Women + church + bible - part 2

The trigger and the book

Around Christmas ‘07 I started thinking about what I felt about female elders. We’ve never had elders at MBC whilst I’ve been there, but we have had deacons, some of whom were female - and who I greatly admired and respected for what they were doing and the character and godliness. Our church leadership has shown it is comfortable with female leadership and teaching roles through the deacon appointments, but also through encouraging an increasing amount of females to preach and teach. When this was ever taught about, the justification by my very good friend Karl, our senior pastor, was Galatians 3 v26-29 - that didn’t quite explain it enough for me and I still felt uncomfortable. My concern was as to whether we were choosing this position because it would be completely culturally unacceptable (inside and outside of our church) to have a different stance, and also because it would offend people if we excluded women from leadership. I wanted to have great conviction that people had studied, and wrestled with Scripture and could give a Genesis to Revelation understanding on what our male-female relationships in the church (and elsewhere) should be. I began to discuss this with my best friend John. As usual, he had a book in his bookcase that spoke exactly to the subject. The book was amazingly written as long ago as 1985 and hit its 10th edition print run in 1999. Not exactly a one hit wonder! The book is called “Beyond Sex Roles: What the bible says about a woman’s place in church and family” and is by Gilbert Bilezikian (commonly known as Dr B), a professor at Wheaton and the mentor behind Bill Hybels, indeed Hybels attributes a lot of the inspiration of Willow Creek to this man. So I was excited about it, and have found it an excellent study of scripture and relatively easy to read. It’s challenged many of my views, but done it in a way that seems robust and thorough and consistent. So that’s the source of the following comments.

The creation pre-fall

 Genesis 1 and 2 set out the story of the beginning of women and man and however literally it is meant to be taken, anyone who would accept that the bible is the word of God would also accept that there is deep meaning in Genesis 1 and 2 and that these passages give us a picture of perfection, as shown by the emphasis that Revelation places on the Tree of Life. I will through this post write a summary of the key points of the book in bullets, to reduce the length of the post, and also to highlight where I am summarising the book and where I am making my own comment.

• Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion - clearly man is plural and refers to man and woman (as in Gen 5:2) - so we can learn that man and woman are both image bearers of God, and also that the whole Triune God is involved in the creation of humans.
• So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. - although man (singular) was to be created, when God created man in His image He had to create man and woman to reflect his image. God is neither male nor female but both femaleness and maleness pertain to the image of God.
• Let them rule - there is no suggestion of an authority structure here at all between man and woman. Both are equally entitled to act for God on earth. God has allocated spheres of authority and a hierarchical structure between animals and humans all through Genesis 1 and yet there is not a hint that man was given authority over woman. This strongly supports a relationship of mutuality in equality.
• Be fruitful and multiply - The additional purpose of being different was to multiply, not to dominate one or the other. It suggests that fulfilling the command so subdue the earth an act of shared partnership.
• The 2nd creation story (it expands on man and woman being formed and repeats part of Genesis 1) - this repeats and amplifies Genesis 1 and so is important. It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.Even with perfection, Adam still was not fulfilled. People need other people for community. Woman was to be a helper (”partner”,) complementary to him (”suitable”) - without woman man would have been useless. Helper is a word usually used in the old testament to denote God rescuing His people - so God provided a rescuer for man!
• So God formed woman from a rib of man - All other animals and man had been made from the ground, so this was very different. This operation reinforces the humanness of woman, she was fully participating in Adam’s humanity. No justification can be found here for this supporting subordination. Neither is the order in which they were formed suggestive of the granting of authority of man over woman - if so, man and woman would fall under the rule of animals.
• God brought woman to the man - the animals were brought to be named but woman was brought to be recognised as fully human. - reinforcing that woman and animals are different.
• Man leaves his parents - the parents role remains passive and man makes the decision to leave and cleave. This does not support a system whereby the father makes all the decisions for the son. Note the man moves to the woman, who seems to be independent. This is very different from what happened throughout the Old Testament. Again there is no suggestion here of a male hierarchy.

I would concur with the author of the book that Genesis 1 and 2 would appear to strongly support a “relationship of mutuality in equality” between male and female.