(Note: Scot McKnight has been doing a series on women in ministry for several weeks. I have been faithfully reading and commenting. However, I must confess that I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I keep repeating the same conversations over and over as people come and go. So instead of rewriting the different versions of the same statement, I thought I might do a few posts here on my blog so I can either link or quote them on demand. So here is the first one. We will see how many other posts follow.)
Today, we repeatedly hear folks who believe women are to be subordinate to men say that men and women are "Equal in being, unequal in role/function." This formulation is false in how the proponents use it, and I will demonstrate why.
It is claimed by teachers like Wayne Grudem and John Piper that it is a woman's "role" to be subordinate to her husband. Subordination does not imply inferiority. Examples are given. The president of the United States is in authority over us. That doesn't mean we are inferior or less than he is. We are simply subordinate in our role. So why do some get bent out of shape over women being subordinate to men? Why do people have such a problem with authority and hierarchy?
There are two types of subordination:
1. Subordination limited in scope and duration.
2. Subordination unlimited in scope and duration.
Is it possible for one of two equal beings to be subordinate in function to the other? Yes, as long as that subordination is limited in scope and duration. The example of the president is a very good one. The president's authority is limited in scope (only to the execution of his constitutional duties) and for a limited duration (no more than two elected terms.) A police officer is another example. Their authority is limited to law enforcement and only while employed in an official capacity. A parent has a virtually unlimited scope of authority over a child at birth, but that authority wanes over time and is for a fixed duration that ends when the child reaches maturity. Officers to soldiers, bosses to workers, and coaches to players are just a few more examples.
There was a time in Western society when we did not have this idea of limited authority. We had the divine right of Kings. The King's authority (and that of his descendants) was complete (unlimited in scope) and eternal (unlimited in duration). The people under him were his subjects. They were in subjugation to him. They were his subordinates and inferiors.
Those who teach women's subordination to men say that woman was made for subordination to man as her "role." It is of her being (ontic) to be subordinate to a man. Here, subordination is unlimited in scope and unlimited in duration. (It is the "divine right of husbands," no matter how benevolent those husbands may be.) If someone is subordinate in an unlimited scope and duration, they are by definition not equal to the one they are subordinated to and, therefore, not equal in being! It is the subjugation of one class of human beings to another.
Equal in being, unequal in role for limited scope and duration? Yes!
Equal in being, unequal in role for unlimited scope and duration? Illogical.
Some hierarchicalists will raise the issue of the priests and Levites. This was a case of God setting apart men to be leaders and women to be followers. First, the priests and Levites role's were restricted to the limited sphere of offering sacrifices and temple matters. (It might also be added that God's primary oracles in the Old Testament included prophets, including women and men.) Second, while the practice persisted for generations, it was not eternal. It was brought to an end with Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We are all (women and men) now a Royal Priesthood, and those limitations are gone. This is a Type 1 subordination, not a Type 2.
Finally, the hierarchialilsts will argue that Jesus was subordinate to the Father. Here again, we have a Type 1 Subordination. The subordination of the Son to the Father was limited to the Son's work in the redeeming creation of humanity. As Philippians 2:5-11 makes so eloquently clear, Jesus gave up his equality with God to become a servant even unto death, only to be raised back up to full equality with the Father as "Lord" at the end of his work. The unified historic teaching of the Church since the fourth century is forcefully stated in the most widely affirmed confession of the Reformation, the Second Helvetic Confession, written in 1566:
“We also condemn all heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate to another in the Trinity, and that their is something unequal in it, a greater or a less, something corporeal or corporeally conceived, something different with respect to character or will, something mixed or solitary, as if the Son and Holy Spirit were the affections and properties of one God the Father, as the Monarchians, Novatians, Praxeas, Patripassians, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Aetius, Macedonius, Anthropomorphites, Arius, and such like, have thought." (Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 2, Heresies.)
Other than proslavery theologians in nineteenth-century America, who taught unequal in being and unequal in role (although not in this language), I know of no other significant departure from this confession among those that have remained part of orthodox Christianity. The "Equal being, unequal role" formulation is an invention of the early 1980s, and it has emerged as an attempt to shore up the traditional practice of subordinating women to men while trying not to look too offensive to a culture that values equality.
The fact is that no category of believers is subordinate to another in the body of Christ in the sense of the Type 2 subordination I described. However, each of us is to submit to every other member of the body of Christ for now and for eternity.
I'll have more to write someday on Christ and subordination, but that will do for now.
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