On being "Equal in Being, Unequal in Role"

(Note: Scot McKnight has been doing a series on women in ministry for several weeks. I have been faithfully reading and commenting. However, I must confess that I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I keep repeating the same conversations over and over as people come and go. So instead of rewriting the different versions of the same statement, I thought I might do a few posts here on my blog so I can either link or quote them on demand. So here is the first one. We will see how many other posts follow.)

Today, we repeatedly hear folks who believe women are to be subordinate to men say that men and women are "Equal in being, unequal in role/function." This formulation is false in how the proponents use it, and I will demonstrate why.

It is claimed by teachers like Wayne Grudem and John Piper that it is a woman's "role" to be subordinate to her husband. Subordination does not imply inferiority. Examples are given. The president of the United States is in authority over us. That doesn't mean we are inferior or less than he is. We are simply subordinate in our role. So why do some get bent out of shape over women being subordinate to men? Why do people have such a problem with authority and hierarchy?

There are two types of subordination:

1. Subordination limited in scope and duration.
2. Subordination unlimited in scope and duration.

Is it possible for one of two equal beings to be subordinate in function to the other? Yes, as long as that subordination is limited in scope and duration. The example of the president is a very good one. The president's authority is limited in scope (only to the execution of his constitutional duties) and for a limited duration (no more than two elected terms.) A police officer is another example. Their authority is limited to law enforcement and only while employed in an official capacity. A parent has a virtually unlimited scope of authority over a child at birth, but that authority wanes over time and is for a fixed duration that ends when the child reaches maturity. Officers to soldiers, bosses to workers, and coaches to players are just a few more examples.

There was a time in Western society when we did not have this idea of limited authority. We had the divine right of Kings. The King's authority (and that of his descendants) was complete (unlimited in scope) and eternal (unlimited in duration). The people under him were his subjects. They were in subjugation to him. They were his subordinates and inferiors.

Those who teach women's subordination to men say that woman was made for subordination to man as her "role." It is of her being (ontic) to be subordinate to a man. Here, subordination is unlimited in scope and unlimited in duration. (It is the "divine right of husbands," no matter how benevolent those husbands may be.) If someone is subordinate in an unlimited scope and duration, they are by definition not equal to the one they are subordinated to and, therefore, not equal in being! It is the subjugation of one class of human beings to another.

Equal in being, unequal in role for limited scope and duration? Yes!
Equal in being, unequal in role for unlimited scope and duration? Illogical.

Some hierarchicalists will raise the issue of the priests and Levites. This was a case of God setting apart men to be leaders and women to be followers. First, the priests and Levites role's were restricted to the limited sphere of offering sacrifices and temple matters. (It might also be added that God's primary oracles in the Old Testament included prophets, including women and men.) Second, while the practice persisted for generations, it was not eternal. It was brought to an end with Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We are all (women and men) now a Royal Priesthood, and those limitations are gone. This is a Type 1 subordination, not a Type 2.

Finally, the hierarchialilsts will argue that Jesus was subordinate to the Father. Here again, we have a Type 1 Subordination. The subordination of the Son to the Father was limited to the Son's work in the redeeming creation of humanity. As Philippians 2:5-11 makes so eloquently clear, Jesus gave up his equality with God to become a servant even unto death, only to be raised back up to full equality with the Father as "Lord" at the end of his work. The unified historic teaching of the Church since the fourth century is forcefully stated in the most widely affirmed confession of the Reformation, the Second Helvetic Confession, written in 1566:

“We also condemn all heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate to another in the Trinity, and that their is something unequal in it, a greater or a less, something corporeal or corporeally conceived, something different with respect to character or will, something mixed or solitary, as if the Son and Holy Spirit were the affections and properties of one God the Father, as the Monarchians, Novatians, Praxeas, Patripassians, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Aetius, Macedonius, Anthropomorphites, Arius, and such like, have thought." (Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 2, Heresies.)

Other than proslavery theologians in nineteenth-century America, who taught unequal in being and unequal in role (although not in this language), I know of no other significant departure from this confession among those that have remained part of orthodox Christianity. The "Equal being, unequal role" formulation is an invention of the early 1980s, and it has emerged as an attempt to shore up the traditional practice of subordinating women to men while trying not to look too offensive to a culture that values equality.

The fact is that no category of believers is subordinate to another in the body of Christ in the sense of the Type 2 subordination I described. However, each of us is to submit to every other member of the body of Christ for now and for eternity.

I'll have more to write someday on Christ and subordination, but that will do for now.

Comments

[Susan]

Thanks for posting on this, Michael.

...Groundhog Day... indeed! I have felt the same way, and gave up.

[Terry Tiessen]

Michael,

It looks to me as though the Second Helvetic Confession was condemning those who posited an eternal ontological subordination, as Origen had done centuries earlier. Are you sure that you are not misusing the Confession and misrepresenting contemporary Reformed scholars when you suggest that Reformed scholars today who argue for ontological equality with relational order are contradicting the Confession?

[ZZMike]

I think Kenneth E. Bailey settled the argument - as if it needs settling - with this:

Women i n the New Testament

...

[Cheryl at MM Outreach]

Michael,

It is a good thing what you are doing by putting the information on your blog and then linking to it if someone wants to dialogue with you. I too have seen the same arguments over and over that have been so aptly refuted. I think it is good to write fresh things on issues that haven't been covered but the ground hog thing.....I'm having some nightmares myself.

For me this is all new. The last three years I have dialogued only with complementarians. I figured there must be *some* truth lovers in that group. I also believed that if one has a good argument (me I hope) then the opposition is welcome to try to tear it apart. If the opposition can show me where I am wrong - wonderful. But if they can't show me where I am wrong, then maybe it should cause them to evaluate their position, right? Well, that's how I think, but apparently most people don't think like I do. So here is where it got me - when I made a good argument they didn't want to dialogue anymore. I was always nice, because that's how Christians should be. But I have been shunned and told that I am going to hell for teaching the bible to men. I have had wonderful friends leave me because they apparently didn't want to be friends any longer with someone who is sinning against God by teaching men.

So now I'm doing what has been suggested to me. I'm now dialoguing with egalitarians. I suppose it's like trying to preach to the choir but I haven't had anyone recently tell me that I am a terrible sinner on my way to hell. Ah, that feels good to be a person again!

Michael, keep up the good job and don't let anyone get you down!!

Cheryl

[Michael Kruse]

"Are you sure that you are not misusing the Confession and misrepresenting contemporary Reformed scholars..."

Well, if so it wouldn't be the first time I goofed. :)

But I am going to need some serious persuading. You mentioned the term "relational order." When I say "My office got messy so I brought some order to it." There is relational order in the Trinity but the word "order" is not a synonym for "hierarchy." There is no eternal hierarchical order of power and authority in the Trinity. The persons of the Trinity are of one mind and will and to rank them in a hierarchy necessarily divides the persons into separate individuals thus destroying the unity of Trinity.

The bottom line is this. Up until the 1970s it was argued the women are to be subordinate to men because women are in one way or another inferior to men. Conservative Evangelicals like Gudem and Piper saw the cultural decay happening around them and decided that traditional values like women’s subordination were key to halting this decay. However, “women as inferior” would no longer fly in American culture in the late twentieth century. Therefore, these conservative evangelicals began with an outcome and then tortured and twisted Scripture, and historic doctrine, to arrive at the completely novel and totally illogical idea of equal in being but unequal in role unlimited in scope and duration. No one, no one, in the history of Church teaching has held this position until the 1980s. What we have is an agenda (i.e., subordination of women) redefining central doctrines of the church. This has not emerged out of some genuine interest in exegeting the Scripture and letting our agendas be defined by Scripture.

If the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father in a hierarchical relationship, then the Son is not equal to the Father. To argue otherwise is Orwellian doublespeak. “All are equal but some are more equal than others.” That is what the Second Helvetic Confession rejects. I don’t see how it misuses the Confession or misrepresents the theological positions.

Ben Witherington had a good (and lengthy) post on this which you can find at this link:

The Eternal Subordination of Christ and of Women

(I hope I am not coming off too aggresive but I need to let you know that I find this whole development deeply disturbing and it is hard for me to be irenic about it.)

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks Cheryl. How terribly painful to have something so wonderful to share but people have shut their ears. I think of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. I also think about the adage that you can't reason people out of a position that haven't reasoned their way into.

My experience is a little different. I have a wide range of interests and depending which topic I am a "fundamentalist" or a flaming liberal. When I was in grad school studying sociology in the 1980s I would go to Church and be put at arms length because I was a "liberal." I would go to the sociology dept. and for my first semester and one half I was largely disinvited from dept. informal events becasue I was one of the those "Evangelicals." I have been living in this tension a long time but I know what you mean about the desire to belong.

Peace to you and thanks for your encouragement.

[Fred Harrell]

Michael,
Your posts help me immensely on this issue, and others I know who are thinking this issue through. Keep posting on it! Thanks.
Fred

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thank you Fred. I appreciate the encouragement.

[Rusty B]

The illogical proposition that one can be equal and subordinate was immediately spotted by Arius while reviewing Origen's theories of the Trinity. He held that Christ could not be subordinate and co-eternal. Hence, he opted for a created being so that the issue of Christ would be logically consistent. Athanasius corrected the heresy (Arian) by stating that Christ was NOT subordinate and was co-eternal - completely equal to and with God. (New Dictionary of Theology, "Trinity", pp 692-693).

I believe Michael is using the Confession correctly and he correctly represents Grudem's position as well as that of many of the complementarians. The issue is logical inconsistency and a departure from the faith once delivered. The subordination of Christ has always been a heresy. The new wrinkle, introduced by Knight in 1977, hides it better, but it is still a departure from the confessions and faith.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Very well said, Rusty! I am thinking of taking your comment here and making a post out of it. Short, sweet and to the point.

[molly]

I just posted on your post, Mr. Kruse, over at my blog... You are awesome! Can't thank you enough for your time and "repeatability" on this issue over at Jesus Creed and here. :)

[Michael W. Kruse]

You are certainly welcome. I have struggled with these issues for more than two decades. My main objective is to shorten the learning curve for others who may be asking similar questions.

(BTW, feel free to just call me Mike or Michael. I fear "Mr. Kruse" makes be sound much more respectable than is truly warranted. :) )

[molly]

lol...I meant the Mr. in the friendliest sort of way... :)

[Rod Bakker]

Mike,

Well thought out and quite convincing. Good work.

Rod Bakker
Quincy, IL

[Michael W. Kruse]

Hi Rod, good to hear from you. Thanks!

[Jeremy Pierce]

It's an interesting conspiracy theory, but I'm not buying it. Grudem and Piper surely did not start with an outcome. They started with scripture and tried to fit it with what is clear and remove what seems to be less clearly taught in scripture. This is the same things egalitarians think they are doing. It's just that Grudem and Piper see more in scripture than egalitarians do and thus don't want certain things removed. If certain things are clearly not taught in scripture, then why retain them when most people recognize them as wrong now? That same motivation runs in egalitarian and complementarian circles, and it's pretty lame to tar complementarians as doing something with a more corrupt motivation when it's the same motivation in both cases. I prefer to give people's motivations the benefit of the doubt, particularly when it's a Christian brother or sister.

As for the content, I think you've underestimated what scripture says about the hierarchy of the Trinity. Paul says in both I Corinthians 15 and Philippians 2 that Christ was glorified at his ascension and will be further glorified at his parousia. But he insists in I Cor 15 that he will indicate a permanency to his submission to the Father by turning the all things that have just been given to him back over to the Father again. That suggests to me that the Trinitarian hierarchy is in fact unlimited in duration, although it says nothing about scope.

(That's one limitation of your categorization. There are really four possibilities. You left out Type 3: "limited in scope, unlimited in duration" and Type 4: "unlimited in scope, limited in duration". Since you admit Type 3 for all believers, it might have been good to have that as a category.)

As for the issue of scope, I'm not sure there is any kind of unlimited scope submission except the submission of human beings to God. There is no human submission to humans that is unlimited in scope according to complementarians. Wife to husband submission does not include a husband's ability to dictate to his wife that she should not follow Christianity, for instance. Restrictions on women teaching are very clearly limited in scope, since they limit women teaching men, not women teaching anyone at all.

Given that elder roles and marriage roles are also not permanent (marriage ends at death, and I assume elder roles also do), it follows that complementarians also do not take gender roles to be permanent, at least in terms of one person being submissive to another in that kind of relationship. It's true that the more general submission to each other is permanent, but any kind of submission that might be taken to be hierarchical is surely not permanent, since the relationships in question aren't permanent in the form they are.

So in the end I'm not sure how complementarian views aren't just another kind of Type 1 submission.

[Michael Kruse]

Hi Jeremy,

As to your first paragraph, it has been the presumption throughout history and across cultures, until the past century or so, that women are in some way inferior to men. (Less rational, too emotional, easily deceived, etc.) This was true of church leaders throughout Church history. You see it throughout their writings. Recent generations have become increasingly aware of the error of this assumption. That has raised a challenge for the Church and forced it to go back to the Word. Non-hierarchical complementarians like myself have come to a conclusion that calls for a change in practice. Complementarians (hierarchicalists) have come to a conclusion that retains the practice but alters central doctrines of the church. Nowhere prior to the 1980s to we have this “Equal in being, Unequal in role” formulation. So you tell me what the motive is for this formulation?

As to 1 Corinthians 15, scripture interprets scripture. Jesus is co-equal with God (Rev. 4:11, 22:1) Christ is seated on the right-hand of God. (Mark 14:62) This is not a spatial representation but a euphemism for equality of power and authority. The Father puts all things under Christ’s feet and Christ in turn makes him self subject to God. Yet we also know that he co-equal with God. Therefore, Christ subjects himself not only to the father but to the Trinity and therefore himself.

Augustine from On the Trinity:

“Neither may we think that Christ shall so give up the Kingdom of God, even the Father, as that He shall take it away from Himself. For some vain talkers have thought even this. For when it is said ‘He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father,’ He Himself is not excluded; because He is one God together with the Father.”

This is not the first time these issues have been raised in Church in history. The doctrine of the Trinity is one the most complex doctrines in the Bible. The ability to draw out one set of passages to support one position or another to support another is easy to do. That is why it took decades in the fourth century to come to a precise conclusion about how to word things in the creeds. What I find more than a little disturbing is the unwillingness of complementarian teachers to go back and honestly engage church history on this issue. When we fail to do so we merely keep repeating the same divisions and debates over and over. There is not hierarchy in the Trinity whatsoever. That is as established as any doctrine can be in Church history.

You mentioned two more categories.

Type 3: "limited in scope, unlimited in duration"
Type 4: "unlimited in scope, limited in duration".

I will grant your type 4 has possibilities. Babies to parents might be an example unlimited subordination but even here the nearly every culture places limitations on what parents can do. However, type 3 is not possible. If someone is eternally subordinate in even a limited way then they are not truly equal. It is possible for there to be differentiation with ranking those differences in a hierarchical arrangement. There are differences in the persons of the Trinity but they are not ranked hierarchically according to those differences. The members of the Trinity operate out of one mind and one will. Period! To place one in subordination to the other is to say that they have minds and wills that operate independently of each other. It is essentially polytheism. That is why suborinationism is heresy.

But the reality is that the nature of the inner-workings of the Trinity has nothing to say to us about subordination between men and women. If you want to argue that women are subordinate to men, as Christ is to the Father, then you must also acknowledge the husband will never instruct his wife to do anything she has not already chosen to do, and the husband will want exactly the same things as his wife. The husband and wife must be of one mind and one will in every minute detail. That is, of course, unless you have a model of the ontological Trinity (as opposed to the “economic Trinity,” the work of limited duration in redeeming creation and humanity) that breaks the person of the Trinity in to three beings with individual wills.

Finally, you raise the question about eternal subordination not being accurate because roles my change when we die. Fair enough. Lets look at our earthly existence.

Genesis 1:27 says male and female are equally created in God’s image. Complementarians affirm this but say male and female have been assigned different “roles.” Men lead, women are to be subordinate. Frequently added to the woman’s distinct role is bearing children. Thus, while being equally in the image of God, men and women play different roles ordained by God.

Let us be clear about a couple of things. First, “subordinate” is not a role. It is relational posture. Citizen, private, or football player are roles (that may be in a subordinate status to other roles like police officer, sergeant, or coach.) There is no role called “suborndinate.”

Second, it is critical to be specific what we mean when we say “image of God.” Francis Schaffer used to use two lists to illustrate what it meant to be in the image of God using two lists:

List 1:

God
…….
Humanity
Animals
Plants
Matter

This highlights that there are ways in which God is “other” than us and we are like nature.

List 2:

God
Humanity
…….
Animals
Plants
Matter

This second list illustrates that there are ways in which we are like God that nothing else is.

God created us for relationship and dominion. Male and female are in God’s image and are to be coregents over creation. At a minimum, male and female exercise abstract reason, moral discernment, creative thinking, and use leadership skills, among other things. In all these things they are equal. Therefore, when we say that a woman’s reason, moral discernment and other image bearing capacities must always be under a man’s, we deny the very equality of being in God’s image. Women are not equally in the image of God. The woman is a lesser image.

We also need to revisit the two lists above and ask which list the childbearing “role” belongs. It belongs on the first list. Childbearing is not a uniquely human trait. It is a mammalian trait shared with countless other species. Raising children is a distinctly human activity and it is the responsibility of both fathers and mothers!

Therefore, let us revisit the complementarian claim:

“The man’s role is to lead and provide while the woman’s role is to be subordinate and have children.”

This formula effectively reserves all those capacities to males that define human beings as image bearers of God and relegates women to roles shared by countless mammals on the face of the planet.

It will not do to say that God created male and female equal but then placed them in hierarchy. This puts ontology (the way something was created) in direct conflict with teleology (the purpose for which it was created). It is to say God created woman to be equal in image but intended for her to live otherwise. Nowhere else in Scripture and theology do we find this kind of divide between ontology and teleology!

The idea that male and female is in the image of God but have “different” (hierarchical) roles does not hold up under scrutiny.

This is why I don’t believe that the complementarian position is just another kind of Type 1 submission.

[Peggy]

Michael, I don't know whether you even track this post anymore...but this is the thought that gives me "groundhog day" nightmares: what does that do with women who are neither married nor have children?

I struggled with this for years...and I was blessed to finally be married and had the first of our three children at 39!

But I suffered terribly under the judgement that "something must be wrong with me" that I was not married.

Anyway, I appreciate your scolarship and your tenacity in defense of your sisters.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I am indeed tracking.

My wife and I are without kids. Over the years we have sensed some of this same misfittedness (If that is a word.) Presently my wife is employed and I am not (by choice) to pursue some other things. I have had a couple of men along the way tell me that I was not being a faithful husband because I was not providing for my wife. This sacralizing of 1950's gender roles as Biblical doctrine is one the most destructive developments in the church today. It damages countless people in a myriad of ways.

We are first and foremost image bearers of God with the capcity to reason, discern, and love, as well as serve and lead each other. Everything else is secondary in my estimation.

[Andi]

"This sacralizing of 1950's gender roles as Biblical doctrine is one the most destructive developments in the church today."

Thank. You.

Really. THANK YOU. I have lost count of the number of times I've thought that myself, both in the pursuit of my Bachelor's degree and when reading articles/books by Christians who would have us idealise the bheaviour and ideals of this period as something to actually aspire to!

I would also add that the tendency I have seen among many conservative/fundamentalist Christians to glorify the Victorian era and its prescriptions for behaviour is in many ways just as detrimental to the Church and Christian marriages as the same tendency to idealise the 50s (and it becomes downright appalling when any Christian scholar who has spent any time actually studying either time period hears them glorified as some sort of Biblical ideal).

I have only just come across your blog via a Google search on non-hierarchical complementariansm, and I'm completely thrilled with what I've seen so far. I'm really looking forward to doing a lot of reading here!

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Andi! I'm glad you found this helpful.

You might be interested in my series (Book Review) of Discovering Biblical Equality as well as my series on the Household of God (particularly the posts about the New Testament Household Codes.)