This topic never seems to be far from the surface of conservative evangelical discourse. The recent publication of Aimee Byrd’s latest book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the reviews that have followed (see here and here) are only the most recent entries in a decades-long conversation (along with these, see also Kevin DeYoung’s recent post).

A couple of months ago I posted an article outlining some thoughts about the renewal of theological anthropology. Therein I suggested a number of resources from which one might draw and a number of topics one might address in promoting such a renewal. Given my desire to reflect globally on the topic, I refrained from addressing some of the more controversial issues in theological anthropology today.

In the present article, I want to turn to a more specific, more controversial aspect of theological anthropology: the nature of sex. My focus is not “sex activity (sexual intercourse leading to childbirth)” but “sex identity (the natural state of females and males)” (Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman, 13). What does it mean that God created (and that God redeems, sanctifies, and perfects) Adam/man as “male and female” (Gen 1:27; 5:2)?

This topic never seems to be far from the surface of conservative evangelical discourse. The recent publication of Aimee Byrd’s latest book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the reviews that have followed (see here and here) are only the most recent entries in a decades-long conversation (along with these, see also Kevin DeYoung’s recent post).

Many are tired of these conversations. Can’t we just move on?! Others are dissatisfied with the options currently on the table but worry that raising questions might signal either indifference or, worse, the beginning of a slide down the slippery slope toward theological revisionism. I understand both responses, which are not unrelated to the current state of the discussion, which is often repetitive, sometimes silly, and rarely self-reflective or self-critical.

Over the past couple of decades, I have found myself increasingly dissatisfied with the ways “complementarianism” is defined and described by its contemporary defenders. The Trinity controversy of 2016 not only strengthened that dissatisfaction, it also suggested to me what might be the “structural weakness” (to borrow Bobby Jamieson’s language) lying at the heart of many contemporary approaches to manhood and womanhood.

I’m not interested in rethinking the ordination practices of my denomination, the PCA. I’m not interested in proposing a “third way” beyond complementarianism and egalitarianism because, well, that’s not how the discovery of truth works (with apologies to Hegel). I’m not interested in “broadening” or “narrowing” complementarianism (for reasons that will become clearer below, I don’t find those categories all that helpful). I am interested in stepping back from the contemporary conversation, returning to first principles, considering the full sweep of scriptural teaching, as well as that teaching’s reception by the church, and asking if and how we might transcend the limitations of our present discourse.

What follows is a first step in this regard. I have three basic points to make. First, contrary to contemporary tendencies toward reductionism, I will suggest the need for bringing a greater number of concepts into play when considering topics of moral and theological significance such as anthropology. Second, I will suggest four sets of gender roles that might enrich the ways we think about the identity and calling of men and women. Third, I will suggest three social concepts that can help us think about the nature and ends of our social lives in general and of our relationships as men and women in particular.

Here’s my thesis: A more diversified account of the social roles of men and women, and a more expansive account of the nature, forms, and ends of our social life will not only better account for a traditional understanding of the roles of men and women in family, church, and society. It will also offer a richer array of opportunities for our mutual agency in realizing God’s purposes for man as male and female.

If conservatives typically worry that expanding agency threatens to erode traditional roles, progressives typically worry that defending traditional roles threatens to restrict agency. Contrary to both worries, I believe that a more expansive theological anthropological framework will better ground traditional roles and further expand the vistas of mutual, personal agency for men and women seeking to live a life that is pleasing to God.

More Concepts, Please

A systematic theology of human beings requires true theological and moral concepts. Because such concepts disclose the nature of reality, they enable us to think well about human beings: their natures and callings, their capacities and ends. True concepts are the building blocks of good systematic theology.

True theological and moral concepts, in turn, must be authorized by Scripture if they are to command our thought and obedience. Scripture may authorize true concepts in different ways. Scripture may remind us what we should have known through the study nature (e.g., natural law) or Scripture may reveal things we never could have known through the study of nature but only through divine self-disclosure (e.g., the blessed Trinity). Scripture, in other words, authorizes true concepts by rehabilitating the natural knowledge of God and all things relative to God and by declaring the supernaturally revealed knowledge of God and all things relative to God.

In order to fulfill its vocation, systematic theology requires a sufficient number of concepts. To take a ready example, the concept of a divine “person” by itself is insufficient for thinking about the person of Jesus Christ. In addition to this concept, we must also have some conception of the oneness of God, of divine and human natures, of the unfolding covenant of grace in history, of various offices (e.g., prophet, priest, and king), and of the sacrificial system. Only with a sufficient number of concepts in place can we think well about the person of Jesus Christ.

The reason for this has to do with the nature of systematic theology. We sometimes think that theology is a “system” in the way that a machine is a system, with different cogs and levers, whose relations to each other are a matter of the machine-maker’s (in this case, the systematic theologian’s) invention. But theology is not that kind of system. As the title of Edward Leigh’s seventeenth-century compendium of doctrine indicates, theology is A systeme or body of divinity. That is to say, theology is not a system in the way that a machine is a system. Theology is a system in the way that a body is a system. The systematic theologian’s job when it comes to theology is not to invent the relationships between one theological concept and another but to discover them.

What’s the significance? You can take a screw out of a machine and describe it truly as a screw without describing its place and function within the larger machine. You can’t do that with an organ in a body. Part of the meaning of the organ is determined by its functions and relations to other organs, the various systems within the body (e.g., respiratory, nervous, etc.), and the body as a whole. This is why considering any topic in theology always requires us to consider a sufficient number of concepts. A screw may be described by itself and, in being so described, it may be described truly. A heart may not.

The “structural weakness” of contemporary complementarianism, as I see it, is that it attempts to account for manhood and womanhood with an insufficient set of concepts. The concepts it employs are not themselves false (e.g., equality, authority, submission). They are isolated, not well complemented by other concepts that are necessary for making sense of who we are and what we are called to be as men and women made, redeemed, and yet to be perfected by the triune God. Like notes abstracted from a larger composition, these concepts by themselves fail to exhibit the harmony of the divine composer’s true intention for men and women.

In the remaining two sections of this article, I want to suggest a fuller set of concepts that, taken together, provide a more expansive framework for thinking about the identity and calling of man as male and female. That fuller set of concepts includes four gender roles and three social concepts.

Four Gender Roles (Times Two Sexes, Times Multiple Social Contexts)

In a recent review of J. Budziszewski’s book, On the Meaning of Sex, Bobby Jamieson identifies what I believe is the key “structural weakness” in contemporary complementarian approaches to manhood and womanhood, namely, the widespread tendency of defining manhood and womanhood by means of the marriage relationship. Jamieson’s point is not that biblical teaching on the relationship between husbands and wives has no bearing on theological anthropology. His point is that taking the husband-wife relation as paradigmatic for what it means to be a man or a woman more generally is potentially reductionistic.

Jamieson finds in Budziszewski’s natural theology of sex a more promising approach to addressing the general question of what it means for man to be “male and female.” According to Budziszewski, “a woman is a human being of that sex whose members are potentially mothers” (p. 54), whereas a man is “a human being of the sex whose members have a different potentiality than women do: the potentiality for fatherhood” (pp. 58-59).

As is clear from Budziszewski’s book and Jamieson’s review, while biological motherhood and fatherhood provide the starting point for defining womanhood and manhood, biological motherhood and fatherhood do not exhaust the potential meanings of manhood and womanhood. Even on a domestic level, fathering involves more than being a sperm donor and mothering involves more than carrying a child to term. Furthermore, fathering and mothering are modes of male and female agency capable of being exercised beyond a domestic context, even by those who do not exercise those modes of agency in a biological sense. The gender roles of “father” and “mother” are analogical concepts that identify roles capable of being fulfilled beyond the family in civil and ecclesiastical contexts. Deborah, for example, is called a “mother in Israel” (Judges 5:7); and Paul describes himself as a “father” to Timothy his “son” (1 Cor 4:17; Phil 2:22; 2 Tim 1:2).

If this is correct, we have not one but two sets of gender-specific roles capable of being fulfilled by men and women. Men may be husbands and fathers. Women may be wives and mothers. Moreover, unlike the marital set of roles, the parental set of roles have potential applications beyond the context of the family. Again: Deborah is a mother in Israel; Paul is a father in the church.

In addition to these two sets of gender-specific roles, let us consider two other sets that further enrich our understanding of the potencies of male and female social agency. In 1 Corinthians 11, while discussing the practice of prophesying in the church and the proper decorum that must accompany that practice, Paul appeals to the order of creation: “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Cor 11:8-9). According to Paul, there is a natural order built into God’s creative design for men and women that the church should reflect in its ministry (so 1 Tim 2:13-14).

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