I’m currently going through Mike Winger’s mammoth series, and deep dive, into the subject of women in ministry.
Having spent a couple of years reading books on both side of the discussion Mike shares his findings in a series of videos that total around 30hrs in length. It’s a fantastic resource and offers the kind of thoughtful engagement and analysis that such an important, and hotly contested, subject deserves.
It’s not a subject of primary importance, it’s not a matter of salvation (we need to remember this!), but it is nevertheless one of importance that affects all of us.
Since it’s a subject that I seem to spend a lot of my time/life thinking, reading and talking about I also wanted to try to distill some of my reflections across a series of posts.
I want to write sympathetically and sensitively on the subject, but I also want to keep the blogs brief enough to be read. If someone is interested in the back and forth of the subject I’d highly recommend reading ‘2 Views on Women in Ministry’, or watching/listening to Winger’s material: here.
I remain confident that the church’s historic position and the plain reading of the relevant passages is the correct one. Men and women are of equal value, worth and significance but Christian men and women have different roles to play in marriage and the church (note: 'roles' to play. This isn't about ontology).
Personally I find the egalitarian position lacking in several important ways (theologically, symbolically and practically), and I have come to see that it's possibly even harmful to women*, but having said that I also remain committed, both as a missionary in an egalitarian culture, and as someone who desires the full flourishing of the church, to try and ensure our church cultures are right in this regard.
I share a love and respect for, and appreciation of, my fellow sisters in Christ and I’m committed to seeing churches celebrate the full wisdom of God in Christ. For that to occur, the church needs to display a more other-honouring, mutually-celebrating, partnership between the sexes.
The church is the eternal family of God, so understanding one another’s roles and demonstrating a commitment to the full flourishing of the sexes really matters to me. Ultimately, if I can sum up (and risk riding rough-shod over a sensitive subject), I believe it boils down to honour and humility which I’ll explain in a future post.
For the subject of this post however I want to pushback and comment on some language that flies around.
In Winger’s 2.5hr presentation on Genesis 2 he often referred to the issue of a husband’s ‘leadership’ over his wife. He used the word authority and head too, (NB. in subsequent teaching videos he corrects his language somewhat) but it’s the ‘L’ word around men and women that rankles with me.
Is it helpful, or important, or biblical to speak of husband leading his wife?
I’m not sure it is.
For one thing, Paul doesn’t use this word. Instead, he talks of the husband’s authority (1 Cor 9) and the husband being the head (Eph 5) of his wife, but he doesn’t call him her leader.
You could say the word is implied in ‘head’ and ‘authority’ but my concern is that it’s an unhealthy example of stretching the text on the complementarian side, and it oversteps and impedes upon a wife’s autonomy.
As a culture, I think it’s fair to say that we loooove the ‘L’ word (leadership).
We may not give our leaders an easy time, but we love talking about and calling people ‘leaders’. We feel it’s empowering, dignifying and enabling - which it is. It’s also the case that the New Testament rarely uses the word to describe those in pastoral authority. Leading a church may well be part of what a pastor/elder does but it isn’t close enough to the centre of the office of an Overseer that it isn’t used, in fact (another post), maybe ‘managing’ is a better word for what elders do? Double in fact, I think we miss a key component of eldership when we isolate it from it’s sacramental function, but that (again) is for another post.
Partly the NT avoids talking of ‘leaders’ because of its association with worldly governing/rulership, and the church is meant to exist as an alternative to the world, and partly it’s because of the important part that representation plays in understanding who and how a person is meant to be.
A Symbolic World minor detour
The world of the New Testament existed before the scientific revolution and the advent of modern materialism. Therefore (as Matthieu Paggeau points out in his book on ancient biblical cosmology) ancient people didn’t think of themselves as material beings comprised simply of benign bits of nature. Instead they saw themselves as symbolic and social creatures whose lives made sense when considered view of the drama playing out between heaven and earth. This, in my opinion, is often a vitally absent part of the discussion on gender roles and sexuality. It’s also this lack that, ultimately, makes the egalitarian position so dissatisfying. For me it is a perspective too concerned with utility rather than meaning (another blog post).
But back to marriage.
A husband is not a wife’s leader, he is her head (read ‘in authority’) yes, but not her ‘leader’. On headship, note that Paul doesn’t argue for headship but from it (another blog post). Using the term ‘leader’ may embolden him but I fear it restricts and inhibits her, putting the wife into the category of ‘the led’ which I can’t see as helpful for a marriage. For one thing, where is he leading her too? It makes a home sound a little too business-ey and institutional, in need of vision statements, targets and goals with spousal appraisals etc.
Now, all of that might not necessarily be a bad thing, but only if we’ve first got a healthy measurement of what makes for a successful marriage in the first place. In order to establish what a successful marriage is, we need to first of all be clear on what a marriage is for, and for that… we’re back to the scriptures and to the heart of what a husband and wife are meant to be.
Here, from a Biblically grounded footing, a husband may decide that directing his marriage and household in a more Christ-like direction is a valuable thing to do, but even then I’m still not sure it helps if he thinks of himself as the marriage’s ‘leader’.
Nancy Pearcey in her book ’The Toxic War On Masculinity’ demonstrates from her research that a harmonious and happy marriage occurs when both the husband and the wife flourish, and mutual flourishing happens best of all in an environment of partnership, not leader-follower. She also, using another set of data, demonstrates that the ‘happiest marriages in society’ are those in Bible believing homes where the husband and the wife understand their God-given roles in the marriage. What are those God-given roles? It’s not leaders and followers but Christ and the church. It isn’t that the husband is the leader but that he’s the life-lay-down-er.
A husband is meant to be a window into Christ’s nature and character for his wife. A christian woman ought to be able to look at her husband and see an object lesson of Christ’s love and devotion. She is meant to feel more pure, more clean, and more holy by being his wife.
Notice also that in Ephesians 5 the wife is given very little instruction by Paul. He tells her to ‘submit as to the lord’ but he doesn’t spell out what that means, and neither should we. That should read ‘neither should we men spell it out for her’ but someone should, and indeed Paul makes that clear elsewhere. Wive’s need help to be Christ glorifying wives just as much as husbands do, but the task of instructing a wife in her role is left, not to the elders or the husbands or even to the apostle, but to the older women in the church (1 Tim 5 and Titus 2). There are likely some very important reasons for this, not least among them is that a woman already knows, and society knew, that a husband has authority over her (we still know it now - another blog), and as such it seems rather inappropriate or cruel for an authority to tell or insist on submission - a recipe for disaster in the hands of sinful people.
Let the women lead the wives, and let the husbands set their sights on the right things.
A husband should be less worried about leading his wife and more concerned with leading himself.
For the men in patriarchal Ephesus (yes it was just as patriarchal as everywhere else in Paul’s day - see the book ‘Women in the Church’ by Tom Shriener) they had their work cut out for them. Their culture had taught them to view their role in the home as one thing, but Paul was insistent that they needed to relearn it by looking through the lens of Christ. You see, husband, in taking up the name ‘husband’ you’ve stepped upon the stage with a new part to play. Your life now has a meaning far broader than before. It’s bound up with how well you represent Christ and the gospel both to your wife and to the watching world.
Good luck!
Let her see how much Christ loves her by looking upon you.
She doesn’t need your leadership, she needs your example. She doesn’t need you to take her anywhere but into deeper levels of purity and holiness thanks to Christ’s work mediated through you into your home. Don’t take on unhealthy pressure to ‘lead’ her, simply be Christ to her - that’s hard enough by itself.
* I say this having learnt recently of a situation where a female friend was humiliated and exposed publicly by men who refused to protect her. Complementarity, for all it's faults, at least believes in the importance of men protecting women.