You, along with several others have been key in challenging several complementarian teachings I have grown up with, as I am now navigating what I genuinely believe to be true in the Scriptures. Your response to this article is helpful, as always, and I'm thankful you're here on the Stack! Welcome and please keep writing!
Thanks Nijay! You are a consistently helpful and clarifying voice in my life. I so appreciate your thoughtfulness and approach, and feel validated by your grounding question (which I have too often gotten into trouble for asking myself): why?
Thank you for this. I understand the appeal to humanity ala abolition, it got the job done for Wilberforce and his cohorts and could certainly do the same for women. I wonder though, about the efficacy of building ornate theologies around our distinctions in the flesh; a woman or a man's place in the home or church, when we are explicitly told in the Word to stop regarding one another according to the flesh. It seems to me that all other passages thereafter which regard one another according to the flesh are given ala the divorce laws of Moses "because of the hardness of our hearts".
Saying this, there may be a perfectly good reason why we don't use this passage, but I have yet to understand how it doesn't render all of our writing on Biblical Manhood/Womanhood meaningless in light of how mature believers ought to regard one another as explicitly stated in the Word. I suppose I argue from the other side of the point, why are we even arguing about this when the very man who wrote the so-called household-codes (which our sister siblings have so thoroughly dispatched) told the same people he was writing to that male, female, nationality or social status (as wildly divergent as we will experience) mean nothing in the Kingdom of God. What am I missing?
Hi Daniel, I’d like to gently caution you about the part of your argument where you cited the phrase “hardness of heart” to reinforce a point you were making. I urge you to read my article about how that phrase has been misunderstood.
Very informative, thank you. I generally use the term in "you have to live the real world," terms of harm reduction or the difference between law and case law. Thanks again for your thorough explanation.
Yes, there is a push to the extremes, as you say. My aunt taught a class for both men and women in a small church for well over forty years. A couple of years ago, she was told she could no longer teach. We must "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness (1 Peter 3:15)." Jesus came to set us free. How often we forget that.
Agreed that Hugenberger's "Let's all get along" stance sidesteps the critical central issue of authority/submission. Its all very well to aim for unity, but he seems to relegate this issue into something secondary and relatively unimportant. By doing so, he denigrates and minimises women's real distress in their experience of being treated as inferior, and the injustice of it. It is as though that does not come into the equation for him. He has pushed the issue of women themselves, and their experience, under the carpet in an effort to make everything look pleasant on the surface.
It is as though the "unity" he wants is just among the men in the church. He seems to have sidelined women, indeed seems to be ignoring their feelings and opinions. Women should be silent - yet again.
This is a great point — helps me name part of what made me uncomfortable with the CT article. He definitely seems to be writing as a man to men — without taking women’s experiences into consideration.
I can't thank you enough for using your work and your voice to stand with your sisters in Christ as we claim the liberty Christ has already given us through His Spirit and His anointing upon us! Yes and amen.
Very helpful, and I found the test case of Phoebe particularly helpful. Thank you Dr. Gupta.
Just one point, there’s a misquote of
Hugenberger who wrote ‘what seems to be intended is a receptive disposition, a willingness to listen and be persuaded as needed, not mindless obedience’. Not disobedience, as suggested.
I discovered this post on Engaging Scripture's homepage, and it immediately resonated with me. Just last week, at my relatively new church, I was struck by our pastor's statement that a woman pastor could be "reconciled with God" if she repented for her "rebellious spirit." When I inquired about this, another pastor cited 1 Timothy 2, explaining that while women could teach women or children at church, a man would never be taught or pastored by a woman.
This conversation literally bubbled up from my sleep when I woke up. I struggled with how 1 Timothy 2—clearly Paul's pastoral response to specific circumstances that Timothy faced as a young, argumentative church leader—could be generalized to universally deny women teaching roles. Are we also going to mandate church leaders wear coats because Paul asked Timothy for one in 2 Timothy? This seems—and I'm open to being proved wrong—like either naive or convenient hermeneutics, propping up "common sense" views rooted in traditional social roles rather than Scripture. If this principle was truly central to Christian leadership, wouldn't Jesus, James, Peter, or John have mentioned it somewhere?
Moreover, this position creates bizarre practical dilemmas: Should we avoid reading exegetical books by women? What about gender-anonymous authors? Podcasts with ambiguous voices? What happens when a woman's cooking demonstration at church incorporates biblical analysis of commensality?
I deeply appreciate how you frame what church leadership should embody: "all leaders, male and female, showing humble openness to a cooperative spirit that brings the best wisdom to the table." Having been baptized and spiritually nurtured in a church with women pastors, I only recently discovered the complementarian position. Those women pastors helped me grow tremendously as a Christian, and I struggle to understand why we would deny ourselves gifted teachers based on chromosomes. Your article has helped me think more deeply about finding a church home where biblical interpretation aligns with the fundamental values you've described.
(Apologies for the length—this has been weighing heavily on my mind!)
We needed this! wow Thanks for this Nijay. This breakdown was so helpful and I'm looking forward to part 2!
Thankful for your voice, Nijay!
You, along with several others have been key in challenging several complementarian teachings I have grown up with, as I am now navigating what I genuinely believe to be true in the Scriptures. Your response to this article is helpful, as always, and I'm thankful you're here on the Stack! Welcome and please keep writing!
Thanks Nijay! You are a consistently helpful and clarifying voice in my life. I so appreciate your thoughtfulness and approach, and feel validated by your grounding question (which I have too often gotten into trouble for asking myself): why?
Looking forward to part 2!
Sooo good...
Thank you for this. I understand the appeal to humanity ala abolition, it got the job done for Wilberforce and his cohorts and could certainly do the same for women. I wonder though, about the efficacy of building ornate theologies around our distinctions in the flesh; a woman or a man's place in the home or church, when we are explicitly told in the Word to stop regarding one another according to the flesh. It seems to me that all other passages thereafter which regard one another according to the flesh are given ala the divorce laws of Moses "because of the hardness of our hearts".
Saying this, there may be a perfectly good reason why we don't use this passage, but I have yet to understand how it doesn't render all of our writing on Biblical Manhood/Womanhood meaningless in light of how mature believers ought to regard one another as explicitly stated in the Word. I suppose I argue from the other side of the point, why are we even arguing about this when the very man who wrote the so-called household-codes (which our sister siblings have so thoroughly dispatched) told the same people he was writing to that male, female, nationality or social status (as wildly divergent as we will experience) mean nothing in the Kingdom of God. What am I missing?
Hi Daniel, I’d like to gently caution you about the part of your argument where you cited the phrase “hardness of heart” to reinforce a point you were making. I urge you to read my article about how that phrase has been misunderstood.
https://cryingoutforjustice.blog/2019/05/06/jesus-did-not-say-hardness-of-heart-is-grounds-for-divorce-deuteronomy-24-has-been-greatly-misunderstood/
Very informative, thank you. I generally use the term in "you have to live the real world," terms of harm reduction or the difference between law and case law. Thanks again for your thorough explanation.
Yes, there is a push to the extremes, as you say. My aunt taught a class for both men and women in a small church for well over forty years. A couple of years ago, she was told she could no longer teach. We must "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness (1 Peter 3:15)." Jesus came to set us free. How often we forget that.
Thank you for writing this!
Agreed that Hugenberger's "Let's all get along" stance sidesteps the critical central issue of authority/submission. Its all very well to aim for unity, but he seems to relegate this issue into something secondary and relatively unimportant. By doing so, he denigrates and minimises women's real distress in their experience of being treated as inferior, and the injustice of it. It is as though that does not come into the equation for him. He has pushed the issue of women themselves, and their experience, under the carpet in an effort to make everything look pleasant on the surface.
It is as though the "unity" he wants is just among the men in the church. He seems to have sidelined women, indeed seems to be ignoring their feelings and opinions. Women should be silent - yet again.
This is a great point — helps me name part of what made me uncomfortable with the CT article. He definitely seems to be writing as a man to men — without taking women’s experiences into consideration.
I can't thank you enough for using your work and your voice to stand with your sisters in Christ as we claim the liberty Christ has already given us through His Spirit and His anointing upon us! Yes and amen.
Very helpful, and I found the test case of Phoebe particularly helpful. Thank you Dr. Gupta.
Just one point, there’s a misquote of
Hugenberger who wrote ‘what seems to be intended is a receptive disposition, a willingness to listen and be persuaded as needed, not mindless obedience’. Not disobedience, as suggested.
I discovered this post on Engaging Scripture's homepage, and it immediately resonated with me. Just last week, at my relatively new church, I was struck by our pastor's statement that a woman pastor could be "reconciled with God" if she repented for her "rebellious spirit." When I inquired about this, another pastor cited 1 Timothy 2, explaining that while women could teach women or children at church, a man would never be taught or pastored by a woman.
This conversation literally bubbled up from my sleep when I woke up. I struggled with how 1 Timothy 2—clearly Paul's pastoral response to specific circumstances that Timothy faced as a young, argumentative church leader—could be generalized to universally deny women teaching roles. Are we also going to mandate church leaders wear coats because Paul asked Timothy for one in 2 Timothy? This seems—and I'm open to being proved wrong—like either naive or convenient hermeneutics, propping up "common sense" views rooted in traditional social roles rather than Scripture. If this principle was truly central to Christian leadership, wouldn't Jesus, James, Peter, or John have mentioned it somewhere?
Moreover, this position creates bizarre practical dilemmas: Should we avoid reading exegetical books by women? What about gender-anonymous authors? Podcasts with ambiguous voices? What happens when a woman's cooking demonstration at church incorporates biblical analysis of commensality?
I deeply appreciate how you frame what church leadership should embody: "all leaders, male and female, showing humble openness to a cooperative spirit that brings the best wisdom to the table." Having been baptized and spiritually nurtured in a church with women pastors, I only recently discovered the complementarian position. Those women pastors helped me grow tremendously as a Christian, and I struggle to understand why we would deny ourselves gifted teachers based on chromosomes. Your article has helped me think more deeply about finding a church home where biblical interpretation aligns with the fundamental values you've described.
(Apologies for the length—this has been weighing heavily on my mind!)
Thank you for this post! Have you read Dorothy L. Sayers' collection, "Are Women Human?" If not, I think you'd greatly enjoy and appreciate it!
Thank you for this post!