1:9 Alliance: Complementarian Design
Editor’s Note: You can also listen to a podcast interview with Andrew Ballitch released in conjunction with this article.
Andrew Ballitch
The 1:9 Alliance core commitment on complimentary design proclaims the following: “We are committed to the equality of men and women before God with distinct roles, including male headship in the church and home as described in the Word of God.” We state this claim in a day and age when any meaningful distinction between men and women is being erased altogether, let alone a distinction in role. We state this claim in a context in which the wider world cannot say what men and women are, not to mention what they do. But the Bible affirms, through special revelation, a distinction between the sexes that until recently humans have understood from their consideration of general revelation. And with its affirmation of clear distinctions between men and women, scripture offers the way to human flourishing.
The purpose of this brief article is not to define, defend, and apply all the tenets of traditional complementarianism. God willing, future installments from such a Biblical perspective are forthcoming. Rather, while asserting the equality of men and women made in the image of God, my aim is to defend the distinction between men and women in terms of role by describing male headship in the home and the church.
Male Headship in the Home
When providing the concept of male headship in the home with actual content, three categories come to mind: initiation, protection, and provision. These categories are grounded in creation itself as described in the first two chapters of Genesis. Adam is created first. He is commanded to work and he is given the information about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While incomplete without Eve, Adam is given priority and primary responsibility. He names Eve. It is the man who is commanded to leave father and mother and cleave to his wife in marriage. When Eve is created as a gift of God’s grace to complete Adam, she is designed as a helper, a nurturer. Genesis actually uses the language of “helper.” Woman is a fitting counterpart to man. Man and woman’s relationship as a whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Indeed, it is designed by God for procreation. And in the process of procreation, woman is uniquely designed for nurture, biologically, of course, which corresponds to an emphasis on the home and children. Finally, submission is part of the complimentary design for women in the home, because accountability begins with the husband in fulfillment of the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth and exercising dominion. He must submit to God to lead and she must submit to help him in this endeavor. So far, all of this is true pre-fall, before Genesis 3.
Genesis 3 confirms God’s complimentary design while at the same time narrating how sin complicates it. Adam is given directions about the tree. The serpent’s attack is a subversion in that he comes to Eve instead of Adam. And while Adam is second in eating the forbidden fruit, he is first when God calls for an accounting. When curses are being meted out by God as just consequences for this cosmic rebellion, the relationship between husband and wife is twisted such that the wife will desire to seize headship from her husband while being dominated by him. Now, the complimentary design is no more negated by this complication than work is delegitimized when toiling by the sweat of your brow or childbearing in pain. Complementarity is not the result of sin. It was a good thing determined by God at creation. God’s good design is distorted by sin but never eradicated by it, and certainly never results from it.
Let us not be confused. The Bible does not view women as inferior to men. The Bible and this classical understanding of it opposes any idea that women are to be controlled, humiliated, or subjugated. Neither should the Bible and the Christian consensus downplay the unwed or childless woman as incomplete. The Bible does not teach that nurturing, helping, and submission are the totality of what it means to be a woman or that men are exempt from cultivating such virtues. That said, the Bible and the overwhelming testimony of the church throughout the ages affirms the creational orientation of women toward the home, wives supporting rather than usurping their husbands, and empowers women to use their gifts in every legitimate church role. Which brings us to male headship in the church.
Male Headship in the Church
The Bible reserves the office of elder, with its unique teaching function, for qualified men. The battleground text for this is 1 Timothy 2:11–15. While Paul offers radical encouragement to women to learn and be full participants in corporate worship, he does so along with some prohibitions. He forbids a woman from teaching or exercising authority over a man. In the context of the pastoral epistles “teaching” is the authoritative transmission of biblical doctrine. Such teaching to the assembly or a mixed congregation is to be limited to qualified men in the church. Paul then moves from the specific function to the more general activity of exercising authority. There is overlap here. Teaching is the primary way authority is exercised in the church, and the responsibility of exercising authority is entrusted to the elders. Again, the Bible reserves the office of elder, with its unique teaching function for qualified men. But why?
In 1 Timothy 2, Paul doesn’t argue from culture or custom, from access to education or inferiority, or from examples of failure, and therefore what he says cannot be dismissed as such. Paul is making an argument from God’s design, from the creation order. Paul puts our noses back in the opening chapters of Genesis, transcending any cultural qualification or convenient wiggle room. Adam’s dereliction of his duty to lead his wife and crush the serpent’s head blew up marriage as a harmonious, God-glorifying institution undergirding human flourishing. A lack of male headship wreaks havoc in the church as well.
The denial of male headship in the home and in the church stems from a hermeneutical error. This is a battle over the Bible. Make no mistake. Christians today want to dismiss what Paul says here as cultural accretion. It doesn’t work. Paul’s argument springs from creation itself. It is not a commentary on what women are capable of, gifted at, or even equipped by the Holy Spirit for. It is certainly not an evaluation of the value of women or their abilities. It is God revealing how he designed things and how he desires homes and churches to operate so that they may flourish and be fruitful.
To conclude, I want to offer a very important caveat. Male headship in the home and in the church is just that: Male headship in the home and in the church. This is in no way a call for all women to view all men as leaders. Neither is it a limitation on what roles women may legitimately pursue outside of the spheres of home and church. God gave Adam an assignment to lead in the stewardship of His creation and to extend, in that action, a fruitful expression of God’s glory throughout the earth. Here is a Scriptural call for Christian men to take responsibility for initiation, provision, and protection, namely, leadership in their homes and churches, and for Christian women in submission to come alongside such leadership to help and nurture that aim in homes and churches. Together, in these complimentary roles, men and women flourish according to God’s design, together round out the image of God, and partner in both the creation mandate and the Great Commission.