Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Going Back to Genesis (honestly)

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a critical topic: in Complimentarianism male leadership isn't just a social construct—it's a part of the created order originally made by God.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:

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.

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Reading About Submission of Wives in Context

Okay, so I'm going to go back a few posts and revisit three passages I touched on earlier, when I was discussing how the Egalitarian position can help a man be a more Biblical husband than the Complimentarian position.  When discussing that, I deliberately left out any discussion of the following verses:

"Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."

—Colossians  3:18, ESV

"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.  Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.  For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.  And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening."

—1 Peter 3:1-6, ESV

"Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands."

—Ephesians 5:22-24, ESV

Just looking at these verses, it would seem that they spell doom for the Egalitarian position.  Here, plain as day, the Bible is telling wives they need to obey their husbands.  1 Peter 3:6 even says wives should be calling their husband "lord!"  At this point, the Complimentarians declare victory, insist on "love, cherish, and obey" as the bride's wedding vow, and prepare to walk off the scene.  After all, demonstrating that wives must be totally submissive toward their husbands is only one step away from showing that women cannot have authority over any men at all, period.

But all is not as it seems from a simple first reading, and these verses do not exist in isolation.  In understanding the Bible, context is critical.  So what's the context of these three passages?  Well, their immediate context is a set of commands to husbands and wives...and as we saw in a previous post, Complimentarianism isn't too good at taking the verses aimed at husbands seriously.  In fact, they're mostly ignored in favor of telling men to be dominant leaders (from nowhere in the Bible) and citing these verses out of context to tell women to obey.

But the larger context of these verses is even more enlightening.  These verses belong to three parallel passages in the Bible: Colossians 3:1-4:6, 1 Peter 2:11-3:8, and Ephesians 5:1-6:20.  Each passage details how Christians are supposed to live in certain situations.  The Colossians and Ephesians passages are nearly identical, speaking of, in order: general commandments, mutual submission among believers, wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, masters, and the importance of prayer.  In fact, the Ephesians-passage could be called simply a fleshed-out version of the Colossians-passage outline.  The passage in 1 Peter is a little different, coming from a different Biblical author, but still covers the same general topics: general commandments for all believers, commands for citizens obeying the government, commands for slaves, commands for wives, husbands, and ending with a call for overall unity.  The main difference is that verses directed toward masters, fathers, and children are left out while verses about submission to government are included.

What does this mean for us?  Well, it means that in their original context, the verses about wives being obedient to their husbands are part of a set of verses directed to Christians in various walks of life telling them how they should live in the roles within which they find themselves.  Citizens should obey their governments, slaves should obey their masters, masters should treat slaves fairly, wives should obey their husbands, husbands should love their wives, children should obey their parents, fathers should treat their children well, etc.  All three passages are also framed by general commandments to all Christians for how they should live their daily lives in all circumstances, and calls for mutual submission and unity.  In other words, the passages are sets of instructions for how Christians living very different lives are to live out the unity, mutual submission, and love that they have in Christ.

This is an important point.  Its easy to see these passages as endorsing these societal roles, but in fact the Bible does no such thing.  All three passages advise slaves on how to live within their roles as Christian slaves without necessarily saying that slavery is good or right.  In fact, in insisting that masters remember that their slaves are equals, these passages subtly lay the groundwork for future Biblical abolitionist movements, which see that these roles, while they can be lived in as a Christian, are fundamentally un-Christian in nature.

The problem for Complimentarians is, again, that their reading of the passages must switch partway through.  The verses that talk about the absolute submission of wives to their husbands are held to be universal divine edicts, expressing the pure will of God for all Christians throughout all time, and most definitely endorsing a patriarchy at home.  However, when, in the same context, the Bible talks about the absolute submission of slaves to their masters...somehow this is a not-so-eternal truth.  It's more of a command to Christians finding themselves in a certain cultural and social construct (slavery) which the Bible, rather than endorsing, simply tells them how to endure in their role as Christians.  The same goes for the verses commanding absolute and unquestioning obedience to an imperial government in 1 Peter.  Just because the Bible says, "Honor the Emperor" or "Honor the king" (in some translations), does not mean that the Bible is establishing an imperial monarchy as the only Biblical and Christian form of government.  So just because the Bible has commands for Christians under autocratic governments and slavery does not mean the Bible endorses these institutions...but somehow just a few verses later passages about how Christians are to behave in a patriarchal marriage absolutely is an endorsement of this institution.

This is a contradictory reading!  We can't have it both ways!  Either the Bible's commands to slaves, citizens, and wives are circumstancial and cultural, telling Christians how to live under certain institutions without endorsing the institutions themselves, or else all Christians everywhere are under a divine command to fight for a society marked by slavery, autocracy, and patriarchy.  Again, as in the previous post, the Complimentarian position forces us to ignore context and treat the items of a list as having totally different meanings, and this is inconsistent.  To me, it means that the Complimentarian reading is, in some way, deeply flawed, forced to distort the passage and take it out of context in order to maintain its own views imported from the outside.

Egalitarianism carries no such burden to the passage.  It sees all three passages as commands given to Christians who find themselves in social and cultural roles which the Bible does not necessarily endorse.  Rather than laying out what these roles should be, these passages simply tell Christians how to live out lives pleasing to Christ within the cultural and social roles in which they find themselves.  Citizens are to obey and honor the autocracy under which they find themselves, even though it may not be the ideal form of government for Christian principles.  Likewise slaves are to obey their masters even though under Christ both are equals.  So also wives, finding themselves in patriarchal marriages where they were literally dependent on their husbands for everything, were to obey him, even though in Christ gender doesn't matter.

What does this mean for us today?  Two things, really.  First, it means that patriarchal marriages as described in these passages are not God's gold standard of relationships.  They are not even, necessarily, something consistent with the rest of Christianity.  Like slavery and autocracy, they are social and cultural roles, and, like slavery and autocracy, we have the freedom in Christ to seek a more perfect and more Christian union.  Second, it means that the roles we take in marriage (whether submissive, dominant, or sharing), like the roles we take in government and economic life, are not nearly as important as how we live those roles, as Christians.  If we, as Christians, find ourselves in a culture of egalitarian marriages which emphasize mutual decisions over male leadership, we do not have a divine mandate to revive the patriarchy.  Nor do we, if we live under a patriarchy, necessarily need to abolish it.  Whether we show the love of Christ and His new life in us in our roles within our culture and marriage (whatever those roles may be) is far more important to God.

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Taking Galatians 3:28 Seriously

I apologize for the lapse in posting.  I was hoping this would be a quick series of blog posts, but it's hard to make a series quick if you stop partway through!  So, let's try to wrap this up!

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

—Galatians 3:28 KJV

 Galatians 3:28 is without a doubt the best verse for arguing equality in the Bible.  It says that in Christ, we are all equal.  Race doesn't matter (neither Jew nor Greek), economic and social status doesn't matter (neither bond nor free), and sex doesn't matter (neither male nor female), we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Despite some preconceived notions some might have, this isn't a point that's actually at variance between the Egalitarian and Complimentarian camps when it comes to gender.  Both sides of the debate insist and believe that men and women are equal before God.  The difference is that the Complimentarian position insists that, while they are equals before God, women and men are designed to function in different roles in the church and the home as part of a divinely ordained hierarchy.  Egalitarians insist that gender is not something that determines roles in the church, but that God can gift anyone, regardless of gender, to be a leader.

Let's take a look at these differences as they contrast with the verse above.  In the verse above, all three categories are declared to be equal before God.  But to what extent are they equal?  Are there certain things in the church which, by divine command, can only be done by people of a certain race?  Can only Jews be leaders in the church, while Greeks must remain followers?  Certainly not!  What about the distinctions between economic and social status?  Should the poor and slaves be forced to remain in separate church roles, while the upper levels of church hierarchy are reserved for the wealthy?  While historically it may have worked out this way more often than not, I think we can all agree that this is merely our human prejudice stepping in rather than a divinely ordained division of roles.  In fact, the Bible flatly condemns such prejudice in James 2:2-7 (and that just in a simple thing like seating arrangements!).  It is clearly not established by God.

This is where the problem comes in to the Complimentarian reading of Galatians 3:28.  In the first two cases, we can agree that the equality the verse speaks of is a total equality that encompasses all church life, that there is no God-ordained division between races or classes to restrict their roles in the church.  When the verse says they are equal, it means they are completely equal and can fulfill any role in the church to which God may call them.

But when it comes to the third pair of the verse, the Complimentarian reading has to make a radical shift.  Men and women, in Complimentarianism, can't be equal in the same way as race and class are in the church, because while race and class cannot be used in the name of God to restrict roles within the church, gender must be.  While the verse clearly says that all three sets of distinctions are done away with in Christ, and all three are equal in the same way in Christ, the Complimentarian can only take the verse seriously on the first two.  When it comes to the third, the Complimentarian must suddenly restrict the kind of equality meant by the verse to an equality of salvation (men and women are both saved in the same way) or worth (men and women are both equally loved by God).  An equality of roles (which exists in the previous two sets of distinctions) cannot exist between men and women because the Complimentarian view holds that men are divinely appointed leaders at home and in church and women can never rightly hold a leadership role over men—that is, male vs female is still a very important distinction and division within the church to God, in a way that Jew vs Greek and slave vs free isn't.

This bothered me for years, and was one of the reasons I eventually became an Egalitarian.  It's textually inconsistent to switch meanings in the middle of a sentence.  It's especially inconsistent to switch meanings in the middle of a list.  If I say, "I love pizza, meatloaf, and spaghetti" it would be a strange interpretation indeed if one were to understand me as saying that pizza and meatloaf were my favorite foods but that I only liked spaghetti occasionally.  Yet that is exactly what I was forced to do when I read Galatians 3:28 as a Complimentarian.  Neither Jew nor Greek meant just that: race doesn't matter to God, and doesn't determine standing or role within the church.  Neither bond nor free meant just that: economic and social status doesn't matter to God, and doesn't determine standing or role within the church.  But neither male nor female?  That I had to switch up and understand in a completely different way, because that one obviously still mattered to God and determined standing and role within the church, despite what this verse was saying to me.  I knew that, because of this forced shift of meaning, my understanding of the passage was fundamentally unsound.  That bothered me, and it was only as I began to see the way other passages I struggled with fit together neatly in Egalitarianism that I was able to let go of this weak and warped interpretation of the passage and take Galatians 3:28 seriously.  Neither race, nor social or economic status, nor gender matter before God—and none of them can determine or limit our roles in our service to Him!