The non-existence of Complementarianism

I've said before that complementarianism does not exist. For me, complementarianism rests on a spectrum, as most things do. First a definition. Complementarianism is the view that men and women are equal recipients of grace from God and have different roles and responsibilities. Sat on this spectrum you have a vast array of interpretations of this statement and from what I can make out they are largely centred around 'roles and responsibilities' and the value and interpretation assigned to them.

It is this problematic inconsistency which makes complementarianism so difficult to pin down or to align with. At one end you have a version which insists on the submission of women in all aspect of life, society and church. Women serve 'at the pleasure of' the men in their lives. Education is seen as unnecessary because their role will be within the home, raising the children and supporting a husband. A man-made 1950's caricature of the well-kept home, wife and kids is held up as a biblical ideal and the loss of this is mourned by prominent complementarian speakers. Of course when you look at the women in the Bible we don't actually see any examples of this image. If you go looking for the perfect nuclear family in the pages of the bible, you are not going to find it. The make up of the family is spoken about in theoretical and conceptual terms. Those ideals include the various characteristics that make up the expectations of folk towards one another but do not include an expectation that women will live a lesser life at the expense of men. Far from it in fact. This leads to a conclusion that this 'ideal' make up of the submissive wife, perfect home and happy husband is simply a social construct made to continue a male dominated society.

Yes that absolutely does sound a bit 'feminist ranty'. I make no apology for this. Complementarianism as it exists above is a gross and abhorrent representation of what complementarianism potentially can be. Here is of course where we get to the part about complementarianism not existing. 

Complementarians who seem to reject this notion as described above are happy with women in leadership roles, they make no distinction in the gifting of women and men in teaching, preaching etc in church life. Women are valued as equal image bearers and seen as invaluable in the leadership structure of a church in the form of 'mothers' working alongside 'fathers', of whom some are 'Elders'. This mirrors the marriage relationship and vice versa, with husbands and wives in mutual submission to one another as per Ephesians 5. However the husband has an additional calling and that is one of loving his wife as Christ loved the Church and being willing to lay down his life for her. This is intended as a correction of the abdication of Adam in his responsibility toward Eve when they both faced temptation in the Garden of Eden. This disrupted the equity in their relationship - they were both called to rule the earth but as the result of the fall, men would struggle in their relationship with the land and women would struggle in their relationship toward men as men would 'rule over her' (Gen 3:16). The fall created enmity and tension within their relationship. Men have leant into the abdication and turned it into a desire for dominance, resulting in women suffering at the hand of this original abdication ever since.

When you look at complementarianism like this and look at the burden on elders (and husbands) to stand in the gap left by Adam, it is not quite the distasteful subjugation of women it originally appears to be. Additionally, the concept of 'Headship' is a natural sticking point for many but when you look at it in the context of Genesis and the Greek translation, the concept of 'source' is much more palatable. You can't get away from the fact that women were made using a male body part (Gen 2:21). Women were 'sourced from' the man. It was then stated straight away that when man and woman are united in marriage they essentially again become one person, mirroring the creation of humanity and the original intention. This is of course not to say that either one of them are incomplete without the other. Human marriage is not the goal of humanity (ask Paul) and to reduce human flourishing to this is to have a poor understanding of God's intention for humanity.

So if this is what complementarianism really is, and it looks ok even from where I am standing (as a ranty feminist), why doesn't it exist?

Simply put because, well, humanity.

It is all very well holding up a biblical ideal for structure in leadership and marriage, except the ones who then inhabit those spheres are human. History has not told a tale which says that men can be trusted to stand in that gap. History has told us that men use the gap to dominate, control and continue to pervert God's original intention of joint human rule over the world. It is a rare church where there are men who truly grasp this concept. In churches where there are no men who fit the biblical criteria for eldership (and by the way it is not simply to be male and good at 'leading'), men will still be appointed to those positions, even when there are women who better fit the criteria, they are just not male so they are ruled out - this is particularly true of churches who also rule out women as deacons or any sort of leadership. Even men who do have a grasp of it will often fall into paternalism out of a belief in their own assertion (and inerrancy) of best interest for others. 

So we are trying to squeeze humans into an impossible vision. And yet we do it anyway, resulting in more, not less disordered relationships. The only way complementarianism works is if men are just like Christ. And they are not. And yet women are expected to submit to this vision anyway, in the full knowledge and historical understanding that it doesn't work. This continues the suffering at the hands of the original abdication. I appreciate this is a very cynical view of the outworking of the complementarian model but it is not an uncommon view. God is using women in pastoral leadership the world over, there is no less blessing on these women than over men. If the complementarian model was the only one then this would not be the case. To address a common response to this, that God has raised up women where men have failed to step into the role - this falls back into a value-based judgement of men and women, in opposition to this biblical model of leadership.

As always I'm left with lots of questions and few answers... but perhaps a slightly better understanding of why 'soft' complementarians are so confused about why more women aren't delighted with the concept.