Complementarity

One of the major roots of division between some liberals and conservatives is their view of gender roles. The disagreement is played out on several levels. First, in considering the ordination of women, second, in considering same-sex blessings and marriage, and, in more traditionalist areas, in considering what sorts of jobs women should do in the family and in the broader society. The more liberal position is frequently described as egalitarian and is, broadly speaking, rooted in passages like Gal 3:28 (There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.) The more conservative position is generally described as complementarian and might be summed up by saying that men and women have separate but equal dignity. The complementarian view is the piece of theological anthropology I want to focus on for the moment.

Biblically, complementarianism is based on a more or less "plain meaning" reading of the curses in Genesis 3:16 (To the woman [God] said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.").

Broadening the scope to the way men and women relate to one another in scripture the complementarian view is reinforced by the repeated instances in which the "point" of the woman in the story is her child, children, or ability to have children. This shows up in the fighting between Leah and Rachel, who both want to give the most children to Jacob. It shows up with the other Patriarch’s wives as well, although it is normally less dramatic. It shows up earlier when Hannah begs the Lord to give her a child (the prophet and judge Samuel). Even the story of Ruth can be read to suggest that women need to have a husband and/or are made important by their children since Ruth was the grandmother of King David (note: I think it's a mistake to take this conclusion from Ruth for a variety of reasons, including the degree of faithfulness Ruth shows her mother in law Naomi and the challenge the book of Ruth provides to the laws against mixed marriages given in Ezra, since Ruth being a gentile would call into question King David's Jewish-ness according to Ezra's laws). The stories of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38), and David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12) can also be read in to support the contention that women's roles are primarily those of wife and mother.

In the New Testament support for complementarity is derived largely from the pastoral epistles and the psuedo-Pauline epistles, notably 1 Timothy 2:11-15 (11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.), Ephesians 5:22-24 (22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.), and Colossians 3:18 (Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.). There are other similar passages in the various Pauline letters including 1 Corinthians 14:33b-34 (As in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.), which is only occasion on which this view appears in an undisputedly original Pauline letter.

Turning from Scripture, to the common practice of the societies in which the Church has been present, it has been very common for women to be given inferior roles and kept out of power in all but a few cases (notably Eleanor of Aquitaine and Queen Elizabeth I). Women were frequently treated as a man's property by the secular law and generally couldn't inherit or control property. This was defended in a number of ways including reference to Scripture, including those listed above. The more philosophical approach explaining why women were subject to men in ancient times depended on the Greco-Roman view of gender. Interestingly, the Greco-Roman view held that there was only one sex, male, and that women were defective men (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae I, 92, ad 1, in which Aquinas agrees with Aristotle's De Gener. ii. 3 which says that women are defective men, although Aquinas holds that this is only true when considering the birth of any particular woman, since the supposed defectiveness of women encourages the recognition that hierarchy is good for humanity.)

This last point, the Greco-Roman view of gender, should give complementarians reason to be concerned, because the Greco-Roman view is emphatically not complementarian, although it supports the contention that men and women have different roles in society. The ancient view supports the separate roles by insisting that men are smarter and/or more to be honored than women for what would be described as something like genetic causes in today’s science. Even a cursory examination of current science, however, simply overturns the notion that men are inherently superior to women. It also overturns the biology of that era which held, for example, that which direction the wind was coming from at the time of conception altered the final gender of the child. It is worth pointing out, however, that modern science doesn't necessarily overturn the notion of the unity of humanity with sex being a variation within the species, although ancient authorities would not necessarily put it that way.

If complementarity isn’t really traditional (and if we want don’t want to hold that women are inferior to men I don’t think we can hold that it is traditional) then perhaps we can find alternative readings of the passage in Genesis without being disloyal to scripture. As it happens, an alternate reading of Genesis 3:16 isn’t hard to find. The passage could easily be an etiology explaining why women weren’t given positions of authority and why childbirth is painful.

The rest of the passages used to support complementarity can be treated as historically bound without much difficulty.

If this is so, perhaps conservatives should give a more egalitarian view of gender roles serious consideration.

Jon