“Male and Female” in God’s Image?

I recently wrote about the Equal in Being, Unequal in Role formula of complementarians, and its logical inconsistency. There is another variation of this claim that says that male and female "bear God's image," but male and female play "different" (eternally hierarchical) roles. This is usually framed something like this:

"The man's role is to lead and provide while the woman's role is to be subordinate and have children."

Thus, while being equally in the image of God, men and women play different roles ordained by God. Does this claim hold up under scrutiny? It does not.

First, "subordinate" is not a role. It is a relational posture. Citizen, private, or football player are roles (that may be subordinate to other roles like police officer, sergeant, or coach.) The is no role called "subordinate."

Second, it is critical to specify what we mean when we say "image of God." Francis Schaffer used to use two lists to illustrate what it meant to be in the image of God using two lists:

List 1:

God
…….
Humanity
Animals
Plants
Matter

This highlights ways God is "other" than us, and we are like nature.

List 2:

God
Humanity
…….
Animals
Plants
Matter

This second list illustrates that there are ways in which we are like God that nothing else is.

God created us for relationship and dominion. Male and female are in God's image and are to be coregents over creation. At a minimum, males and females exercise abstract reasoning, moral discernment, creative thinking, and leadership skills, among other things. In all these things, they are equal. Therefore, when we say that a woman's reason, moral discernment, and other image-bearing capacities must always be under a man's, it is to deny the very equality of being in God's image. They are not equally in the image of God. The woman is a lesser image.

We also need to revisit the two lists above and ask which list the childbearing "role" belongs to. It belongs on the first list. Childbearing is not a uniquely human trait. It is a mammalian trait shared with countless other species. Raising children is a distinctly human activity, and it is the responsibility of both fathers and mothers!

Therefore, let us revisit the complementarian claim:

"The man's role is to lead and provide while the woman's role is to be subordinate and have children."

This formula effectively reserves all those capacities to males that define human beings as image bearers of God and relegates women to roles shared by countless mammals on the face of the planet.

Finally, it will not do to say that God created male and female equal but then placed them in eternal hierarchy. This puts ontology (the way something was created) in direct conflict with teleology (the purpose for which it was created). It is to say God created woman to be equal in image but intended for her to live otherwise. Nowhere else in Scripture and theology do we find this kind of divide between ontology and teleology!

The idea that male and female are in God's image but have "different" (eternally hierarchical) roles does not hold under scrutiny.