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Diary of a (Maybe) Retired Pastor

Tag: Complementarianism

  • Adolescence – A Warning To The Church

    mayberetiredpastor

    Adolescence – A Warning To The Church

    So God created humankindin his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

    Genesis 1:27, Old Testament, The Bible

    Last week, the youngest male actor to ever win an Emmy was named. He was awarded the accolade for his part in the Netflix drama Adolescence, a drama about a young teenage boy who murders a  female classmate. It was of particular interest because it sought to portray the reactions of the boy’s family from the moment of the police bursting into their house to the realisation that what was alleged about their son was not some ghastly error but the horrifying truth.  As the story unfolded through its various episodes we learned that the family was a perfectly ordinary, decent family, nothing anyone would say could lead to the misogynistic rage exhibited by the boy. It was his exposure to misogynistic incel culture on social media that led to his violent attitudes towards women that we saw disturbingly exposed in the harrowing third episode.

    The warning for the church is not that we need to be careful about what our young people might be exposed to on social media, although that might indeed be a concern, but the holding on to teaching that, however tangentially, provides justification for the misogynistic narrative propagated by various online influencers. That teaching is complementarianism.

    Complementarianism is held by some (not all) conservative evangelical churches across the world. It holds that men and women are not interchangeable but complement each other. By itself, this notion seems unexceptionable and, indeed, a positive way of thinking about relationships between men and women. But complementarianism goes further to teach that headship and authority belong to men and not to women. There are various flavours of this but the most common, at least in UK churches, is that this applies to marriage and order in the church.  Regardless, complementarianism has at its core the belief that women are by nature subordinate to men. This is openly taught in complementarian churches and while modern complementarians go to great lengths to extol the value and competence of women (in their proper roles) it is not hard to see how young minds could easily take hold of the core idea that women are subordinate and lesser than men, and how that could be exported into the wider culture thus affirming and justifying extreme misogyny.

    The biblical basis of this teaching rests principally on three passages (1) found in the letters of the New Testament. Each of these passages carry significant interpretive problems that, ordinarily, would mean they would not be used to formulate teaching. However, these three passages are an exception. They are used as the interpretive prism that shapes and controls the interpretation of the rest of scripture in the matter of the relationship between men and women.  Leaving out these passages when developing teaching about men and women results in the exact opposite of complementarianism: women in the Bible exercise leadership and authority in society and church in  the same way that men do and it is never questioned or qualified. It is this overwhelming weight of scriptural witness that ought to control the interpretation of the three passages (1) and not the other way around.

    The weakness of the complementarian case is amply demonstrated by the desperate theological attempts to buttress the teaching by reaching for the central doctrine of the Trinity (the being of God) only to end-up perverting the doctrine of the Trinity by resurrecting a teaching that was condemned as heretical in the 4th and 5th centuries AD (2). That attempt has been roundly repudiated and complementarians have retreated from that position (3).

    Complementarianism is a pernicious teaching that distorts our understanding of the relationship between men and women. It gives affirmation and justification for the widespread abuse and exploitation of women that still pervades our societies. Complementarian churches may strive to gloss and mitigate the notion that women are innately subordinate but it does not eliminate it. The subordination of women is the foundation of all exploitation and abuse of women. There ought not to be any room in any church for this unscriptural doctrine.

    1. 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36; 1 Timothy 2:8-15
    2. https://diaryofamayberetiredpastor.blog/2024/09/03/i-didnt-know-this/
    3. Kevin Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trintiy, 2017 Cascade Books.

  • I Didn’t Know This!

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    I Didn’t Know This!

    One of the great things about being “maybe retired” is having a lot more time to read.  So it was I came across a book titled “The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity” by Kevin Giles (1). I knew what complementarianism was, or so I thought, and have raised my hands (figuratively) in exasperation at what I have always thought was a bit of fig-leaf of a doctrine (for those of you who don’t know what it is, it is the way some parts of the church justify excluding women from leadership in the church) but I didn’t know there was a complementarian doctrine of the Trinity! This may also surprise those of you who think, as I did, that the doctrine of the Trinity had been done and dusted 1600 years ago – there’s a complementarian doctrine of the Trinity!? So it was with a feeling of intrigue that I dived into this book.

    It was as good as a thriller, a page turner I couldn’t put down. As I delved into the nefarious doctrinal shenanigans surrounding the development and justification of the complementarian doctrine of the Trinity, open-mouthed astonishment would be a good description of my demeanour. The list of heavy-weight evangelical theologians and pastors nonchalantly strolling across the pages as major players in the development of major heresy – all to provide an irrefutable base for complementarian teaching about women – made me feel fortunate that I am of an age to have escaped their influence during my training!

    What these heavy weight theologians and pastors argued was that the Son – the Second Person of the Trinity – is eternally and essentially subordinate to the Father. And, from this position argued that this conclusively demonstrated that women must be subordinate to men (a little oversimplified perhaps, but the essence of the argument). It turns out, that for most of my time as an evangelical Christian, the bulk of the evangelical world has subscribed to a version of the Trinity that was labelled  heretical all the way back at the Council of Constantinople in 381AD. I have been fellowshipping with heretics!

    This may seem very obscure if you’re not a Christian, and even ordinary Christians might feel this is a bit dry, but we are taught by the ancient creeds of the church that the Father, Son, and Spirit are the same in divinity, power and authority; the Persons are each fully, and completely God but yet still one God. There are not three gods. It’s a mystery, and hard to get our heads around (who said God had to be simple?), but this has been what the church has professed since the 4th century. But late 20th – early 21st century evangelicals have seemingly deviated from this teaching and have taught a version of the Trinity that leads to the Son being a lesser god than the Father and, with that, the theology of the atonement goes out of the window (how is all of our sin paid for by a lesser god?)!

    The worrying thing about all of this is that it appears that foundational doctrine was changed simply to justify the subordination of women to men. Perhaps, the theologians and pastors involved would vehemently deny this, but this is what it looks like. Thankfully, It appears that in the last few years other evangelical theologians have recognised the serious departure from orthodox Christian teaching on the Trinity and have rejected the path taken by these senior theologians and pastors. How long this change of heart will take to percolate through the ranks of ordinary church ministers and local congregations who have been trained in this version of the Trinity is unclear. Complementarian teachers continue to argue their case but the fact that their leaders found it necessary to resort to fundamental heresy surely says all that needs to be said about the soundness of this teaching? It all seems like convoluted mansplaining to me!

    1. Kevin Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trintiy, 2017 Cascade Books.