(If John is still reading he can comment on how much I have stretched the Hebrew out of shape.)

Jeremy wrote God has the right to restrict our roles as much as he wants, and if he does so we don’t have the moral right to question it.

(Sorry to pick on you Jeremy – maybe it’s your name. I have a son Jeremy.)

Paul eventually says that it is not our practice to argue. I don’t know whether to read this as sarcastic or whether to read the section in 1 Corinthians 14 as dislocated from his quoting of their letter – where a sentence like “Now I want to deal with women etc…” is missing. But while God has rights, I am in no position to define them except that I note his rights when I am in the dentist’s chair or flying into an intersection on my bike at 35 clicks when there is a stupid pedestrian wearing a hood crossing against the light. (I say stupid in spite of my dislike for adjectives because it sums up the role he played in this little get-out-of-my-way scenario.)

I think it is very likely that Paul and I disagree on some things. As such, I question him and in questioning him I question our tradition and I also question God – I have been given the right to question God and in the spirit of the letter gimel I might receive what I deserve or I might receive a maturing that I did not deserve.

I avoid some intersections. I think it important not to be right sometimes – a terrible admission for me.

Henry, that’s about as unfair as it can get in such discussions. First, we’re not talking about thinking but teaching.

And you have again illustrated why I’m using “Animal Farm” as a source of my metaphors. So the horse can think wherever he wants, but he just can’t speak wherever he wants.

Second, we’re not talking about a view that the pigs get to decide anything but a view that God has restricted these things. Unless you think God is male, it’s not analogous to say the pigs are deciding it.

Actually I think it’s quite analogous. You and I, not God, are discussing how things ought to be. I don’t know about you, but I don’t equate my view with God’s view, though I attempt to get as close as I can.

Further, I don’t think church conferences, boards of elders, or other groups are equivalent to God. In fact, I find this particular argument incredibly sloppy on your part and very surprising, since I think you normally argue quite cogently even–no especially–when you disagree with me.

If God restricts the activities of women, then let’s go ahead and admit it. I say that whoever God gifts can use those gifts wherever God calls, and I do not put restrictions on where that might be. The complementarian may say women may have any of the gifts, but they have a prior restriction, i.e. that these women cannot exercise authority over men.

If that is God’s restriction, in your view, then admit it, but don’t try to pretend the two views are equivalent with reference to the use of gifts–they aren’t. I’m trying to decide whether it’s “offensive” and “just silly” to expect me to believe they are.

Yet it seems that’s what you expect me to believe.

Second, we’re not talking about a view that the pigs get to decide anything but a view that God has restricted these things. Unless you think God is male, it’s not analogous to say the pigs are deciding it.

Third, even if God is male, it’s not all pigs who do this on the complementarian view but simply the one who is perfectly loving, knows what’s best for people, cares about us, wants to build the church, and has worked out a plan for how he intends to do that even if he’s restricted the roles of some to do it. That’s true of no human being and certainly not of the pigs in Animal Farm. There’s nothing wrong with a dictatorship in principle, as Plato’s Republic and Statesman show. It’s actually the best form of government provided that you’ve got a dictator who really is morally perfect, wants the best for everyone, knows the best for everyone, and is able to ensure that the best for everyone actually can happen. It’s just that with corrupt human beings it’s the worst form of government, since we’re not even enough like that for us even to consider a good dictatorship as remotely beneficial unless the alternative is anarchy (in which case I’d rather be under draconian rule than in Hobbes’s state of nature). God has the right to restrict our roles as much as he wants, and if he does so we don’t have the moral right to question it. There is the intellectual question why it might be for the best, but we have no right to demand an answer to it, as the book of Job shows with other questions of the same sort.

I’m not claiming here to be arguing that this is all true, but it is the standard complementarian position, and representing the view accurately requires taking this all into account. This is why I don’t think the Animal Farm analogy is correct. It’s simply not like the pigs saying the horse can only think in certain contexts. Given egalitarian presuppositions, it is less inaccurate to put it this way. But those presuppositions are not shared by the complementarian, and it’s not fair to the complementarian to attribute such a view to them.

. . . You were speaking as if it’s using gifts and teaching that complementarians want to restrict. It’s not. It’s using them in a certain context that complementarians object to.

I’m going to be brief . . . no, really! Here is the crux. You think I’m misrepresenting complementarians. I think complementarians are misrepresenting themselves, trying to sneak by. You see, I think that your second part contradicts the first.

I think that if one encounters a woman who is gifted in preaching and church administration, and in fact a solid cross-section of gifts desirable in a pastor, and I reject her as a pastor because she’s a woman, I’m restricting the use of gifts. So I find the entire context of use argument disingenuous.

If I might yet again refer to Animal Farm, and note in passing that I think your criticism of my use misses the mark, I would say that’s what is involved here is denial of a role to a person who is functionally capable of doing it. If the horse can think (perhaps unlike Boxer), and the pigs deny it the opportunity to do thinking work, that’s not fitting function to activity.

I think your use of Animal Farm is a little problematic. One of the problems he was pointing out is that egalitarian models don’t work out that way in practice. He wants to insist that different animals in the novel really are good at different things, and division of labor is perfectly fine. We want medical experts in the health care profession and economic experts working at the banks we keep our money in. What he didn’t like about the Soviet Union is that there was a pretense of equality of benefits to everyone when there really wasn’t. There were privileges in society that came from certain positions, and there still was an elite.

One way it’s not analogous is that complementarians don’t think there should be a spiritual elite of those in authority, at least not Protestant complementarians. Another way it’s not analogous is that Christians don’t base equality on role, as is evident in I Corinthians 12-14. A third way is that this isn’t about benefits but about kinds of serving. Paul has a ready answer to the objection that some people aren’t going to serve in certain ways. He says that everyone is equally valuable even if not all serve in the same ways. Some ways are more visible than others and lead to more worldly praise, but that’s not how Christians are to operate. So for those reasons, and probably more that I’m not thinking of at the moment, I don’t accept the Animal Farm objection. But my point wasn’t to defend the view. It was to seek for a more accurate presentation of it.

On the last point, I will admit that there are complementarians whose particular version of the view might ground someone’s dismissal of a woman’s suggestion of an idea, but I don’t think it’s true that complementarianism provides the theoretical justification of such behavior, since complementarianism as a general view doesn’t specify that ideas women suggest to a group, even in a spiritual context, are to be ignored. In fact, many complementarians would agree that such behavior is immoral (assuming the man in question didn’t provide further arguments that were more convincing when the original reason itself wasn’t, and the woman in question just didn’t realize that, which I’m sure can happen in some such cases but probably doesn’t explain enough of them to dismiss the phenomenon).

You say:

I fully agree with that, but the point of contention isn’t that. It’s whether God’s gifting and calling as a leader or teacher requires someone expressing that gift in a way that constitutes authority over men. I think it doesn’t, so I don’t see how restricting a range of authority means not using the gifting of God. If complementarianism is correct, then God doesn’t call women to lead men in such a way except in rare exceptions, but it doesn’t mean God doesn’t call women to be leaders with significant influence. . . .

George Orwell, call your office. No, not 1984, Animal Farm. “All the animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” I simply don’t understand how complementarians make this point with a straight face.

Women can, under this rule, take on whatever role they are called to and gifted for, as long as it doesn’t mean exercising authority over men, but of course men aren’t subject to similar strictures. It simply isn’t equality, no matter how carefully you slice and dice the verbiage.

Complementarians just extend that to male-female difference of roles, but the same general point is one that egalitarians recognize, so I’m not sure the application of the incarnation is really any different between the two views.

For me, at least, the difference is that I believe that God broke down all artificial barriers, and I believe that male dominance is one of those artificial barriers. Again, no matter how one tries to nuance the labeling or the specific nature of “authoritative” teaching, it still privileges males, and I don’t think that lives up to the goal. I also don’t see how it is essentially the same understanding of the incarnation. I believe the incarnation broke down (in an ontological sense, not necessarily in the application of the moment) all the barriers in those three categories; it seems to me that complementarians will disagree.

To go back in your comment a little ways:

If complementarianism is correct, then God doesn’t call women to lead men in such a way except in rare exceptions, but it doesn’t mean God doesn’t call women to be leaders with significant influence.

Again, while we may debate whether I’m right or you’re right on God’s intent, let’s please not try to claim it’s the same thing. I believe that one would seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance and observe the gifts and find who is called. Whether that person is male or female is of no consequence, other than based on certain specifically cultural contexts.

Complementarians would exclude the woman from certain roles, irrespective of the gifts. I could easily see–and have seen–circumstances in which a woman who was better qualified for the leadership role was rejected simply because she was a woman. I have found many occasions, even amongst people who regard themselves as egalitarians, in which my wife can express a view and have it rejected, while I express the same view, and suddenly it’s accepted. That represents egalitarians not living up to their convictions, but complementarians provide the philosophical foundation for such improper discrimination.

I fully agree with that, but the point of contention isn’t that. It’s whether God’s gifting and calling as a leader or teacher requires someone expressing that gift in a way that constitutes authority over men. I think it doesn’t, so I don’t see how restricting a range of authority means not using the gifting of God. If complementarianism is correct, then God doesn’t call women to lead men in such a way except in rare exceptions, but it doesn’t mean God doesn’t call women to be leaders with significant influence.

I do know of those who hold that since God became incarnate as a male, that there is a special leadership role accorded to human males. That position is the one I directly intended to address.

I’ve heard that view, but I don’t think it’s standard complementarianism, which goes the other way. Most complementarians, in my experience, don’t see the incarnation in a male as the basis of complementarian gender roles but as a consequence of a decision already made by God for complementarian gender relations with presumptive male authority in the church and home.

I think ultimately I have the same view as you about the implications of the incarnation for Christian equality, but I think that’s what distinguishes complementarianism from the view complementarians have always tried to distance themselves from. The catchphrase is “equality but complementarity”. The roles aren’t equal in the same sense that the giftings and callings from any believer to any other aren’t equal, but the kind of equality Gal 3:28 speaks of doesn’t violate Paul’s insistence on diversity of gifting and calling in I Corinthians 12. Complementarians just extend that to male-female difference of roles, but the same general point is one that egalitarians recognize, so I’m not sure the application of the incarnation is really any different between the two views. It’s more the scope of how that application works itself out. Both views still accept absolute equality spiritually with respect to salvation and our love for each other.