Patriarchy Rears Its Head (Again)

Dr. Jamin Andreas Hübner, ThD (curiousjamin.com), is a scholar of religion,
as well as an economist, activist, and cultural commentator. He
currently serves as a faculty member of The University of the People
and a Research Fellow for the Center for Faith and Human Flourishing
at LCC International University.

Saddleback Church, founded by SBC Pastor Rick Warren, recently ordained three female pastors—a bold first for the evangelical megachurch. In public response, many in the SBC and conservative groups circled the wagons to re-affirm female subordination and patriarchy as God’s eternal design for human beings.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler even tweeted a quote from his slave-holding predecessor at the seminary, John A. Broadus:

Now it does not need to be urged that these two passages [1 Cor 14:34 and 1 Tim 2:12] from the Apostle Paul do definitely and strongly forbid that women shall speak in mixed public assemblies. No one can afford to question that such is the most obvious meaning of the apostle's commands.

Broadus continued in the same publication, “Should Women Speak in Public Assemblies?”:

All that can be Said in opposition to the view that this is what he intended to teach, must rest either upon a supposed unusual sense of some one of the terms employed in the passages, or upon the connection, or upon some other source of information about the persons the apostle's aim.

Again, just yesterday, Mohler repeated this sentiment on his public website, saying "In most churches around the world, there is no question about these texts even now."

This claim about such passages being “obvious” in their meaning is so prominent amongst traditionalists that most engaged in this centuries-long conversation have not bothered to stop and reflect on how grossly untrue it is. While there has been endless debate about what such texts may mean—something I documented in my seminal article on this subject in The Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters—there has not been as much discussion about whether it can be said that such passages are “absolutely clear,” “obvious,” etc.

This is probably because of how not obvious their meaning and applications are. A “literal” or “face-value” reading of “it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church” would imply that women shouldn’t be talking or asking questions in church. Yet, that is not what is advocated by Albert Mohler, his fans, or any church in the English speaking world that I’m aware of. Indeed, a wide range of interpretations and applications throughout time strongly suggests that such sacred texts (especially single verses and specific imperatives) are not really as “clear” and “obvious” as some imagine them to be.

But what kind of criteria would it take to justifiably use such a label like “clear” and “obvious”?

For a couple years after doing my doctoral dissertation on women in ministry, I researched this question only to find that if there was one verse in the Bible that can be said to be unclear, obscure, and profoundly difficult in any kind of contemporary application—based on all available criteria—it is 1 Timothy 2:12. Why? Because:

1.     The meaning of 1 Tim 2:9–15 has been and is still highly disputed.

2.     1 Tim 2:9–15 does not make sense according to a literal, “straightforward reading” of the text (women being “saved through childbirth”? “No teaching,” at all? What!?), and therefore requires greater qualification and attention.

3.     1 Tim 2:9–15 contains an unusual number of obscure terms (many terms used only once in NT).

4.     1 Tim 2:9–15 has produced an unusually large number of diverse interpretations—regardless of one’s position about women in ministry. I found no less than eight different interpretations by “complementarian” authors alone.

5.     1 Tim 2:9–15 has been particularly difficult to apply, especially for those who reject the legitimacy of women pastors. (Can women teach boys? To what age? Can women be seminary professors? If so, limited to what subjects, and why? Does it matter if it’s on Sunday or a weekday? In the church building or at home? Does it matter what the office-title of the woman is?)

What’s interesting is that, no matter one’s perspective about women in ministry or gender roles, I learned that all perspectives agree in their general hermeneutics that the obscure should be interpreted in light of the clear. This principle is even enshrined in the Westminster Confession (1.7; 1.9).

But, when it comes to women’s voice and male power, those who assert women’s subordination and male authority either (1) throw this hermeneutical principle out the window, or (2), against all evidence to the contrary, assert that 1 Timothy 2:12 is as clear as it can be. This second option was the choice of Broadus in 1880 and, evidently, for Albert Mohler in 2021.

We know this to be impossible. How can one proclaim an “obvious” conclusion when “complementarians” (patriarchalists) themselves promote over a half-dozen different interpretations with wildly different applications? Continue to enforce the “timeless principle of the text” in, well, any way that they see fit?

It is ironic enough that this research was published in The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society—a comfortable publishing home for theological critics of gender equality. But it also reminds me another academic article I wrote on this subject: “The Evolution of Complementarian Exegesis.” Complementarians love to accuse outsiders of “capitulating to culture” and “changing their views,” as if they rest on some kind of secure foundation. But I show that not to be the case. Complementarians continually change their views on many of the key passages in the Bible about women in ministry and gender in an endless cycle of musical exegesis. If complementarian theology is “based on the Bible” (which really means “based on my reading of the Bible”), then it is a profoundly unstable theology.

At a conference presentation in Orlando hosted by CBE, I showed how such instability and contradictions of complementarian hermeneutics conveniently serves to affirm male control. One example is the radically different interpretations of Deborah in the Old Testament between Thomas Schreiner’s essay on Deborah and Barry Webb’s commentary on Deborah in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT). Both are complementarian and members of TGC. And yet, when the genre and audience of scholarship changes from preaching to the choir (Schreiner in CBMW) to Old Testament biblical studies (Webb in his commentary on the Book of Judges), the entire interpretation changes with it. Deborah becomes whatever male interpreters want her to become, at any given moment.

As does the Bible itself—to the extent it can be manipulated. The ESV, HCSB, and CSB translations are designed to affirm male authority and erase any hint of liberatory, progressive, or egalitarian ideas that might be found in the New Testament. Junia in Romans 16:7 is no longer an apostle. Ephesians 5:22 is no longer an extension of the mutual submission in v. 21 (because of a header needlessly and shamelessly splitting them apart). The power/authority in 1 Timothy 2:12 is no longer rendered as abusive or heavy handed, but generic so as to eliminate women from anything resembling a pastoral office. 1 Cor 11:10 finds the curious insertion "a symbol of" to assert that it is man's authority over woman, not woman's authority over herself. And of course, in various printings and editions, endless footnotes bombard readers with a morass of what can only be described as sexist propaganda from Genesis to Revelation.

In short, my decade of scholarship on this particular area has shown complementarianism to be what it is: a 20th century fundamentalist ideology that will adapt anything—especially the Bible—to reaffirm its own conclusions of supporting male power. It is no more “Christian,” “godly,” or “biblical” than any other intellectual framework or religious constituency—especially white American men driven by a constant fear of losing their privileged place in church and society.

And that fear is real. I was fired as an Associate Professor of Christian Studies by a former President of Criswell College explicitly for my publications supporting women in ministry—even though the school I was at was not SBC. But this is nothing new. Patriarchy must colonize, assert itself by coercion, as it always has for thousands of years, because it cannot ultimately win by either love or persuasion. The real question is: can we still not see this?

Apparently, we must reflect once again: (1) If it is not by heart or mind—that is, if it can neither produce good fruit in our relationships and society, nor produce coherency amidst its own claims—then is it really of The Kingdom? (2) If you genuinely believe women “can’t do x, y or z,” then why not just get out of the way and let them fail instead of making God, the Bible, and the entire field of theology and literary interpretation look more ridiculous than it already appears to the onlooking world.