognises that both mutual submission and authority structures co-exist in the church: “In a Spirit-led church, the elders submit to the congregation in being accountable for their watch-care, and the congregation submits to the elders in accepting their guidance … the congregations submit to their leaders by obeying.” What is odd about this view, which is more common at the popular level than academically (probably for exegetical reasons), is that the assumption that equality and authority are incompatible is demonstrably unbiblical, when you consider both the church and the Trinity. (Whether the submission of the Son to the Father is eternal or not does not really matter here; the point is, subjection does not necessarily equate to inferiority). Yet many can see this is true in the church, and in the Godhead, but believe it is impossible in marriage.

The fascinating thing about #2 is that its advocates agree entirely with complementarians on the exegesis of Ephesians 5. They do not have any time for the view that Paul makes no distinction between the roles of husbands and wives in marriage. Rather, they agree that he does – but conclude that, for hermeneutical reasons, we do not obey this passage by doing what it says, but by doing what it was pointing towards (as with slavery). On this hermeneutical principle and the hostages to fortune it provides, see the posts on hermeneutics we did here and here, as well as the more thorough review of Bill Webb’s book provided by Tom Schreiner.

With #3, it is somewhat intriguing that John Piper, who co-edited the complementarian magnum opus with Wayne Grudem, disagrees (as, incidentally, he also does on women deacons). Perhaps there should be nothing surprising about this, but given how central a text it is for the debate in which they have been engaging together for twenty years, it is interesting that disagreement on its meaning still lingers between these two great friends and great scholars. Here’s Piper’s view: “It is true that verse 21 puts this whole section under the sign of mutual submission ... But it is utterly unwarranted to infer from this verse that the way Christ submits himself to the church and the way the church submits herself to Christ are the same.”

Finally, the most curious thing about #4 is that it is essentially a complementarian position – the way in which a husband and a wife relate to each other involves a fundamental distinction in their responsibilities which stems from the way men and women are created – and yet it is frequently held by those who would self-identify as egalitarians, like Chris Wright, Ben Witherington (so I’m told), Tom Wright, and many others. This is not because such scholars are muddle-headed, however; it’s because the conversation in the UK, and its rather more feisty equivalent in the USA, has been so preoccupied with teaching and government in the church that many on both sides haven’t noticed how much they agree on when it comes to marriage. Who would have thought, for example, that (notwithstanding the different nuances and phraseology they would bring to the topic) Wright and Piper would basically agree on the meaning of Ephesians 5 and its application to marriage? Who would have thought that it was possible, even common, for people to deny distinct roles in ministry, while affirming them in marriage?

Have a guess, for example, who wrote the following on Ephesians 5:

Paul assumes, as do most cultures, that there are significant differences between men and women, differences that go far beyond mere biological and reproductive function. Their relations and roles must therefore be mutually complementary, rather than identical. Equality in voting rights, and in employment opportunities and remuneration (which is still not a reality in many places), should not be taken to imply such identity. And, within marriage, the guideline is clear. The husband is to take the lead – though he is to do so fully mindful of the self-sacrificial model which the Messiah has provided. As soon as ‘taking the lead’ becomes bullying or arrogant, the whole thing collapses.

It’s the use of ‘the Messiah’ that gives it away, probably. If you’re still not sure, his name’s an anagram of Tim Growth. Maybe complementarians and egalitarians agree about more than we think!

This blog was originally published on What You Think Matters. Andrew Wilson’s new book, If God Then What? Wondering Aloud about Truth, Origins and Redemption, is out now, published by IVP.