MEN AND WOMEN IN CHRIST
Fresh light from the biblical texts
By Andrew Bartlett
IVP. 412 pages. £24.99
ISBN 978 1 783 599 172
This book is a significant contribution to the debate about the role of women in the church within the broadly evangelical world.
Andrew Bartlett’s long career as a lawyer and his work as an international arbitrator in the commercial world give him strong credentials. He says that he began without any idea whether he would end up sympathetic to the egalitarian or the complementarian position. He claims he is merely following the evidence and implies he is weighing everything objectively with a legally trained and judicially experienced mind.
His aim is to avoid ‘needless schism’ over this issue. ‘To make progress towards unity it will be necessary for those who have taken up opposing positions in the evangelical debate to acknowledge that this is not a primary gospel issue, to look afresh at biblical arguments, to take care to use only sound methods of interpretation, and especially to pay closer attention and give more weight to context and to the train of thought in the relevant texts.’
Andrew Bartlett effectively lands up in the egalitarian camp although he is highly respectful of complementarian scholarship.
To his credit, he grapples in detail with the text of all the key Scriptures. He knows all the right tools for biblical interpretation and uses them throughout, especially context.
The big question is: to what extent do egalitarians or complementarians simply follow an inherited culture of feminism or of male domination, and baptise it with biblical language and proof texts?
Bartlett’s answers too often left me unpersuaded. Some examples:
In dealing with Genesis 1-3 he makes a case for 3:15b simply meaning that male rule is a result of the Fall. But he can only sustain this argument by ignoring the significance of Adam naming not just the animals, but also Eve.
Editing Scripture
In dealing with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 he cuts this out of the Scriptures completely, even though it is found in every single ancient manuscript of 1 Corinthians, albeit a few verses apart depending on the manuscript. This is special pleading and certainly a minority view in the world of evangelical scholarship. Once this text has been removed, with its clear reference to women not speaking in church when ‘the whole church comes together’ (v.23) and ‘when you come together …’ (v.26), it clears the ground for claiming that the other hard text, 1 Timothy 2, is not about the public gathering of the church at all. But to delete a paragraph from the Bible is an extreme way to deal with interpretive challenges.
Special pleading
In dealing with Ephesians 5 he argues that the word ‘head’ does not mean what Paul clearly intended it to mean in its first use in the letter (1:20-22, ‘Christ … raised … and seated … far above all rule and authority … appointed head over everything’). To be fair he accepts that this is what ‘head’ means in Chapter 1. But he then argues that in Chapter 5 it should mean what it may possibly mean in its second use in the letter (4:15,16 ‘we will … grow up into Him who is the head. From Him the whole body … grows’). In other words, he says, the point in Chapter 4 is that Christ is the source of the growth, not the Lord of the church. But 4:15,16 is part of a section that speaks of Christ as the ‘one Lord’ (4:5) who has ‘ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe’ (4:10), language reminiscent of 1:22,23: [Christ] appointed ‘head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills everything in every way.’ Again, this is special pleading; and a selective use of context.
In dealing with 1 Timothy 2:9 he says that no-one really understands the appeal to the order of creation (‘Adam was formed first, not Eve’ v.13) so we cannot meaningfully talk of ‘creation order’. He then uses the whole-book context to argue that the reference in 2:9 to extravagance amongst women, relates exclusively to the younger widows mentioned in 1 Timothy 5. He imports into 1 Timothy 2 the suggestion that the women were dressing in a sexually provocative way, something not explicit in the text. He loads two words in 1 Timothy 5 (‘gossips and busybodies’ NIV) with possible meanings which then become definite meanings in his argument. In effect, he gives a version of the ‘it’s only cultural’ argument based on narrowing the reference in 2:12 to a handful of wealthy and sexually predatory younger widows who are spreading false teaching in the church in Ephesus. But why would Paul want to exclude these younger widows from the widows’ social welfare list (5:11) if these women are the well-to-do women of 1 Timothy 2:9, who presumably were affluent enough not to be considered for inclusion on the widows’ list?
In dealing with Colossians 2:19, ‘head’ is interpreted to mean merely ‘source’ even though a few verses earlier it is clearly used to mean ‘having authority’ (‘Head over every power and authority’ v10). Often, there seems to be a negative connotation attached to the concept of authority, with the word ‘unilateral’ often attached to ‘authority’.
Much good exegesis
When it comes to 1 Corinthians 7 there is much good exegesis, and a helpful distinction between ‘the present crisis’ (v.24) as something particular at that time and ‘this passing world’ (v.31) as something characteristic of this entire present age. However, enormous weight is put on the fact that, when discussing sexual relations within marriage (v.4), Paul uses the term ‘have authority over’ in a precisely reciprocal way for both the husband and the wife in respect of the body of the other. It is at best ambiguous as to whether Paul intended this to reflect their entire relationship. But for the author it becomes a controlling paradigm fundamental to the entire relationship between a husband and wife and trumping any suggestion of hierarchy. This seeks to prove too much.
His exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 is more persuasive and has much to commend it, namely that it is essentially a reference to hairstyles amongst men and women and their sexual significance in the culture.
What is absolutely vital is that evangelicals do not make this issue a primary issue. Andrew Bartlett rightly underlines this point. It is a secondary issue and we must be generous in how we think and speak about brothers and sisters who differ from us on it. We are largely using the same tools of interpretation but coming to different conclusions. However, we must be careful not to use these tools to deny what Scripture teaches or, without compelling evidence, remove offending verses from the canon.
This book ends up being, even if it did not begin as, a valiant effort to promote an egalitarian position. It did not persuade me.
Andrew Bartlett has done the evangelical church a service in raising many good questions in a judicious manner. For that we should be grateful. But we must not be deceived into thinking that, because he is a barrister with a theological degree, he will somehow be free from bias, with flawless reasoning which will lead us to the sunny uplands of an objectivity of assessment never before achieved in this debate. The book’s subtitle is: ‘Fresh light from the biblical texts’. I am not sure how much fresh light has been shed on the biblical texts.
