Let’s get the complementarianism/ egalitarianism debate in perspective

I wrote my MTh dissertations on pastoral ethics relating to marriage. My current work is focused on raising up leaders to plant churches in urban contexts. This combined with another factor means that a particular topic comes up from time to time and you will find me writing about it here.

The third factor is that the question of how men and women relate to each other has become one of the hottest topics within evangelicalism. In the US, it has become central to the culture wars and as a result, two competing sides have turned it into the single most important mark of orthodoxy.

Now getting what the Bible says about marriage, relationships and church right is important. I also happen to have views on what the Bible has to say on those matters. For that reason, I am comfortable with the label “conplementarianism” to describe the particular conclusions I’ve come to.

However, it’s important to keep that in perspective. The label helps locate my particular interpretation but it doesn’t tell you everything. There are a number of different views within conplementarianism, it’s more a continuum than a binary choice and I may find myself closer at times to some egalitarians than some complementarians. I suspect that some egalitarians may find themselves closer to me than some of their fellow egalitarians, once we start to talk properly.

Here’s the second thing. The crucial questions that matter are

1. Who is God – and linked to that, what do you make of Jesus?
2. How do we hear God?
3. How can we know and be right with God? (The Gospel)

This means that the questions we started with are not the be all and end all. They are not what we should place central. This means that it is in my view unhelpful to label yourself as egalitarian or conplementarian, if in effect you are creating an identify for yourself and a description of your whole position in Christian faith. Sadly, at the moment, it seems that too many people are making these words their identifying labels. The result is that these two labels, on either side of the debate have become the new circumcision of our time. If Paul were writing to the Galatians today about who they sit down to dinner and break bread with, this may well be the issue he would have to tackle.

One other thing to help us get the perspective right. Like many other issues, we have made something polemic that is meant to be pastoral. I originally wrote my dissertation on marriage, not to enter a debate to win but because I wanted to contribute something helpful to others. I hope it has done that.

More importantly, this was Paul’s purpose in writing Ephesians 5 and other related passages, not to kick off a debate, heresy hunt or culture war but it help young Christians live out their faith, showing their love for God in their love for each other.