Tag Archives: complementarianism

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First, let's define "blasphemy": from Answers.com

    1. A contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning God or a sacred entity.
    2. The act of claiming for oneself the attributes and rights of God.

What brought this question on?

Paula, from Words of a Fether, wrote on a set of sample wedding vows from Bible.org, saying,

Especially repulsive is no. 12.

Here is the text of the sample:

Male

I love you, ______, and I thank the Lord for the love that has bound our hearts and lives together in spiritual fellowship of marriage. I will love, honor and cherish you always. As we enter upon the privileges and joys of life's most holy relationship, and begin together the great adventure of building a Christian home, I will look to Christ as Head of our home as I have looked to Him as Head of the Church. I will love you in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, in sorrow as in joy, and will be true to you by God's grace, trusting in Him, so long as we both shall live.

Female

I love you, ______, and I thank the Lord for the love that has bound our hearts and lives together in spiritual fellowship of marriage. I will love, honor, cherish and obey you always. As we enter upon the privileges and joys of life's most holy relationship and begin together the great adventure of building a Christian home, I will look to you as head of our home as I have looked to Christ as Head of the Church. I will love you in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, in sorrow as in joy, and will be true to you by God's grace, trusting in Him, so long as we both shall live.

Paula's take:

Sorry, bible.org, but that makes the husband a blasphemer (taking the place of Christ in the life of another person) and the wife an idolater (looking to a man instead of Christ). This abominable trend in the churches has infected influential leaders in the Christian community, and it’s spreading rapidly. Those men love to “keep their place” and to be “head over” someone, especially women. We women are expected to spend our lives stroking their delicate egos, making them little gods over us, and believing it’s God’s divine order. (the bolded text is my emphasis).

My take, let's compare Scripture to the sample vow (just the "repulsive" part):

(Scripture):  Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

(the vow): I will look to you as head of our home...

(Scripture):For the husband is the head of the wife...

(the vow): as I have looked to Christ as Head of the Church...

even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

Scripture goes on: Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Paula called her post "Vows and Wows". I agree.

It's a "wow"...when wedding vows that reflect Scripture are called repulsive, blasphemy and idolatry.

I wonder if it would be blasphemy if the bride quoted (as her vow) Ephesians 5:22-24 directly from Scripture, the groom quoted (as his vow) verses 25-28 and the pastor quoted the rest?

I wonder....

Paula goes on about Bible.org and complementarian belief that a wife should submit to her own husband, as to the Lord, and as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands:

Now evangelicals can take their place beside Muslims, Jews (traditional rabbinical views), Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses in making women truly subhuman.

I repeat:  wow.

And I am truly saddened.

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The quote: from Husbands Who Love Like Christ and the Wives Who Submit to Them:

Therefore, headship is not a right to command and control. It's a responsibility to love like Christ: to lay down your life for your wife in servant leadership. And submission is not slavish or coerced or cowering. That's not the way Christ wants the church to respond to his leadership: he wants it to be free and willing and glad and refining and strengthening.

In other words what this passage of Scripture does is two things: it guards against the abuses of headship by telling husbands to love like Jesus; and it guards against the debasing of submission by telling wives to respond the way the church does to Christ.

(...)

There is no contradiction between mutual submission and a relationship of leadership and response. Mutual submission doesn't mean that both partners must submit in exactly the same ways. Christ submitted himself to the church in one way, by a kind of servant-leadership that cost him his life. And the church submits herself to Christ in another way by honoring his leadership and following him in on the Calvary road.

So it is not true that mutual submission rules out the family pattern of Christ-like leadership and church-like submission. Mutual submission doesn't obliterate those roles, it transforms them.

What this means to me:

If we see headship and leadership within the framework of responsibility, not right, it becomes a loving response to a loving God. Godly submission of a godly wife becomes a loving response to a loving husband.

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The quote: from "Do you believe in 'mutual submission' the way Paul teaches in Ephesians 5:21, 'Submit to one another'?"

Are Christ and the church mutually submitted? They aren't if submission means Christ yields to the authority of the church. But they are if submission means that Christ submitted Himself to suffering and death for the good of the church. That, however, is not how the church submits to Christ. The church submits to Christ by affirming His authority and following His lead. So mutual submission does not mean submitting to each other in the same ways. Therefore, mutual submission does not compromise Christ's headship over the church and it should not compromise the headship of a godly husband.

What this means to me:

The key is love. The key is different. There is no conflict between love / leadership / submission. As sinful mankind, we can inject a conflict where one does not belong, but a man or a woman sinning in an authority structure does not make the structure wrong, it makes the sin wrong.

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The quote: from "Building a Christ Centered Marriage: How Husbands and Wives Can Complement One Another in Marriage"

The traditional camp, on the other hand, advocates equality before God, but is committed to complementarianism, rather than egalitarianism. This is the belief that, while men and women are equal before God, they serve him in complementary roles which are not always identical and in some cases ought not to be. These complementarians recognize that there is "neither male nor female" in terms of our relationship to God (Gal. 3:28). But they also recognize the other biblical texts which counsel that men and women possess distinct abilities and callings (such as 1 Pet. 3:1-7; Col. 3:18; 1 Tim. 2:9-3:7). In the home there ought to be male headship (though not domination) and womanly submission (though not fearful servility). Complementarians insist that to be truly evangelical we must confess that there is no contradiction over this matter in Scripture, and to be truly biblical we must affirm both the spiritual equality of men and women and also the distinctions and differences in roles that are taught in the Bible.

What this means to me: Men and women should fit together like a jigsaw puzzle - heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. Not like identical and interchangeable gear cogs.

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The quote: from Armorbearer:

i agree, women are not afforded the courtesy of dignity in many cases, but the problem is not patriarchy. the problem is men acting like buffoons. the remedy then is not feminism and matriarchy or swapping one bully for another, the remedy is mutual submission. rightful authority.

What this means to me: Some parents abuse their children; that does not mean we should remove parental authority. Some pastors are abusive; that does not mean that we should abolish pastoral authority. There are some bad bosses; that does not mean that the position of "boss" is bad. A president may lie under oath, or knowingly accept bad intelligence; that doesn't mean that the office of presidency is evil.
Abuse is sin, it does not follow that the structure is sinful, but the person within that structure.