Curated by It’s That Part™ — Originally published by Faith and Proverbs on .
Sometime in the seventh century BC, Semonides of Amorgos wrote a poem providing a systematic and quasi-scientific classification of wives primarily as animals. Among the 10 types are the sow (her home, clothing, and body are always filthy), the horse (pretty but there’s nothing more to her), and the dog (who’s begging to be kicked). The bee alone of the 10 types is good. This kind of scientific misogyny reached its height in the writings of Aristotle.
That there are so many conversations about gender in evangelical churches today is, in fact, something the Judeo-Christian value system has wrought—an admission that God made both men and women in his image. Alas, few topics among Christians today are as explosively divisive as debates over the roles of men and women at home and in the church.
Conversations about whether women should serve in pastoral leadership positions, in particular, seem to always be at fever pitch. Complementarity: Dignity, Difference, and Interdependence by Gregg R. Allison, professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, facilitates a broadened perspective that will inform better debates.
Allison asks big-picture questions that change the direction of the conversation. What if we temporarily set aside the discussion about female pastors and think first about male and female in the church more broadly? What if both egalitarians and complementarians get something right—but also something wrong—in their considerations about men and women at home and in the church?
Allison’s definition of complementarity is distinct from a traditional understanding: “Complementarity is God’s design for his male and female image bearers to fill out and mutually support one another relationally, familially, vocationally, and ecclesially for their individual and corporate flourishing. Complementarity affirms three principles: equal dignity, significant differentiation, and flourishing interdependence” (xiii). Though Allison’s perspective is still closest to complementarianism, his focus on the essence rather than the function of men and women may offer a new way forward for productive conversations between complementarians and egalitarians.
Tracing Historical Narratives
The exploration begins by considering how different Western societies viewed women vis-à-vis men from the ancient Greco-Roman world to the present. The result is bleak: Sex polarity and a prevailing view of women’s inferiority—whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual—is present to varying degrees in thinkers from Plato and Aristotle on into late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and even the present. The more recent feminism waves, at the same time, have swerved in the other extreme, insisting on women’s equality to men in all matters but demanding significant costs in return.
Both contemporary egalitarianism and complementarianism cannot help but react to this historical background in their own ways. Yet the range of responses extends beyond those two options. Allison highlights a critical distinction: Complementarianism is different from the abusive patriarchy of Bill Gothard and his ilk. This is an important point to keep in mind because so many egalitarian critics of complementarianism accuse it of patriarchy and equate both with abuse.
Following this groundwork, Allison explains how his vision of complementarity differs from both complementarianism and egalitarianism. He’s concerned, for instance, that excessive focus on function within complementarianism makes the roles of husband and wife into identities. This can muddy male-female relationships outside of marriage, where the question of authority may not apply. While both complementarians and egalitarians can find biblical examples to support their stances, both also have to explain some examples away. Complementarity is an effort to more holistically explain all the biblical data.
Men and women are equal in dignity and equal in spiritual and intellectual gifts. The church needs both.
In this overview and an extensive analysis of Old Testament and New Testament passages, we see that “everything about human beings as divine image bearers is gendered” (462). People always interact with each other as men and women, and the Bible includes a broad range of types of interactions, positive and negative. Men and women are equal in dignity and equal in spiritual and intellectual gifts. The church needs both. But Allison doesn’t attempt to resolve the battle over whether female pastors are biblical. He highlights another important conversation: seeing the value of both men and women in service to the church, to their families, and to this fallen world.
Identifying Discontinuities
These 500 pages of earnest research, some of it likely a product of decades-long reflection are helpful. However, as a historian, I took issue with one historical conclusion from Allison. His historical overview, based almost exclusively on Prudence Allen’s two-volume survey The Concept of Woman, offers no significant distinction between the negative view of women in pagan antiquity and in the early church and beyond. But there was a break.
Yes, Aristotle in particular took scientific misogyny to another level. Yet many early church fathers wrote lovingly about the care of widows and unmarried dedicated virgins, expressing respect and concern for them as treasured persons that’s simply inconceivable in the pagan world. Historian Kyle Harper has written about the difference that Christianity made in the treatment of women and sexuality in the early church. And as Allison himself shows, the New Testament has a merciful view of women.
We don’t see a straightforward continuity of the problematic treatment of women from antiquity to the present, seamlessly transitioning from the pagan world into Christianity. Rather, as Aristotle’s influence entered Christian thought more firmly toward the end of late antiquity and into the Middle Ages, views of women became more Aristotelian and less Christlike. Misogyny isn’t biblical but Aristotelian. And we see a new variation of such Aristotelian-style misogyny now in transgender ideology, which convinces some women that they really are, as Aristotle said, mutilated males. In response, they mutilate their God-given bodies to make them more like the male ideal. This too has ramifications for how we think about men and women in the church—after all, such developments seep into the church too.
Many early church fathers wrote lovingly about the care of widows and unmarried dedicated virgins, expressing respect and concern for them as treasured persons.
Allison is right to think that the history of how different thinkers have viewed men and women matters, but he doesn’t fully address the ramifications of that history. The recent work of scholars like Abigail Favale has shown the misogyny latent in modern transgender ideology. Novelist J. K. Rowling has been no less outspoken about this issue, showing that the concern is not limited to the church alone. Still, ultimately, this is a theological development, a disastrous false anthropology that is damaging for both men and women in our society.
Arising in response, a new type of conservative Christian feminism, sex-realist feminism, offers key affirmation that God made men’s and women’s bodies different—and this is good. No, Aristotle, my ability to carry a baby to term is not a sign of my inadequacy as an incomplete man. It is a sign of God’s beautiful—and different—design and purpose for my life. Bringing together writers concerned with these themes is Fairer Disputations, an online magazine of sex-realist feminism. In her introductory editorial, Serena Sigillito explains, “You can’t be a human being without a body, and every body is either male or female.”
Complementarity, as Allison explains it, overlaps with sex-realist feminism along three main dimensions: the equal dignity of men and women, “significant differentiation between men and women,” and the need for “flourishing interdependence between men and women” (466). But sex-realist feminism emphasizes more firmly the importance of women’s physical bodies in defining their experience—at home, in society, and in the church.
The worst modern developments for women have been technologies that have denied the capacity for their physical bodies to be what God has made them to be. Christians will also recognize these technologies as incompatible with their faith. It will be interesting to see how the conversation unfolds between those weary of an inappropriate focus on either essence or function. It’s time to bring both aspects together.
Overall, I appreciated Allison’s exhortation to embrace nuance and reflection over fights. Men and women aren’t interchangeable, and the flourishing of churches, households, and communities requires the joyful flourishing of both for God’s glory. Allison’s book offers a needed path forward for productive dialogue among church leaders about the beauty of collaboration and complementarity within the body of Christ.
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Originally sourced via trusted media partner. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/complementarity-difference-interdependence/
