a word for young complementarians...

Having been a complementarian and having argued the position a lot over the years, let me give a word of advice to young complementarians as to which argument to drop out of your repetoire. It's this one: "[Our church] like Jesus did, only appoints men to the highest position of spiritual leadership."

Okay... is that your final answer? Is that really one of the reasons you want to stick to- that because all of Jesus' disciples were men, therefore, you are going to stick with appointing only men to leadership?

Well, here's my problem with that.

Arguably a bigger issue than male/female roles in the early church was the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. For awhile there, the first Christians (who were Jews) were somewhat skeptical that Gentiles could even be saved. And then, there were a bunch of Jewish Christians going around saying that to become a Christ follower, Gentiles needed to first become like Jews, getting circumcised and becoming obedient to the law.

Of course that was all hogwash, but they did have one very powerful piece of evidence on their side, after all...

Jesus chose only Jews for His disciples.

Yeah- just good Jewish boys like Levi and Simon and Judah (though we all know how it turned out with Judah...). It seems as though Jesus was making a powerful, powerful statement in favor of non-Gentile leadership in the church, no? Or at least as much as He was saying anything about all male leadership...

If you are going to argue that we should have only men in leadership because Jesus Himself had only men in leadership, then try to be a little more conistent. With that line of argument, Jewish men are also technically what's required.

But Jesus is our peace who has broken down every wall? In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek?

Exactly.

There are a lot of good reasons and good arguments for complementarianism (just as there are many good reasons and arguments for something else). But if I hear one more respected Bible teacher make the argument that male leadership is based on and modeled after Jesus' choice of disciples, my head's gonna explode...

I'm just sayin'... :)

Comments

[Tony Chimento]

Great article with some good points. At our church, we take the position as much as possible that husband wife teams are the most desired. We also feel that if men are active and shoulder lots of responsibility, it frees the women to do what they want to do in ministry instead of having to pick up the slack for the whole church and essentially do too much. Just a thought. I can't wait to see your comments section explode after this post.

[jmac]

Hey first time commenter, long time reader

I agree somewhat with what you said. This argument is not good standing alone. Being a complementarian, I think, a part from the Scipture, the Jesus picking men arguement for complementarianism only works with these other historical realities:
1. Only men were priests in the O.T. Women were prophests, judges, etc., but not priests.
2. Jesus picked only men to be apostles though women were clearly disciples and supporters (Luke 8)
3. Only in the last 100 years, especially the last 50 has the view that women could hold the office of elder been embraced by the church.

[bob]

Thanks for the comments- a couple of pushbacks... :)

1. The New Testament counterpart to Old Testament priests is not pastors or elders... it's what? Everyone. Every believer, male or female is included in the priesthood of believers, correct? Also, only certain men (Jewish, of the lineage of Aaron, without any physical defect) were allowed to serve as priest. I'd argue that Christ broke down each and every one of those impediments and invites every person, male or female, jew or gentile, slave or free to the prieshood of believers.

2. Yes- Jesus picked men as diciples. He also picked only Jews. If you use one as a support for your postion of who can and can't be in ministry, then you logically should probably use the other, particlularly since the second was more of an issue than the first, and more likely to be a matter of dispute in the early church.

3. No- not true :) While it's been true that fairly early on, women began to be restricted in ministry, there are very early examples of women in church leadership:

An ancient mosaic which shows four female figures. One is identified as Bishop Theodora. The feminine form for bishop (episcopa) is used.
A 3rd or 4th century burial site on the Greek island of Thera contains an epitaph referring to Epiktas, a "presbytis" (priest or presbyter). Epiktas is a woman's name.
A 2nd or 3rd century Christian inscription in Egypt for Artemidoras, whose mother is described as "Paniskianes, being an elder" (presbytera)
A memorial from the 3rd century for Ammion the elder (presbytera)
A 4th or 5th century Sicilian inscription referring to Kale the elder. (presbytis)

Also, let's go back to the 1850's and apply that argument to something at minimum condoned in Scripture and (arguably) encouraged: Slavery. it took us nearly two thousand years to understand that Christ came to free the oppressed, to set the prisoner free and that in Christ disctinctions of slave and free were being taken down. Almost two hundred years later, few people would argue in favor of slavery... but 200 years ago, the weight of church history was decidely (and wrongly) on the side of slavery...

[ryan]

I think it is a mighty stretch to try and connect the religous backgrounds of the disciples, and their God given gender and say that someone is inconsistent if they do not argue for both. If you want to put this burden on complementarians than you may as well just keep going with it. Why not just say that all elders must be of Middle Eastern background. Why not just say they must also all be in their twenties and thirties, since the twelve were. Yes these men were Jews, but the discples were also followers of Jesus. The fact still remains that the disciples were all men. It is also a weak argument to say he did this because of the culture. Jesus was not afraid of going against cultural norms, this is why he often got ran out of town, hung out with sinners and hung on a cross. Curious what you think of the fact that women were part of his ministry but not part of the twelve.

[Donna Roa]

Bob, loved your post. And couldn't help but notice the Lafayette, LA listing in the right column. I have a favor. Can you visit my blog and tell me what you think? I am working on a project, well two projects...a screenplay and children's book...and am trying to drive traffic to my blog to get "nominees." Please take a look and tell me what you think. Perhaps we could get members of your church to participate??

Regards,
Donna

[bob]

Ryan- I don't think it's a stretch at all. And I never said Jesus di it because of culture, did I? :)

As I said: The issue of Jew vs Gentile was a huge issue in the early church.
If someone were to try to infer from Jesus' choice a particular preference for Jew or Gentile, I think they'd have an agument.

Of course we know they'd be wrong in saying that since Jesus chose only Jews, that only Jews should be in leadership.

And of course, Jesus was going against the culture by having women followers who even sat in the position of disciple (at his feet as he taught). That in and of itself should be instructive to us.

What I see when I read Scripture is a redemptive arc- a slow raising of the status of women and slaves (as described in William Webb's book, Women, Slaves and Homosexuals). What Jesus did was consitent with a kingdom-oriented arc that began with Moses raising women's status, Jesus raising it even further, Paul arguing in favor of educating women, and all pointing us toward an ultimate Kingdom Ideal as described in Gal 3:28. Simply because none of them dropped the whole thing on us all at once is no reason to ignore the arc or even to take out further than NT writers did. We see the arc and bodly step into it with slavery- none of us are arguing for slavery are we? We should do the same with the issue of women.

I don't mean this post to be a hash-out of the over arcing issue of women in leadership, though, merely a comment on one common argument that I think is ill-conceived and poorly thought out- that since Jesus only had male disciples (a false statement from the get-go... it was the 12 who were male. He had plenty female followers- the definition of disciple), then therefore only men are allowed to serve in the role of pastor.

The two roles are in no way equivalent and the argument ignores the huge statement that would be made to a church struggling with the role of Jew and Gentile if we were meant to make inference from Jesus' choice of disciples.

[jason]

Don't forget Junias in Romans 16.

[ryan]

Thanks for the response Bob, and I think you have some great points here. I just have a tough time buying that this argument is not a good one. It is used by Dr. Blomberg in "Two Views on Women in Minstry" and by many other biblical scholars. Really is it that suprising that Jesus would call other Jews to serve as his apostles. This sounds more like an argument against the methods Jesus used, than against gender roles. "First to the Jew and then to the Gentile," does not mean the Gentile was of less worth or value, Paul makes that abundently clear in Romans, but this was the method the NT speaks of.

Second, I think you are understanding of Gal. 3:28 is off. Egalitarians like to take it and point out that it says, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" and claim this settles once and for all there are no differences in gender roles. Reading the immediate context of 3:26-29, we see that Paul is talking about how one comes to Christ and baptism. Baptism being an outward sign of an inward repentance and faith in Jesus. This is open to all believers and all who believe in Jesus come to him in this same manner. To get out of it that men and women are completly equal in role and function is reading to much into it.

Also the word "one" (eis) in this passage does not mean "equal in all respects" in any of its other 344 NT usages, "equal" is not even a definition found for this greek word in the standard lexica.

[bob]

Hey Ryan-
Thanks for your thanks! Back at ya' :)

I understand that many scholars use the argument. I just think it's ill-conceived. I would say that first to the Jew and then to the Gentile is exactly what Jesus was doing. And that should tell us something...
His choosing of all Jews doesn't mean that the Gentiles were later to be excluded, right?

So why in the world would we make the same assumption and replace the word "Jew" with the word "male" and the word "Gentile" with the word "female"?

I see the context of Galatians. My point is this: salvation impacts and informs every area of life. In the same way that Galatians 3 is a perfect reason NOT to exclude gentiles or people who might be slaves from salvation, from baptism, from church gatherings, from honor in the body, etc I think the same can be said for women.

In other words, though the specific context is salvation, the implications are much, much broader, IMHO.

[bob]

By the way- I'm not saying that Galatians 3 settles once for all that there are no difference in gender roles. I still don't get to breastfeed my daughter :)

But my point is that we choose to look at large over-arching statements like Gal 3:28 through the lense of specific, often difficult to understand statements like 1 Tim 2:12. I think it's a better practice to do it the other way around...

[jason]

actually, it should be "Junia" in Romans 16-- my bad.

I feel like such a voyeur in this conversation.

[bob]

Hey Jake- your're not a voyeur... and both readings are correct, I think. :)

And of course I still read your blog!

[ScottB]

Galatians is at least as much about the life of the body as it is about who "gets in". If the reality of "neither Jew nor Greek" didn't affect the social roles and relationships, why then was Peter in danger of denying the gospel in Gal 2:11-14? The issue was eating with Gentile believers - and Paul's response leads up to the statement of "neither Jew nor Greek".

All that to say that I think you've got an excellent point here, quite interesting in fact when I start to ponder it further. Good stuff.

[Jeremiah]

Hey, bob, just found the site and it's excellent. I stumbled on this dicussion by accident and have enjoyed reading it. Just to throw a few more cents worth of comment...

I have absolutely zero problem with women leading in ministry in the church and I think that you're right in suggesting that Jesus' choice of men for His 12 disciples isn't a great basis for excluding women from eldership (though I don't really know if we can compare elders and Apostles anyway). Throughout the New Testament we see women leading in ministry - meeting the needs of Jesus and His followers (Luke 8), working hard for the church (Romans 16), being deacons (Phoebe - Romans 16), hosting churches (Lydia - Acts), teaching (Aquilla - Acts 18), prophesying (Philip's daughters), and so on. The one thing we never do see is a women in eldership. Something to consider...

In 1 Timothy 3, Paul gives the qualifications for elders and deacons (ministers). We normally note that in both cases, they should be "the husband of one wife", therefore we normally asume that both are exclusivly male roles. What's really interesting to me is verse 11, in which there is an extra set of qualifications for the wife of deacons. Why would this not also be ture for the wife of elders (a far more important role)? I think that it's because this word "wife" is poorly translated. Since the Greek for wife can also mean woman, it makes more sense to translate the phrase as "In the same way, the women like them... (or "their female counterparts..."). If this is the case, Paul has just given qualifications for male and female deacons, but only for male elders.

[Jeremiah]

Oops, I mean Pricilla, not Aquila, in Acts 18. D'oh!

[Derrick]

Like I would say to my kids...not a bad post....for a GIRL!

;)

Keep up the excellent work, Bob!

[Toby]

I have the once and for all Scriptural means to prove elders can be and were women...

Revelation 4 & 5

Never mentions the gender of the 24 elders...

but in the 5th chapter, it says they had harps and burned incense...must be chicks! LOL!

[Toby]

Well, I guess according to that description they could be emergent men as well...which is inlightening as to the whole "are the emergents biblical" discussions...LOL!

[Seanno]

A video for young complementarians...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNwD8Q2OP0w&mode=related&search=

;)
Sean