I am in the debt of those who contribute to the ongoing conversation on "Women in the Church", as they bring to the surface matters which color our positions on complementarianism and egalitarianism. Conversations which help to refine thinking, not so we will simply have an academic grasp of the matter, but that we can answer more of the question."How then should we live?" Living out the gospel to its fullest measure is ultimately the end of all our theological struggling and our efforts to know the will of God. We aren't trying to win arguments in this, or shouldn't be; we aren't simply abstractly interested. Most of us sincerely want to understand and advocate doctrine that will lead to "Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven".
That is why the discussion is important to us.
I was reading The Complegalitarian and happened upon a strongly worded argument with these words, "the fundamental lie of complementarianism" . It was a response of Peter Kirk in his post,Complementarianism: Sola Scriptura or Sola Traditio? to a comment by Jeremy Pierce concerning the position that some have on "status" of the differing roles of men and women as defined by those of complementarianism. [See this post for definition of the two terms, complementarian and egalitarian]
The glaring error that stood out to me was on the point of "status". In making the comment, "I am not going to abandon wisdom for the folly of believing the comps’ insistence that women have equal status while denying them every possibility of expressing that equal status. That is not equality, it is oppression, it is Animal Farm “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” double-speak." from Peter Kirk, in his comment response to Jeremy, the whole debate was thrown into another arena than understanding the position given in the Christian scriptures. While my own position is closer to Peter's than to the traditional complementarians, this emphasis on status made me realize that in the conversation on women's roles we are dealing with two separate systems of deciding "status" : that of the spiritual 'Kingdom of God' and that of the world, the 'Cosmos'. Sometimes the logical fallacy of equivocation is committed. We use this word "status", but we really are talking about the concept of authority in the debate over women's roles in the Church. "Status" in spiritual terms is what God deems of high position and value, "status" in the worldly sense of our comparisons of position and power are something else again.
It is worldly status that both sides end up talking about. Peter Kirk is correct in pointing out the disingenuous position of complementarians:
“Complementarians say that men and women have equality of nature, but their view of difference in roles reveals that this supposed equality of nature is really unequal.but he is mistaken in thinking that this is the platform on which to seek scriptural understanding of women's roles in the Church. Not that he would say that is his platform, but arguing strongly on that point makes it so.
The whole trouble with it is that truth "The first shall be last and the last shall be first". We don't judge things on the basis of the world's standard of status... we can't. We have a whole 'nother system.
