Reconsidering gender : evangelical perspectives

225 Pages·2011·1.86 MB·English

by  Habets

Reconsidering Gender
Evangelical Perspectives
E M H B W
DITED BY YK ABETS AND EULAH OOD
Reconsidering Gender
Evangelical Perspectives
Copyright © 2011 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical
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www. wipfandstock.com isbn 13: 978-1-60899-547-9
eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-689-0
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
Reconsidering gender : evangelical perspectives / edited by Myk Habets and Beulah Wood.
xviii + 230 p. ; cm. 23 — Includes bibliographical references.
isbn 13: 978-1-60899-547-9
1. Women in Christianity. 2. Women and Religion. 3. Feminist theology. 4. Feminism—Religious
aspects—Christianity. 5. Evangelicalism. 6. Gender identity. I. Title.
BR1642 R45 2011
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
This volume is dedicated to the many pastors—women and men—who
labor so faithfully in the Lord’s vineyard to bring God’s Word to
God’s people in God-honouring, Bible-affirming, and life-changing
ways.
To Christ, the head of the church, be all glory.
Foreword
TWO THEOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO CHANGE
I years, one of the most momentous social changes known in
N THE LAST FORTY
human history has taken place—women’s liberation. A number of factors
came together in the late 1960s to open the door for this revolution. First of all,
women caught up in the education stakes and then gained a small lead. Girls
today do better on average at school and now over fifty percent of graduates are
women. When brute strength mattered more than brainpower in the workplace,
men had a big advantage. Now that brainpower has triumphed, the two sexes are
more evenly matched. Then the Pill became available. Women could, from this
time on, control their own fertility. They could decide when to have a family and
when they did not want to get pregnant.
As a result of these two changes, women joined the work force in large
numbers and soon were involved in leadership positions at all levels. Now we
are not at all surprised to meet a female judge, airline pilot, bus driver, managing
director, builder, prime minister or president, mining engineer or professor.
What this opening up of well paid work opportunities for women has meant is
that for the first time in human history women can support themselves and, if
they have children, their family as well. They are no longer dependent on men.
This monumental social revolution has not been easy for women to work out in
theory or practice, extremely hard for men to adjust to, difficult for business to
implement, and hugely challenging for Christians in general (and evangelicals in
particular) to respond to theologically and biblically.
For long centuries, Christians simply reflected and endorsed the prevailing
cultural norms of society, arguing that women were subordinated to men in all
spheres of life—the home, the church, and every part of society. Theologians
and clergy, along with everyone else until the turn of the twentieth century and
often up to the 1960s, generally spoke of women as “inferior” and of men as
“superior” and the Bible was interpreted to teach this. Many interpretations of
key texts were demeaning to women. Tertullian interpreted Gen 3 as a reminder
to women that “each of you is Eve. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the first
deserter of the divine law.” Calvin concluded Paul taught that women “are born
to obey, for all wise men have always rejected the government of women as an
unnatural monstrosity.” And as late as 1957 Donald Guthrie in a Tyndale
evangelical commentary wrote, that 1 Tim 2:13 teaches “the superiority of men
over women” and verse 14 “the greater aptitude of the weaker sex to be lead
astray.”
PROFOUND CULTURAL CHANGE AND THE INTERPRETATION OF THE
BIBLE
In the face of this monumental social change, all Christians, including all
evangelicals, were forced to rethink their teaching on women and their
interpretation of the key texts that they had appealed to in the past to subordinate
women. Profound changes in how people see the world always force believers to
rethink their theology. When a cultural worldview changes Christians have to
distinguish between what they believe as those seeking to be guided by the Bible
and what they tacitly believe as those living in a given culture. This has
happened many times in Christian history. When everyone thought the world
was flat, theologians read the Bible to teach this. When everyone thought the sun
revolved around the earth, the Bible was read to teach this. When everyone
thought the world was created in seven literal days about 6000 years ago,
Christians read the Bible to teach this. Changed worldviews that are compelling
have always forced Christians to rethink what the Bible is teaching. Importantly,
these changes in worldview did not lead to the rejection of any biblical teaching,
simply to a re-reading of what it actually said.
The change in thinking on women is of this kind. It was easy for Christians
until modern times to think the Bible endorsed the subordination of women
because they lived in a patriarchal context where men ran the world. And
because the Bible was written by those living in a taken-for-granted patriarchal
context, what they wrote reflected that world. Only when the world changed did
Christians see clearly for the first time that there were profound and principled
statements in the Bible that spoke of the equality of the two sexes in creation and
in Christ.
OPPOSING INTERPRETATIONS OF WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ON THE
SEXES
Confronted by the reality of this far-reaching and profound change in women’s
status and job opportunities, evangelicals developed after the 1970s two new and
competing interpretations of what the Bible said on the man-woman relationship
and now these two positions are firmly fixed in form and content.
Some evangelicals concluded that 1 Tim 2:11–14, supported by 1 Cor 11:3–
16; 14:33–34; and Eph 5:22–23 quite clearly taught that God had given
“headship” to men. The Timothy text is pivotal to this position. On this basis it is
concluded that two things indicate that woman was set under man from the
beginning, that woman was created second and that she was deceived by the
devil in the garden of Eden. Thus male “headship” is the unchanging and
unchangeable ideal that pleases God. They say Jesus endorsed this “headship of
man” by appointing twelve men and no women to be the first apostles. The
many references to women leaders in the Bible such as Deborah and the prophet
Huldah in the Old Testament, and Priscilla and Junia in the New Testament, are
explained by arguing that their leadership was of a subordinate kind under a
man. Finally, appeal is made to a supposed hierarchical ordering in the Trinity
where the Father commands and the Son obeys, arguing that this prescribes how
men and women are to relate.
To complete this novel post-1970s reformulated reading of the Bible, three
important changes were made from the way in which women’s subordination
had been spoken of in the past. First, new language was introduced to make this
theological position sound acceptable to modern ears. Rather than speaking of
women as “inferior” or subordinate, and men as “superior,” as had been the case
in the past, the terms “different” and “role” were used. What the Bible teaches is
that men and women have “different roles” by which it is meant, men have the
“headship” role, and women the subordinate “role.” Second, instead of the
subordination of women being universal, in the home, the church, and society
—all of creation—as one would think if women’s subordination is grounded in
the created order, the assertion is made that women are only subordinated in the
home and the church—part of creation. Third, and only from the 1990s, this
reading of the Bible was called, “the complementarian position,” again to sound
acceptable to modern ears.
Other evangelicals developed a very different way of reading the Bible in this
new social context. They insisted that the right place to begin any study of what
the Bible says on the sexes is to begin where the Bible begins—the first chapter
of Genesis. Here the primary and fundamental truth is revealed. God made men
and women alike in his image and alike he gave them rule over creation and
alike he made them responsible for procreation (Gen 1:27–28). Gen 2 and 3 are
then read in the light of Gen 1. This view rejects the two suggestions that being
created “second” and Eve being deceived point to the subordination of women.
It bases its rejection on their incompatibility with the teaching of Gen 1:27–28,
on the plain meaning of the text of Gen 2 and 3, and the fact that the
subordination of women is explicitly a consequence of the fall (Gen 3:16).
Rather than the subordination of women being the God-given ideal, these
evangelicals conclude that it reflects what is “not good,” not the ideal, something
not pleasing to God and as such is to be opposed by Christians. Rather than
finding Jesus supporting male headship, they argue that Jesus affirms in word
and deed the equality of the two differentiated sexes.
Luke and Paul’s theology of ministry, in which the Spirit’s gifting trumps
gender, shows that the apostles believed that in Christ there was a “new
creation” (2 Cor 5:17) where social, racial, and sexual differences are
transcended (Gal 3:28). The numerous examples of women leaders in the New
Testament churches illustrate the apostolic theology of gift-based not gender-
based ministry in practice. The three texts in which Paul regulates the ministry
of women in some way (1 Cor 11:3–16; 14:33–34; 1 Tim 2:11–12) they take as
speaking to exceptional situations where women were doing something to
disrupt the life of the church. In this reading of the Bible, 1 Tim 2:11–12 is
studied last because it is, when reading the Bible chronologically, the last
significant text on women. When we come last to this text, what it says stands
out like the proverbial sore thumb. Nothing has prepared us for this exceptional
comment that is so negative about the ministry of women. The obscuring
language of differing “roles” is not used by evangelicals who read the Bible in
this way, and their self designation is unambiguous, “evangelical egalitarian.”
After all the essays in this book were submitted the definitive exegetical study
of all the texts relevant to this debate was published: Philip Payne’s Man and
Woman One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). His exegesis is a “must read” for those who
want to know what the Bible teaches on the man-woman relationship. It stands
apart and above all other books on this question.
At first the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to “women’s lib,” but
significantly in 1987 it made an about turn. In his binding encyclical, Mulieris
Dignitatem: On the Dignity of Women, Pope John Paul II rejected the Catholic
teaching held for centuries that in creation God subordinated women to men. His
statement insisted instead on their complete equality. Taking much the same
interpretive approach as egalitarian evangelicals do, he maintained that in
creation men and women were made “essential” equals, the subordination of
women being entirely due to human sin and as such is to be opposed when
possible by Christians. However on the question of leadership in the church John
Paul II was not consistent. Appealing to the fact that the twelve apostles were all
men, and to the traditional Catholic idea that the twelve apostles were the first