What if complementarians are the ones “following culture”?

I am not a theologian.

The data speaks for itself and is clear. Now, if that doesn’t happen to line up with somebody’s interpretation of what the Bible says, frankly I believe the onus is on them to explain their view, not me.

But often online I am confronted by people who are more than ready to ignore real world evidence unless I can “square it with the Bible”. So, eternally the optimist, I try to explain how I interpret the Scriptures in light of what I know. I basically present what I believe is a cogent case for Biblical egalitarianism.

It makes total sense to me, but often not to the person on the other side of the conversation who then calls me “unbiblical”, “feminist”, “heretic” or some combination of the three. I expect many of you have had similar encounters, so I offer today’s post by way of encouragement.

Which “culture” are we trying to bend to?

The argument often leveled in these discussions is that we are trying to make the Bible fit what worldly culture says is right rather than just believing God’s unchanging truth. It is worded differently each time, but basically always has three components:

1. My side (the one limiting women) is based on God’s unchanging truth
2. The church has believed like me for its entire history, and
3. You are being influenced by culture to make the Bible say what your culture wants it to say

However, “women are equal to men and should be given the same rights and privileges as men in society” is not “culture”; it is an idea. Now a particular culture may be shaped by that idea or by its absence or outright rejection, but the idea itself is not “culture” and conflating the two is a dishonest rhetorical sleight of hand.

Regardless of its presence or absence in a culture, an idea is either true or it is not true and it must be evaluated on its merits.

The idea that women are inferior to men has been largely abandoned

Philosophically, the fight is over in this case; the validity of this idea is no longer contested. For most people, “women are equal to men” has taken its place among the truths that are considered self-evident. Even those who want to limit women no longer use “inferiority of the female sex” as their argument, but are the very first to say, “OF COURSE we believe women are equal, we just think they have different ROLES.”

Moreover, women’s equality has been proven not just philosophically, but practically in the real world. Over the past two centuries, prior assumptions about women’s inferiority have been repeatedly debunked by evidence of women succeeding where they had been told they never would due to the “fragility of their sex.” At one point, our society held that:

• Women would never succeed in medicine as their fragile minds wouldn’t be able to tolerate the strain of higher education.
• Women would not succeed in the workplace as the anxiety of the public sphere would put undue the strain upon them and cause a nervous collapse.
• Women would never succeed in politics because the aggressiveness and excitement would cause them to have nervous breakdowns due to their delicate dispositions.

Today we not only see these beliefs as patently ridiculous, but even the idea that they were once sincerely believed we find disturbing. And let’s not forget that women demonstrated their competence in these areas not in an environment of support, but in an environment that generally ranged from patronizing neutrality to overt opposition. Yet, refusing to give up, they pushed through and accomplished a truly momentous feat.

Admittedly, not everyone concedes the point that women have proven themselves as equals. One occasionally still encounters the odd person who genuinely believes that women are not as capable as men in education, business or politics, But data disagrees:

• Today, women represent about half of physicians worldwide and a recent study showed their patients do better! (and I’m sharing this study as a male physician myself!)
• Current research shows women exceed men in all aspects of leadership
• A study of outcomes during the global Covid-19 pandemic showed that countries led by women had lower infection rates and mortality.

It is clear to an unbiased observer that any ideas of female inferiority persist in society not because of evidence, but in spite of it. The source of such convictions isn’t data, but simply old-fashioned sexism.

Even complementarians accept women’s equality

Perhaps the greatest argument for the universal triumph of the idea of women’s equality is the fact that it is accepted even by those who oppose women achieving full practical equality in daily life.

If you tell a complementarian that their view of wifely submission means they believe women are inferior to men, they will be offended and quick to correct you. I think they are sincere. And that impression is bolstered by the fact that they continue to insist they believe women are equal to men even as you point out how it is philosophically impossible for women to both be

• (1) equal to men and
• (2) in an unchangeable, arbitrary, and permanent position that is inferior to that of men.

It is a rare person who collapses under the pressure and says (as one man did online with me recently):

Most of them are so committed to the idea that women are equal to men that they prefer to convince themselves it is possible to believe the two contradictory ideas.

But let’s set aside the self-contradiction since Sheila has dealt with that elsewhere and instead talk about the problem that true acceptance of women’s equality raises with the idea that “The church has believed like me for its entire history”.

Has the church always believed women weren’t inferior?

While it is true that through Church history, women have been relegated to the status that modern Complementarians wish them to have (or lower), it is decidedly NOT true that through history the church believed women were fully equal to men. Marg Mowczko has compiled a rogue’s gallery of misogynistic comments by early church fathers demonstrating that unequivocally their belief was that women were made subordinate by God because they were inferior beings to men. Just a few:

Why does this matter? Because we can’t even begin to talk about Biblical arguments until we recognize how incredibly wrong the early church was in their understanding of women.

When someone today who believes that women are equal to men but should still be subordinate to them says, “My interpretation of the Bible verses about women is correct because it is the historical interpretation” it sounds convincing. But in effect what they are saying is “My interpretation of the Bible is correct because it agrees with that of people whom you and I both agree were overtly misogynistic.” And if an egalitarian’s interpretations of Scripture can be influenced by culture, it must also follow that the early church’s interpretation could have been influenced by their notions of female inferiority as well!

Complementarians are holding on to historic and cultural misogyny, not the Bible

The Bible contains verses that appear to elevate women and verses that appear to put them down. How does one make sense of that? For me the egalitarian interpretations presented in works like “The Bible vs Biblical Womanhood”, “How God Sees Women” and Marg Mowczko’s website make more sense than the complementarian ones. Egalitarians accept the new discovered truth that women and men are truly equal and they see the Scripture in that light.

And to say we must “put away ideas of women’s equality and just read what the Bible says” is to me exactly the same logic as saying one should put away their ideas of cosmology and accept that the sun goes around the earth (Psalm 19:6) , which is flat (Isaiah 40:22), unmoving (Psalm 104:5) and encased by a solid firmament (Job 37:18). It’s just nonsense.

Complementarians point the finger and say “you are bringing your culture into the Bible!” Yet it is not culture that we are bringing, but the recognition of a truth of the universe, not seen by prior generations. Meanwhile, complementarians have four fingers pointing back at them as they continue to read the Bible through the lens of an earlier culture that was based upon the incorrect idea that women are inferior to men – just like the pagan nations around them, I might add.

Egalitarians are not “following culture”, they are following an idea to its natural conclusion.

In the verses that elevate women (despite being written in a culture that saw them as “less than”), we see the glimmers of hope that one day sisters and brothers might stand as equals before God. And now that that day is here, we embrace it. In contrast, complementarians, while saying they form a continuous line with history, do not actually preach “let’s keep everything the way it has always been.” Instead, they preach a weird hybrid where they ostensibly accept that men and women are equal in a way that previous generations never thought of but also believe that should have no bearing on how we interpret Scripture or how we interact with each other. In other words, complementarians accept the idea of equality but refuse to give up the culture that arose around the idea that women are inferior.

So who is really following culture and who is following truth?

What do you think of Keith’s argument? Let’s talk in the comments!