The problem is that while the complementarian movement explained a lot and defended important Scripture, it still has underlying root weaknesses. The primary one, in my opinion, is its foundational misinterpretation of Genesis 3:16 that believes a woman’s root problem after the fall is that she wants to take control from the man and dominate him in return. That view put termites in a corner foundation of complementarian thought. You can’t build a solid structure on gender with that kind of foundational misinterpretation of the root problem from the fall for women.

There’s been a number of posts this last week defending complementarian thought. Most notably, Kevin DeYoung wrote 9 Marks of Healthy Biblical Complementarianism. I’ve had this post in the works for a long time, but Kevin’s post and Aimee Byrd’s response to it reminded me anew of a long unsettled feeling I’ve had with complementarian language.

Many reformed conservatives feel dissonance with the Counsel of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Though we generally identify aa complementarian, this is more a function of the fact that we DON’T identify with egalitarian thought than a hook, line, and sinker support of conservative presentations and applications of complementarian thought.Furthermore, we generally identify as complementarians because we’ve been greatly influenced in other ways by the old leaders of the movement. I was deeply influenced by John Piper’s Desiring God. I find D. A. Carson’s exegeses of various passages incredibly helpful, including passages on women. Tim Keller’s writings on social justice transformed how I think about the gospel applied.

I really don’t want to be at odds with any of these guys whom I respect and from whom I have learned life changing truths. But some of their language around the Bible and gender and the applications of the groups they support leave me uncomfortable. I go back again and again to the worddissonance. Something is not quite right. Something doesn’t fit the rest of Scripture. I think often of a science conundrum that well illustrates the problem (in my humble opinion) with the last 30 years or so of discussion on gender among evangelicals.

Note: if you are of the personality type that curls into the fetal position at the mention of a science conundrum, I’ll try to explain this in a way that is empowering, not frustrating, to you. If I fail, let me know in the comments, and I’ll try harder next time. 

Consider for a moment Newtonian physics. Most of us are familiar with it — even you artists and poets who don’t think you are. At least we all live according to it everyday. It centers around the concept of gravity. An apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head in the late 1600’s, causing him to figure out gravity. Large objects (like our earth) pull smaller objects toward them (like an apple being pulled back to the earth or the moon being held in orbit by the gravitational pull of the earth), and the foundation of Newtonian physics was laid. Much in our world fits Newtonian physics, and it has become a great tool for understanding the universe. We all stick to the earth because of Newtonian physics. The moon orbits the earth; the earth orbits the sun. From satellites transmitting data to the earth to ants crawling along the ground, it seems that our universe is fundamentally held together by gravity. I was even taught in high school that electrons orbited around neutrons in atoms similar to the planets around the sun. The idea was that the neutron held the electrons in orbit through the gravitational pull of the neutron.

The problem is that scientists later discovered that electrons and neutrons don’t actually work like that. In fact, you can’t even measure how an electron travels in an atom. All of our world does not in fact obey Newtonian physics, particularly at the micro level. So we have a universe that follows one principle while the tiny parts that make up that universe defy it. Atoms don’t fit Newton’s model. Albert Einstein and others after him sought for a Unified Field Theory, something that explained how the universe worked on a macro and micro level. How could the big parts of the Universe work together in a way that the small parts making them up defied? There has to be a bigger principle at work, one that explains both.

Can you see where I am going here with gender?

In the 70s and 80s, a new conservative model on gender in the Church was codified. Statements were written, councils were established, and books were published. And these statements, councils, and books spoke into a number of problems around gender in the Church.

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