The Complementarian Position Is Not Lived Out Consistently, Even By Ardent Followers

One of the things I’ve never been able to reconcile about the complementarian position is how frequently one thing is preached or taught and another is lived out. I honestly don’t think most complementarians mean to be inconsistent. I think it comes from trying to make it all work in the church, the culture, and the home when in reality it really doesn’t work all that well.

But because people have been told that the very existence of the church itself hinges on the complementarian doctrine, people struggle to make it work even when it doesn’t. Let’s look at two examples of these inconsistencies of thinking.

John Calvin on Women Being Silent

Wade Burleson has had a couple of excellent posts about this lately. One was One Has to Admire the Bold Consistency of John Calvin in His Views on Women. From this post are these words of John Calvin:

“As far as the external connections and social propriety are concerned, the man takes his lead from Christ, and the woman from the man, so that they do not stand on the same level, but this inequality exists … Because he is made subject to Christ and that includes the condition that he take first place in the control of the household and its affairs. For in his home the father of the family is like a king… The man is in authority, and the woman is in subjection to him … In I Tim. 2:12 he debars women from speaking in church altogether … because of the pre-eminence which God has given to the man, so that he might be superior to the woman … The woman took her origin from the man, and that therefore she has a lower standing … The woman was created for the express purpose of greatly enriching the man’s life … Paul looks higher, viz. to the eternal law of God, which had made the female sex subject to the authority of men. Therefore all women are born to submit to the pre-eminence of the male sex … Let the man therefore carry out his function as the head, having supremacy over her; let the woman perform her function as the body, giving help to him … Let the woman be content in her position for subjection, and not feel indignant because she has to play second fiddle to the superior sex” (translated by John W. Frazer, Eerdmans, 1996, pp. 229ff.).

With all respect to John Calvin, reading some of that makes me sick. (And the irony that I’m in a denomination that heralds Calvin and named their college after him is not lost on me. No longer, praise the Lord.)

But how many complementarians do you know who require a woman to keep silent in the church?

“I do not permit a woman to speak…” means silence.

Not just not preaching.

It means silence.

No talking.

No singing.

No teaching Sunday School.

No teaching children.

Not even making a comment in Sunday School if a man is present and might learn from your teaching.

No offering a prayer request.

NOTHING.

How many complementarians do you know who would happily sign off on Calvin’s summary and proudly proclaim this is what they believe about how God views men and women?

Women Not Speaking in Church

Wade shares a great story in Do You Define “Church” the Way the Bible Defines It? This is an excellent post and if you only take one link, take this one for the biblical insights if offers. Here is a little story from the post:

I taught Wednesday night that Paul states the Judaizers beliefs about women in I Corinthians 14:34-35 to only refute it. In other words, the “women keep silent” passage is not God’s commandment, but it is the Judaizers corrupt teaching. I showed them additional internal evidence that identifies this as false Judaizer teaching, including the Greek conjunction prior to verse 36, the absence of quotations in the original Greek which caused many translators to be unable to identify the verses as from another, and the important verses before and after the text that shows Paul’s teaching that corrects the Judaizers’ false beliefs. I then spent the remaining few minutes of the Bible study reviewing the overwhelming number of verses, including those from Paul’s own letters, which are diametrically opposed to the principles taught by the Judaizers. If you think I Corinthians 14:33-35 is from God and not the Judaizers, then you will have a hard time explaining how the rest of the Word of God contradicts the teaching of I Corinthians 14:34-35.

We always have a question and answer time at the end of Bible study and a new member of our church, a woman about seventy years of age who was life long member of a traditional SBC church in Nevada, desired to comment about what I had taught. She was seated next to her husband, and she raised her hand to be recognized and was called upon, she spoke and disagreed quite strongly with my interpretation. She believed I Corinthians 14:33-35 was a COMMANDMENT FROM GOD and after explaining her reasoning, she concluded emphatically that God wanted women to be silent “in church.”

When she was finished I gently suggested that if she believed my interpretation of I Corinthians 11:34-35 was wrong and her’s was right, then she should have never raised her hand to be recognized, she should have never voiced her beliefs in the assembly, and she should have waited until she and her husband arrived home before she asked a question of HIM or made a comment to HIM about what I had taught. That is what the text says! So either she must believe that what I’m teaching is right and then she is FREE to ask questions of her pastor, at any time, any place, for any reason the assembly is gathered, or she must be true to and consistent with her beliefs and remain absolutely silent in church.

Her response?

She said she was not “in church,” so she could speak. Mind you, we were in our Fellowship Hall on Wednesday night with a couple of hundred believers present. There were numerous other small groups from our church meeting throughout our facility and around the city that night. But, in our new member’s mind, we were not “in church” that night because we weren’t in the “auditorium” and having a typical Sunday morning “church” service.

This is one example of the widespread inconsistencies with people’s thinking about complementarianism. It illustrates why I firmly believe that many, many Christians who claim to be complementarians are really egalitarians in function and most of their actual beliefs.

But these sincere Christians have been told so many times that complementarianism is The. Only. Biblical. View. that they can’t even begin to entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, the egalitarians might be correct.