Earlier this week, I shared by review of Andrew Bartlett’s book “Men and Women in Christ.” AS I indicated in the review, I consider this book to be a good representation of a position differing to my own. I suggested that the best complement I could give it and the author would be to engage seriously with it.
Andrew has kindly indicated that he is willing to engage back as I start to flesh out my thoughts in more detail and so, I’m hoping to share some of his responses as well as my own thoughts where possible. I hope this will be informative. here will be things we will disagree strongly on but there wil I think also be areas of agreement and that should be the case when Evangelical brothers talk.
Andrew did share with me some initial responses to my review and I think some of those responses will come out best as we go along. However, it is worth mentioning two of them here.
First, Andrew picks up on my comment that
the diversity of views within both egalitarian and complementarian camps and the relationship/overlap between the two so that we are not talking about a binary choice but rather a continuum”
He says:
Yes, indeed. I couldn’t agree more strongly. And since writing the book I have become even more aware of the variety in and overlap of the various views and the inadequacy of the terms ‘complementarian’ and ‘egalitarian’ to express that variety and overlap. The conventional labels are not fit for purpose, in my view.
I do think that the labels are fit for purpose, with appropriate nuancing and as attempts to label doctrinal/practical positions rather than people and tribes. I will be arguing as a complementarian that this label is worth holding onto and this will involve engagement with his assessment of the historical position and argument that both positions are novel.
Secondly, I argued in my review that whilst 1 Corinthians 7 is not the place to start the work of proposing and evaluating positions on complementarianism. Andre, unsurprisingly disagrees. He commented back to me on my statement about the verses on having authority over each other’s body that:
“this focuses on one aspect of married life”
His response was
1 Corinthians 7 is about more than one aspect of married life. The whole chapter says more about relations between men and women, and decision-making in or relating to marriage, than any other passage in the Bible.
Whilst it is true that the whole chapter does cover a wider range of marriage issues, I will be arguing that tihs isn’t the same as saying that the chapter covers the full orb of issues covered by the egalitarian/complementarian debate. But also, my point in my review is that we have to provide a case for why we would start in a certian place and my xhallenge was about whether such a case was made. So, I think there is opportunity here for Andrew to make the case.
So, I’m looking forward to seeing how the conversation/debate develops. I appreciate Andrew’s willingness to engage, espexially as he is in effect in the position of the Away Team, coming onto my home turf! I would encourage you again to get hold of a copy of his book so that you have had time to engage with his argument. You can also chck out my position by reference to the two publications on the subject available below
Faithroots 