As I said in my introductory post, any Complimentarian argument, sustained long enough, eventually goes back to the Creation and Fall accounts in Genesis 1-3. It is here, according to Complimentarians, that God established the hierarchy of roles between the genders. This is why it's such a critical topic: in Complimentarianism male leadership isn't just a social construct—it's a part of the created order originally made by God. In this view, leadership is an essential part of masculinity: literally what men were created to be. Likewise with submission for women. Its easy to see how this view could easily spill over into a view of complete inequality, wherein women are created as inferior humans who need to "learn their place"—which is sadly something women still have to put up with hearing from time to time in supposedly Christian society.
But where is this essential part of the Creation story? Where does Genesis say that women were created to follow and men to lead? Well, no where so clearly as Genesis 3:16:
An Egalitarian can read the passage that way, can see the domineering and abusive patriarchy that we observe throughout so much of history as a curse brought on as a consequence of sin. But the Complimentarian reading, again, must approach the passage inconsistently. Sure, thorns and thistles, death, decay, and extreme pain in childbirth are not the way things are meant to be. All these things, the Complimentarian acknowledges, are a part of the Curse and are distortions of God's perfect created order. But the domineering patriarchy from the very same verses? Somehow, that must be exactly the way God intended things!
When we have to be inconsistent like this and change the meaning from Curse to Created Order in the middle of a verse, it's a good hint that we're not reading the passage honestly. We're bringing in some outside idea and trying to mold the Bible to support our own views. An honest reading sees that "he shall rule over you" is a curse, a statement of how the world will be broken as a result of sin, just as much as the statement "you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
But this is only the most obvious place where Complimentarians see a subtext in Genesis supporting their position. Really, Complimentarians see and claim it everywhere, but most prominently in the following places:
1. Woman was Created for Man
In Genesis 2:18-25, the story of Eve's creation takes the form of a search by God for a "help-meet" for Adam (or, as other translations have it, a "helper fit for [or suitable for] him"). Woman, therefore was created to be man's helper. How exactly you want to take that varies. Some interpret it as meaning that woman is an accessory to man: unnecessary, and fit only to be a man's slave. That's an extreme view, and one attested no where else in scripture. More moderate interpretations have woman as an essential part of humankind, but one suited and created for supporting roles, rather than leadership. After all, you can't be a "helper" and still be a leader, right?
Well, perhaps not so much. See, the word translated "help-meet" is the Hebrew 'ezer. Anyone who's a fan of old hymns might recognize it. The old classic "Come Thou Fount" features the word in the form of a name:
In fact, in every occurrence of the word 'ezer in the Old Testament, except for two, the word is referring to God and His divine action of rescuing, delivering, sustaining, directing, and saving. The two other occurrences are in Genesis 2 and refer to womankind collectively in Eve. That is a radical perspective shift when it comes to thinking about woman being made for man!
If woman is an 'ezer—a term elsewhere only used to describe the miraculous intervention of God—then she is surely not an unnecessary accessory to man. She is certainly not his inferior. It is unthinkable to say she is his slave (is God Almighty our slave?!). Can we even say that she's a supporting actress, unfit to lead? Not honestly. God is certainly not limited to helping us in non-directive ways. In fact, we are very, very much in need of God's leadership and direction. Very frequently His role as our 'ezer takes the form of Him giving us divine leadership and direction through life's challenges. Why should we expect things to be different with woman, created to be an 'ezer to man herself? She may not always lead, especially after the Curse put domineering male authority as an obstacle in her life as surely as thistles were an obstacle to man, but leadership certainly is not beyond her created capabilities, purpose, or role as an 'ezer.
But where is this essential part of the Creation story? Where does Genesis say that women were created to follow and men to lead? Well, no where so clearly as Genesis 3:16:
To the woman he said, "...Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."Well, that's it folks! God has officially instituted the patriarchy as His divine will for all women everywhere! Show's over!...at least until we read the rest of the verse:
To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."That complicates things. You see, in context God's declaration of the patriarchy isn't part of His establishing the ideal way things are meant to be. It's part of the Curse, part of a passage where He goes about systematically breaking His perfect world so that Adam, Eve, and the Serpent will be forcibly confronted with the depth of their sin. For the man, the curse was hard labor, thorns and thistles, death, and eventual decay. For the woman, the curse was extreme pain in childbirth and domination by men. None of these things are the way the world was supposed to be. All of them represent a twisting of the created order by the sin that we, as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, brought into God's perfect world.
An Egalitarian can read the passage that way, can see the domineering and abusive patriarchy that we observe throughout so much of history as a curse brought on as a consequence of sin. But the Complimentarian reading, again, must approach the passage inconsistently. Sure, thorns and thistles, death, decay, and extreme pain in childbirth are not the way things are meant to be. All these things, the Complimentarian acknowledges, are a part of the Curse and are distortions of God's perfect created order. But the domineering patriarchy from the very same verses? Somehow, that must be exactly the way God intended things!
When we have to be inconsistent like this and change the meaning from Curse to Created Order in the middle of a verse, it's a good hint that we're not reading the passage honestly. We're bringing in some outside idea and trying to mold the Bible to support our own views. An honest reading sees that "he shall rule over you" is a curse, a statement of how the world will be broken as a result of sin, just as much as the statement "you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
But this is only the most obvious place where Complimentarians see a subtext in Genesis supporting their position. Really, Complimentarians see and claim it everywhere, but most prominently in the following places:
1. Woman was Created for Man
In Genesis 2:18-25, the story of Eve's creation takes the form of a search by God for a "help-meet" for Adam (or, as other translations have it, a "helper fit for [or suitable for] him"). Woman, therefore was created to be man's helper. How exactly you want to take that varies. Some interpret it as meaning that woman is an accessory to man: unnecessary, and fit only to be a man's slave. That's an extreme view, and one attested no where else in scripture. More moderate interpretations have woman as an essential part of humankind, but one suited and created for supporting roles, rather than leadership. After all, you can't be a "helper" and still be a leader, right?
Well, perhaps not so much. See, the word translated "help-meet" is the Hebrew 'ezer. Anyone who's a fan of old hymns might recognize it. The old classic "Come Thou Fount" features the word in the form of a name:
"Here I raise my Ebenezer: hither by Thy help I'm come!"Ebenezer, far from being simply a Charles Dickens character, is a Hebrew name from the Bible (1 Samuel 7:12, actually) that means "Stone of Help." An Ebenezer was a stone set up to mark a place where God had helped someone...that is, in the name Ebenezer, the 'ezer (or helper) is none other than God Himself.
In fact, in every occurrence of the word 'ezer in the Old Testament, except for two, the word is referring to God and His divine action of rescuing, delivering, sustaining, directing, and saving. The two other occurrences are in Genesis 2 and refer to womankind collectively in Eve. That is a radical perspective shift when it comes to thinking about woman being made for man!
If woman is an 'ezer—a term elsewhere only used to describe the miraculous intervention of God—then she is surely not an unnecessary accessory to man. She is certainly not his inferior. It is unthinkable to say she is his slave (is God Almighty our slave?!). Can we even say that she's a supporting actress, unfit to lead? Not honestly. God is certainly not limited to helping us in non-directive ways. In fact, we are very, very much in need of God's leadership and direction. Very frequently His role as our 'ezer takes the form of Him giving us divine leadership and direction through life's challenges. Why should we expect things to be different with woman, created to be an 'ezer to man herself? She may not always lead, especially after the Curse put domineering male authority as an obstacle in her life as surely as thistles were an obstacle to man, but leadership certainly is not beyond her created capabilities, purpose, or role as an 'ezer.
2. Man was Created First
Similar to the first argument, but weaker, this argument says that, since Adam was created first, it's implied that he, as the forerunner of the human race, had a divine implied imperative to lead which was passed on to all of his sons. Order of creation implies order of hierarchy. Specifically, because God delivered His command against eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam before Eve was created, Adam must have been intended as the spiritual leader of the pair, since he would have to teach this command to Eve himself.
However, the basic argument of the order of creation translating into an order of hierarchy falls apart when the creation order from Genesis 1 is examined. In this order, the first creatures God put on the Earth are fish and birds, and by this logic they would have an implicit divine mandate to rule over all of us (well, maybe they do). But this isn't so in the Bible. Rather, the mandate to rule is given to humankind, the very last species to be created by God. If it is order that makes hierarchy, then this would actually put women as the rightful leaders of the species rather than men.
The argument for spiritual leadership doesn't fare much better. All we really know for sure is that God told Adam not to eat of the fruit and that somehow, by chapter 3, Eve knew as well. Did Adam tell her? This would seem logical, but there are other possibilities. God may have told her before He brought Eve to Adam. She may have simply been created with this knowledge, the way she was evidently created with the knowledge of how to walk and talk. We simply don't know, and that gap in the text renders the argument for spiritual headship from Genesis to an argument from silence, which is inherently weaker than any passages blatantly stating that women and men are equals in spiritual matters before God.
3. The Fall was really a Failure of Male Leadership
This argument is really a complete reinterpretation of the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. In this interpretation, Eve started out under Adam's spiritual leadership. Under him, she learned the command God had given them. Enter the snake. Satan deceives Eve and gets her to doubt God's leadership, and, implicitly, Adam's. The real sin here is that Eve casts off Adam's spiritual guidance and takes initiative for herself. She takes the fruit, eats it, and—even worse—acts as a spiritual leader herself by giving it to Adam. Thus the real moral failure of the Fall was not a human disobedience to God (though that certainly was there) but a female rebellion and reversal of the God-ordained male hierarchy! Thankfully, God restores the right and good order of the patriarchy later during the Curse.
The problem with this interpretation is that it isn't based on what Genesis 3 actually says at all. It's an interpretation entirely imported from our own views. There's no mention of Eve usurping spiritual leadership from Adam, or even of him having a spiritual leadership role for her to usurp. When God deals out justice for the Fall, He does not mention Eve usurping authority or Adam failing to exercise it. His focus is on disobedience, on each of the newly created humans listening to someone else other than God (Eve, in the case of Adam, and the serpent in the case of Eve). Furthermore, as discussed earlier, the "establishment of the patriarchy" is a part of the Curse—which is perhaps the most compelling argument for believing that it is not a part of the created order and is, in fact, something Christians may rightly struggle against. Weeds aren't a part of the naturally created order, and we certainly strive against them!
At this point, someone may object that these interpretations of Genesis are Biblical because Paul subscribed to them, based on readings of 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 or 1 Timothy 2:11-15, but such readings ignore the larger context of what Paul was talking about and why he referenced Genesis in the first place. For example, in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 Paul brought up the facts in Genesis that Adam was created before Eve and that Eve was the first deceived in Genesis because he was combating early Gnostic heresy, which asserted that Eve was created first and that she was a demi-goddess, a wellspring of divine wisdom and enlightenment: contrary to what scripture actually said about her. He wasn't trying to justify male spiritual dominance, but trying to combat the opposite teaching. However, to be fair, these complex passages really deserve their own posts, to explain how I understand them now as an Egalitarian. For now, suffice it to say that, in their context, they don't support a complete reinterpretation of the Genesis creation narrative.
The account, as it stands, is one of equality. Both male and female are created together in chapter one, both in the image of God, and both together given dominance over all other life on Earth. In Genesis 2, looking at the particulars we see the woman created for the man as an 'ezer, an amazing companion whose role as help does not at all imply inferiority or an inability to lead (since it is directly related to the way God Himself helps us and acts as our 'ezer). Finally, in the Fall we see both male and female fall when they place someone else before God and disobey Him, and as a result both are cursed by God with a broken creation to strive against. For women, a part of this fallen world is a domineering male society—something they must strive against even as farmers have, throughout recorded time, striven against weeds.
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