Will ‘Complementarianism’ Survive?

I want to continue to call myself a complementarian. But we need to reclaim the term.

Illustration by María Jesús Contreras

Is there a future for complementarianism? I don’t mean whether the God-ordained concept of complementarity between men and women will itself continue to exist—those of us who hold to the principle of equality and distinction between men and women understand it to be grounded in Scripture itself. Rather, I’m speaking of complementarianism as a specific movement, a coherent framing of some of those biblical convictions.

I’d very much like to be able to continue describing myself as complementarian by conviction, believing that Scripture prescribes particular roles for men and women in the church and in the home. But in recent years, the increasing cancellation, co-option, and cannibalization of complementarianism as a term has led me to question whether I will continue to use it to describe my beliefs.

Since the word complementarianism was first used in the late 1980s to describe or frame the theological beliefs I hold, the concept has been subject to much critique. Now as Christians, we should not fear inquiry but embrace healthy and respectful criticism. It compels us to interrogate our thinking, identify our unspoken assumptions, and grow in our understanding and knowledge of God.

But cancellation is different. Cancellation doesn’t simply say, I think you are wrong, and here’s why. It says, You don’t deserve to exist. There is no place for you here. And unfortunately, an increasing number of opponents of complementarianism are choosing to leapfrog over critique to land on cancellation. Indeed, many newer and younger commentators now typically condemn all expressions of complementarianism—in every time and in every place—as being inherently abusive and intolerable.

I share in the lament expressed by many of these sisters and brothers. I grieve that complementarian theology has been misused and abused by its self-proclaimed proponents to the deep detriment and harm of others, most notably women. I prayerfully long for repentance and recommitment to what I am persuaded is the biblically faithful and fruitful teaching of the complementarity of men and women.

However, many now see the concept of complementarianism as fundamentally incapable of being anything other than harmful to women, with no place for it in the contemporary church. But this means there is no place for complementarian women such as myself in the church.

I hold a doctorate in theology and have extensive experience in ministry leadership as well as the respect and support of countless male complementarian colleagues. When I seek to offer my own experience and credentials as evidence that complementarianism is in fact capable of uplifting and honoring women, I have been informed that it is simply impossible for complementarianism to have produced such positive results, and so I must not in fact be complementarian.

How is it possible for complementarianism to have a meaningful future when its opponents deny that it should even have a present?

Yet cancellation is not the only thing imperiling complementarianism’s future. The theological framework is also being co-opted by those who hold a far more restrictive view about gendered relationships and roles and seek to flatten out any differences between complementarianism and patriarchalism (the societal rule of men). But complementarian theology is not the same as patriarchal ideology. Those of us committed to complementarianism’s defining theological principles can spot the differences immediately.

Written in 1987, the founding document of complementarianism—the Danvers Statement—insists on the equal personhood of men and women. It also recognizes that scriptural distinctions exist and lays out the Bible’s teaching on the godly expression of those distinctions within the home and the church. It calls women to exercise their God-given intelligence, to not be servile, and to proactively make God’s “grace known in word and deed.”

This is in direct contrast to those who speak of men and women as unequal in being, extend male headship beyond marriage and the church to all areas of society, claim there is no place for women in theological study (or even higher education more generally), encourage husbands to determine what Christian books they will and won’t permit their wives to read, and suggest there is no legitimate ministry for women outside the home. This is not complementarianism.

To their credit, many proponents of patriarchy know this. To their mind, complementarianism is too passive. It doesn’t go nearly far enough. And yet despite this, complementarianism is increasingly being hijacked by this distorted and repressive ideology.

When there is no recognized public distinction between these two contrasting viewpoints, how can complementarianism stand on its own terms? How can it continue to have genuine meaning into the future?

In addition to cancellation and co-option by outsiders, the third and likely greatest present danger to complementarianism’s future is cannibalization from within.

Such cannibalization occurs when adherents insist on redefining complementarianism beyond the foundational theological principles in the Danvers Statement. Yes, different individuals, churches, and ministries will come to different conclusions about the application of those principles.

However, the peril of self-destruction presents itself when such interpretations are defined as the only faithful form of complementarianism. It occurs when no allowance is made for differing conclusions that are still grounded in and consistent with complementarianism’s defining theological affirmations.

Cannibalization also happens when self-professed complementarians eagerly refute any hint of feminist thought while being apparently content to overlook outright misogyny. I recently watched as a tweet from a self-described Christian feminist woman was subjected to a vitriolic pile-on from certain complementarian quarters while a viral video that asserted women are biologically less capable of rational thinking than men was greeted with near silence from the same camp.

When we complementarians are selective about the biblical principles we will and won’t uphold, we participate in our own destruction. How is there to be a future for complementarianism if we, its adherents, won’t comprehensively and consistently uphold what we say we believe?

I don’t know if complementarianism as we know it has a future. But I do know it will only have one if complementarian Christians are willing to consistently demonstrate—in both word and deed—that those who judge it (and us) incapable of bearing any good gospel fruit have it wrong; if we are willing to unapologetically denounce unbiblical and misogynistic teachings about men and women; and if we are willing to hold ourselves accountable to our theological principles, both by refusing to go beyond them and by settling for nothing less.

If complementarianism is to have a God-given future, then it will require both its male and female adherents to proactively invest in that future and to do so in actual complementary partnership with one another. Therein lies the challenge, but also the opportunity: to model what it really means that God has created men and women to bear his image together.

We have the chance to reiterate the central role that God has been pleased for women to play in the unfolding storyline of Scripture (such as in Luke 24:1–12) and to enact the kind of wonderful ministry partnership we see between men and women in Romans 16.

And we have the opportunity to imitate and so honor our Savior, who always treated women with enormous dignity and respect, who called them to find life abundantly in him, and who urged them to invite others to do the same.

Danielle Treweek is the author of The Meaning of Singleness: Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church and the diocesan research officer for the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

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Egalitarianism Is More Than a PR Statement

Gaby Viesca

Are churches moving to an egalitarian model truly embracing female leadership?

Illustration by María Jesús Contreras

Imagine that it’s a Sunday morning and a church is getting ready to announce its transition to an egalitarian model and commit to include women in pastoral leadership. The leadership gathers behind the stage to pray and review their communication strategy before the service begins. The pastor who will be sharing the news from the pulpit paces, with a burning question filling his mind: How will the congregation respond to the announcement?

The months leading up to this day proved to him that on matters of women in ministry, his congregation was not of one mind. Yet he is convinced that embracing an egalitarian approach is the way forward for his church, so he gathers his strength, steps into the auditorium, and delivers the news.

The statement goes well, all things considered. The congregation doesn’t cheer, but no one boos or walks out the door—and that feels like a win. Everything seems to be under control. The service ends without much tension, and the pastor along with the rest of the leaders breathe a sigh of relief.

This, of course, is an imagined scenario. But it’s not vastly different from what happens in reality when previously complementarian churches transition to egalitarian models: Oftentimes the people involved in the process are so exhausted from all the work it took to move the church to an egalitarian ministry philosophy that changing the church’s official statement on women seems to be the victory, the destination at the end of a long road, when it is just the beginning of an arduous journey.

Every church handles this process differently. What’s undeniably true in all situations is that no matter how careful and intentional a church might be in its approach to this transition, the process is lengthier and more challenging than anticipated. It’s usually painful and it’s inevitably messy. As a result, many communication strategies inadvertently prioritize messaging (like proper apologetics and careful articulation of a position) and damage control, significantly limiting the energy and focus required to properly set up women to thrive.

As someone who has been caught in the middle of these transitions, I can say two things are usually true: First, often good-hearted people are driving these efforts, doing their best with the resources available. Second, sometimes those well-intended efforts result in a lot of pain.

While no church can navigate this journey perfectly, it is possible to mitigate the hurt and frustration that often ensue. I offer a few suggestions for church leaders to consider—pitfalls to watch out for—whether they’re beginning the egalitarian journey or reevaluating their church’s posture toward women. With more women becoming preachers in recent years than in previous decades, it is imperative we continue to talk about how to make these transitions well.

One of the most common pitfalls for newly egalitarian churches is thinking that a statement on women changes everything. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While an official position on women may have changed, generally the systems and values undergirding a church’s culture remain the same. Decades of tradition continue to be at play. Long-held assumptions and expectations placed upon women remain intact, adding layers upon layers of complexity and challenges for women to navigate.

Women who might think they have new leadership opportunities available to them find themselves bumping into invisible barriers and tripping over unspoken rules without knowing they were there in the first place. In contexts like these, the women appointed to new or higher positions of leadership are set up to fail.

How can we mitigate this? A good place to start is to consider how your church’s current context—not your statement on women—supports (or undermines) the inclusion of women in your congregation.

A few guiding questions are helpful here: Can we think of specific traditions, assumptions, or expectations around women that might be at play in our staff culture? Are there any mechanisms in place to identify the value systems or structures that may be dated or in need of attention? Have we considered how our hiring practices and employee manuals might be impacted by a new position on women (for example, what would maternity leave look like for a lead pastor)? What would it look like for our church to fully include women at all levels of leadership and influence?

Another common pitfall for churches is thinking that by appointing one woman to a specific leadership position, all women are now represented and included. This is especially common in the area of preaching. In many instances, once a church has found a female preacher it trusts, not a whole lot of effort is made to include more women in the mix. After all, they can now say that “women preach at this church.” But is that a truly accurate statement?

Time and time again, when I walk into formerly complementarian churches and ask if women preach there, the answer is some version of this: “Oh yes, Kimberly preaches all the time.” What’s embedded in that sentence—and can be easily missed—is the fact that Amber (who happens to be trained in preaching) doesn’t preach there; neither does Sarah, Tara, or Michelle. Kimberly is the one woman who preaches at that church. That a woman preaches at all is something to celebrate, no question about that. But there is a world of difference between a church where Kimberly preaches and a church where women preach.

What would it look like to have a full-fledged vision for female preachers in our churches? Are there areas besides the pulpit where one woman might be carrying the banner of all womanhood? As churches look at their current female staff, are there any perspectives, ethnic backgrounds, or life experiences that may not be represented?

A third pitfall, and perhaps the most painful one, is failing to understand the emotional toll that these significant church transitions take on women. Knowing that the ultimate goal of these discussions is to determine what us, women, can or cannot do based on our gender is especially difficult for me. Who I am as a woman, as a female preacher and pastor, is profoundly connected to the discussion. For many of us, these conversations are deeply personal and fully embodied experiences.

Moreover, there are times when we are asked to share our personal experiences with the male staff and elders. Hopefully this is a genuine effort to listen and try to understand our experience, but many of these conversations end up being one-sided. We share our personal experiences and pain—and they don’t.

When these dynamics are in place, the playing field is not level. This only exacerbates the pain some of us have been carrying long before these conversations started and reopens the very wounds the church is trying to mend. Once the decision has been made to officially move in an egalitarian direction, most of the leadership’s efforts turn to apologetics, biblical grounding, and the careful articulation of the position paper, and not enough attention is given to the women who get caught up in the middle of it all.

Churches that want to truly move to an egalitarian model should ask themselves: Are we aware of the particular ways that one-sided conversations have affected, and perhaps continue to affect, the women serving at our church? Do we have male and female advocates whose main role is to intercede and pray for women—to support them and look out for them on an ongoing basis? What would it look like to implement guidelines to ensure the conversations between men and women are mutual and fair? Is there opportunity to create clear pathways, safe spaces, and resources for men and women to voice their spiritual and emotional needs and struggles? How often will church leaders revise their stance and approach to women in ministry?

The chief question of all is this: Is our church truly committed to including women in the life of the church and to creating pathways for them to exercise the full extent of their giftings? The answer to that question will inform the answers to all other questions about women in church leadership.

The journey won’t be perfect and churches will make mistakes, but the way church leadership approaches every conversation, every announcement, and every situation will make all the difference in creating a space where all women and men can thrive and use their giftings together with mutuality and respect. The key word here is intentionality—not perfection. Loving, genuine, and ongoing intentionality will always go a long way.

Gaby Viesca is the director of programs at Missio Alliance and is chair of the evangelical studies unit at the American Academy of Religion. She has worked in full-time pastoral ministry in Israel, Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Beyond Damage Control".

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Complementarian at Home, Egalitarian at Church? Paul Would Approve.

Gordon P. Hugenberger

The biggest New Testament passages on gender roles may have more to do with marriage than ministry.

Illustration by María Jesús Contreras

C hristianity Today once featured a cartoon depicting the apostle Paul arriving at Corinth and saying rather meekly, “I see you received my letter.” Greeting him on the road is an angry mob of women holding placards reading “Women of Corinth unite” and “Paul the apostle is a male chauvinist pig.” It is an amusing picture, but its sentiment is far from the truth. For his time period, Paul’s letters were radically liberating and dignifying for women, who had few rights in eastern Greco-Roman culture.

Paul’s teachings about women have sometimes been misunderstood and misapplied in ways that are denigrating to women. For example, rather than giving attention to Paul’s emphasis on the husband’s obligation to put his wife’s interests well ahead of his own, people have often misconstrued Paul’s comments on wifely submission as a charge to husbands to make their wives submit; as permission for husbands to boss their wives around; or as justification for meanness, abuse, or even violence against women.

Related to their views on these and other texts regarding marriage, evangelical churches continue to be sharply divided on the question of the role of women in church leadership. They have often polarized on a spectrum, with complementarians (those who believe there are distinct, complementary roles for men and women in marriage, church, and sometimes society) on one side, and egalitarians (those who deny there are distinct roles for men and women) on the other.

Despite the regrettable divisiveness that has sometimes resulted from these differences, some evangelical churches have decided to respect the strengths of both views and focus on the deeper unity between complementarians and egalitarians. As just one example of that unity, most complementarians and egalitarians celebrate the inherent worth and giftedness of women. They know that women fully share with men in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and that men and women are joint heirs of the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ and cobeneficiaries of the outpoured Spirit of God and his gifts (Acts 2:17–21).

Further, most complementarians and egalitarians believe that the Bible enjoins both men and women to exercise their spiritual gifts for the upbuilding of the church (1 Cor. 12:7). This includes, in many circumstances, teaching the Word of Christ to all, regardless of gender. For example, Paul exhorts believers to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Col. 3:16, NIV 1984). Nothing in the context suggests that Paul has only men in view as those who should “teach and admonish.”

To this text could be added many others (such as Hebrews 3:13 and 5:12), including descriptions of women who taught spiritual truths to men in various private or less formal contexts, such as Abigail, who rebuked David in 1 Samuel 25, or Priscilla, who with her husband, Aquila, corrected the defective theology of Apollos in Acts 18:26.

Most complementarians are persuaded that 1 Timothy 2:12 (“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent”) prohibits women from teaching men in specific situations, such as a pastor or elder within a church setting. But many complementarians, like egalitarians, would not object to a woman teaching physics to male students at a local university, or a female boss teaching a male employee how to do his job, or even a wife teaching her husband how to update his computer.

Similarly, most complementarians, like egalitarians, would not object to a woman prophesying (differences in how this is understood notwithstanding) or praying out loud in church (1 Cor. 11:5; 14:3), the content of which may be packed with profound theological insights. Likewise, complementarians and egalitarians affirm women who compose or sing songs in church that aid worship and reinforce biblical truths, or who author scholarly biblical commentaries from which male pastors and others can learn.

In fact, both groups agree that women like Deborah (Judges 5), Hannah (1 Sam. 2), and Mary (Luke 1) were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write various portions of Holy Scripture. Through their writings, these women have taught both men and women with inerrant authority down through the ages.

Complementarians and egalitarians are not as divided as some think. Their main difference concerns only the very narrow issue of the right of women to teach and lead men within the church with what may be characterized as an intermediate level of authority (below that of the women whose inspired words were incorporated into Scripture, but above that of the praying and prophesying women of 1 Corinthians 11).

Christians of both persuasions, and those in between, have a profound loyalty to Jesus Christ and his Word and are convinced that their viewpoint is demanded by Scripture. Their common loyalty to the Word of God constitutes a deeper unity that should enable a generosity of spirit toward those who may differ in this current debate.

Complementarians and egalitarians may achieve greater understanding and mutual respect by learning more about three key biblical texts that are most often cited in support of the main points of contention related to gender roles with respect to church leadership: 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1. The challenges regarding the interpretation of these texts may encourage greater forbearance toward those who hold a different view from one’s own.

The first passage, 1 Timothy 2:12, is translated in the NIV 1984 version as “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” If this is read without regard to context, it appears to prohibit any woman from teaching any man anything or having any position of authority over any man. Women must “be silent.” Based on its wider context, however, most interpreters limit the application of this directive to ecclesiastical settings, especially public corporate worship.

Egalitarians often argue that Paul intended the prohibition to be only a temporary measure based on the fact that women were typically less well educated than men. Perhaps also the women in Ephesus, where Timothy was ministering, may have been susceptible to certain false teachings or were themselves promoting the false teachings that the resurrection had already taken place (2 Tim. 2:18) and hence there is no more marriage (1 Tim. 4:3; Mark 12:25).

Some egalitarians also view Paul’s wording of “I do not permit” as indicative of the temporary nature of these requirements. In any case, now that women are as well educated as men and since that dangerous heresy is no longer a threat, Paul’s prohibition may no longer apply.

Complementarians usually agree that some aspects of Paul’s admonition may be temporary or culturally relative, such as the prohibition against “braided hair” a few verses prior, but they insist that this cannot be the case for 2:12 since Paul grounds it in creational norms based on the relationship between Adam and Eve (1 Tim. 2:13–15). This conviction regarding the permanence of 1 Timothy 2:12 seems persuasive, but on closer examination, the appeal to Adam and Eve implies that what Paul intended was not a prohibition about gender roles but rather a prohibition about marriage roles—how a wife and a husband should relate to each other.

As Paul correctly recognizes, Gen. 2:24 is explicit in its conclusion that the account of Adam and Eve defines the marriage relationship where the two become “one flesh.” Adam committed himself before God to love and care for his wife, Eve, just as he loves and takes care of his own body. Paul builds on this understanding with his “head-body” metaphor for marriage in Ephesians 5:29–30: “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body.”

Also, in Ephesians 2 Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 about how the two become one flesh, proving that the Genesis text is the inspiration for his use of the head-body analogy. Building on the Old Testament’s frequent use of the marriage analogy for God’s relationship to Israel (Isa. 54:5–8; Ezek. 16), Paul then uses the head-body imagery to show Christ’s love for the church, which is his body.

Therefore, when Paul speaks of Adam and Eve, as he does in 1 Timothy 2 and Ephesians 5, he is not using Adam and Eve as a model for how all men should relate to all women (gender roles), but rather as a definitive model for how a husband and wife should relate to each other (marriage roles), just as Genesis 2:24 stresses.

It is important to recognize that in Greek the terms for man (anēra) and woman (gynē), which are used in 1 Timothy 2, are, in fact, the normal terms for “husband” and “wife.” Sometimes a definite article or a pronoun helps indicate which meanings are intended, but mostly it is the context that allows translators to know for sure.

Although many English Bibles translate verse 12 with woman and man, it is far more likely, given Paul’s emphasis on Adam and Eve, that it should be translated as it is in, for example, the Common English Bible (2019): “I don’t allow a wife [gynē] to teach or to control her husband [anēr].” Not surprisingly, Martin Luther, well before modern feminism, already recognized that 1 Timothy 2 refers explicitly to husbands and wives, not men and women in general.

Three other considerations support the marriage interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12. First, within the rest of Paul’s writings, the word anēr (for “man” or “husband”) occurs 50 times in close proximity to gynē (the word for “woman” or “wife”), which appears 55 times within 11 distinct contexts. In every case, these terms bear the meanings “husband” and “wife,” rather than “man” and “woman.”

Second, the detailed list of immodest eye-catching clothing and jewelry prohibited in 2:9 parallels similar lists of disapproved adornment in other Greco-Roman texts in the New Testament period. Adherence to these prohibitions is evidence of good behavior and modesty in wives, rather than women in general. So Paul seems to be already thinking in terms of husbands and wives.

Third, extensive thought and word parallels exist between 1 Peter 3:1–7 and 1 Timothy 2:8–15. Peter explicitly acknowledges that he read Paul’s letters (2 Pet. 3:15), and it is universally agreed that 1 Peter 3 refers to marriage. If one allows Scripture to interpret Scripture—that is, if one allows what is clear to assist in the interpretation of what is less clear—the presence of so many striking parallels between 1 Peter 3 and 1 Timothy 2 creates strong support for the interpretation that 1 Timothy 2 likewise concerns marriage roles rather than gender roles.

Of course, the mandates in 1 Timothy 2:11–12 still need clarification about what exactly is intended, even if it seems likely that these verses concern the relationship between a wife and her husband: “A wife should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a wife to teach or have authority over her husband; she must be silent.” It helps to recognize that elsewhere, the Bible requires men or all people involved to be “silent” (1 Thess. 4:11; 2 Thess. 3:12; 1 Tim. 2:2).

Based on examples like these, the demand to be “quiet” or “silent” can mean—depending on the context—an end to unwelcome, disruptive, or negative speech (arguing, complaining, harping, nagging), not necessarily absolute silence (1 Pet. 3:1).

Paul’s prohibition of a wife teaching her husband seems strange, especially given the Bible’s positive report of the remarkable wisdom of many women, including cases when they correct their husbands (Judges 13:23) or where God instructs a husband to do what his wife tells him (Gen. 21:12). In this text, “to teach” is paired with a rare Greek word that is sometimes translated “to exercise authority over,” but it can also be translated into terms that suggest abusive authority such as “domineer,” “control,” or “boss.” The church father John Chrysostom, in a homily on Colossians, uses the same word when he warns a husband not to “be domineering over” his wife.

Based on examples like this, the Common English Bible translates 1 Timothy 2:12 as “I don’t allow a wife to teach or to control her husband.” This translation suggests that the word often translated as “teach” may have its less common but recognized pejorative sense of “instruct,” “lecture,” or “order,” as it does, for example, in Matthew 28:15. Accordingly, Paul’s statement may be more adequately translated as “I do not allow a wife to lecture or boss her husband, but to be quiet.”

The mention of “submission” on the part of wives in 2:11 strikes some readers as demeaning, but what seems to be intended is a receptive disposition, a willingness to listen and be persuaded as needed, not mindless obedience. It helps to recognize that other biblical texts require all persons, male or female, to be submissive to all governing authorities (Rom. 13:1, 5; Titus 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13–14) and even just to those who are older (1 Pet. 5:5).

Both 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 insist that candidates for overseers, or elders, should be “the husband of but one wife.” This instruction cannot be seen as disqualifying for the issue of women holding church office, however, because the Bible almost universally expresses generalizations, laws, and norms from a conventionally androcentric, or male, point of view.

For example, each of the Ten Commandments is worded in Hebrew as if it were being spoken to men only (for example, in Hebrew all the you forms are masculine singular), including the 10th commandment, which insists, “You [masculine singular] shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Ex. 20:17). Readers have always correctly understood, however, that this and every other commandment applies equally to women.

The same androcentric language is used for every job description seen in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. This is the case even when there is clear evidence that the office in question did in fact permit women, even if they were less common in that role. For example, we know that there were legitimate female prophets, such as Miriam (Ex. 15:20), Deborah (Judges 4:4), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14), and Anna (Luke 2:36). But the job descriptions for a “prophet” found in Numbers 12:6–8, Deuteronomy 13:1–5, and 18:14–22 are written as if they could only apply to a man. The androcentric language to describe a legitimate prophet of the Lord in Numbers 12 is especially striking, since the only prophet in the immediate context is Miriam.

If there are other biblical texts that prohibit women from serving as an elder, 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 would not disagree with them. But the androcentric language of these passages does not provide an adequate basis for assuming that there was such a prohibition. Perhaps something that suggests the possibility that New Testament churches included both spiritually mature women and spiritually mature men is the New Testament’s choice of the term “elders” to refer to those leaders (see Acts 14:23; 1 Tim. 4:14; 5:17; Titus 1:5; and 1 Pet. 5:1).

The very first occurrence in Scripture of this term, with its more common sense as a reference to persons of mature age appears in Genesis 18:11, where it refers to a mature man and mature woman: “Now Abraham and Sarah were elders well advanced in years” (author’s translation).

Historic evangelicalism has considered other secondary issues like baptism, church polity, or the ideal style of worship music as important and worthy of prayerful examination but not of divisive obsession. There should be no excuse for followers of Christ to disparage or disfellowship one another over secondary issues.

This generosity of spirit ought to apply to the current debate over gender roles in church leadership. It should not be necessary even as a practicality for there to be any separation between followers of Christ who hold one view versus those who hold the other. Both egalitarians and complementarians should be able to thrive happily in the same church, regardless of the approach favored by its leaders.

Even though egalitarians welcome competent women to serve as elders or pastors, they recognize that no text in Scripture requires there to be a female elder or pastor in their church.

Similarly, complementarians should be able to attend a church where women serve as elders or pastors. Naturally, complementarians would not encourage or vote for any women to serve in these leadership positions.

Nevertheless, it would never be a sin for the complementarians in a church that has female elders or pastors to learn or heed directions from those elders or pastors, as long as whatever those female leaders preach or direct is faithful to the Word of God. For example, if a female elder directs the congregation to open a worship service by singing “Amazing Grace,” the complementarians in the congregation should not hesitate to sing that hymn because it would not be a sin to comply with such a directive.

Any discussion or teaching on gender roles and marriage roles should be open to correction and be as generous and respectful as possible toward those who hold a different view. May the Lord guide us all to continue to search out the Scriptures and teach us to love one another with greater humility and forbearance.

Gordon P. Hugenberger is senior professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and former senior minister of Park Street Church in Boston.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Joint Heirs".

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Gender Roles Beyond the Western Church

Interview by Kara Bettis Carvalho

Scott W. Sunquist calls the American church to observe the diversity in ecclesiologies around the world.

Illustration by María Jesús Contreras

The recent revival of interest in biblical gender roles—how men and women serve in the church and function at home in relation to each other—seems to be focused in the Western church, especially in the US. Christianity Today reached out to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary president Scott W. Sunquist, who is also a missiologist with expertise in non-Western Christianity, to ask about the global context around gender and the church.

This interview has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

How have the terms of the gender roles debate come to be defined in the evangelical church?

Two prefatory comments: First, “evangelical” has become a contested category, so whenever we ask about “the evangelical church,” we need to further specify which family or tradition we are talking about. Secondly, much of the “debate” regarding gender roles occurred when my family was overseas, so we missed the initial formation of the discussion around the words complementarian and egalitarian. They were new concepts that began to spread in the late 1980s.

The evangelical debate around this has been very different from the larger and broader ecumenical discussion regarding the roles of men and women. The Orthodox church does not ordain female priests and neither do Roman Catholics. Protestant mainline churches began opening all offices of the church to women in the wake of the great missionary movement, where women dominated the pioneering work. Pentecostals from the earliest years of the movement recognized the equal function of women and men and so, in that tradition, women were planting and pastoring churches in the early 20th century.

The bifurcated (“either/or”) view of gender roles we now have arises mostly out of Southern Baptist, independent Baptist, and conservative Reformed traditions, which defend the clarity of two genders and delineate roles that are acceptable for women with the word complementarian. And it must be stated clearly that this particular discourse is an American approach that has now been exported some through missionary work.

It should also be said that not all traditions that identify as evangelical, both within the United States and globally, frame the debate in the same manner.

The complementarian-egalitarian debate is a big one in the US (and the Western church generally). How is the view of men’s and women’s roles in the church viewed globally? How do Scriptures on the distinctions between men and women play out in different ecclesiological convictions worldwide?

As we all know, the diversity of cultures (seen most clearly in religion and language) is a beautiful thing to witness and to thank God for. I have been fortunate to have taught and learned from Christian leaders in many countries in Asia as well as in Africa. Generally, once women become literate, women’s roles change. The gospel brings literacy and education to women, and this is often a threat to traditional female roles in Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures. Women become empowered through literacy. They can teach their children and they can ask questions and evangelize others.

However, in many cultures of the world, Christian men and women sit on different sides of the sanctuary, and women look after the children on the women’s side. Gender roles are cultural, but the gospel always brings a degree of freedom to women in cultures where women are oppressed. Expressed differently: When the gospel enters into any culture, it moves that culture toward greater grace, wholeness, and flourishing for all people. Cultures are fallen, and the gospel rectifies cultural patterns to individuals, families, and societies.

How does this compare within monoethnic churches in the US?

Following up from your previous question, let’s imagine what happens when people from other countries come to the United States. Korean (and most Chinese) churches are dominated by a Confucian ethic and social order in the first generation. All social order in Confucian society is hierarchical: emperor over subjects, father over children, husband over wife, etc. Thus, these churches seldom have women in leadership, but women often run the churches behind the scenes.

The positive side of this is that a Korean would understand the church as My church with my people; that Christianity is not a foreign religion and I can come to church without changing cultures. The negative side of this strong adherence to cultural patterns is that sometimes women are not treated by men with Christian respect and dignity. This hurts Christian witness. This is one of many cultural examples which we can identify as the incomplete conversion of cultures. We find these examples in every world culture.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a rectification that comes with conversion to Christ. We are not left with all our sinful patterns of our cultures. Many Indian and Middle Eastern churches in the United States have men and women sitting on different sides of the sanctuary. We must remember that both local indigenous cultures as well as the teaching of Western missionaries often influence the place and role of women.

There is no “pure” Chinese or Black church in the United States—or so-called “white” church either, for that matter. Cultures are all made in the image of God but are fallen. It is important to remember this, lest we try to shape all ethnic groups in “our” image and insist on our definition of gender roles in the family and in the church.

As evangelicalism grows outside of the West, will controversies and discussions over women’s and men’s roles be more or less relevant in broader evangelicalism?

If by “evangelicalism” you mean faith traditions centered around biblical authority, the centrality of Christ, and the need for conversion, then it has already grown outside of the West. Today such “evangelicals” in the West comprise only about 30 percent of global evangelicals. As Ogbu Kalu used to say, “African Christianity is evangelical Christianity.” Most of the growing Christian communities (including Pentecostals) in China, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America would be considered evangelical according to the description mentioned above. Non-Western evangelicalism often has unique teachings in many African Independent Churches but, broadly speaking, they are evangelical and their approach to gender follows cultural norms.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the place of women has improved. We need to pay attention and watch how the gospel reshapes various African and Asian cultures, specifically the view and role of women. Much of their discussion about gender roles in the church relate to applying the Bible to their present cultural gender roles, plus having to read Western books and listen to Western Christians. When it comes to nonessentials such as gender roles, Western Christians need to listen as, for example, Egyptian or Malaysian Christians shape their ecclesiologies and pastoral care and preaching. American Christians are not good at listening.

I pastored a Presbyterian church in Singapore when there was only one woman ordained in the presbytery, and she was from England. The next woman ordained was my student, who became the pastor of a church I helped to plant. The change took place over years, and it came about not by outside “authorities” but through biblical study, recognition of spiritual gifts, and prayer. As in the United States, not all denominations in Singapore and Malaysia ordain women. But most roles in the church—ministering as deacons and elders, reading Scripture, teaching, planting churches, serving the Eucharist—are now open to women. Ordination is the one role that is not open to women in all evangelical churches globally.

What can the American church learn from the global church in how it approaches the roles of men and women? How can we pursue unity while upholding biblical convictions?

I think we need to acknowledge that the global church is diverse in terms of their ecclesiologies, because that is what we are talking about: who can be ordained, preach, oversee sacraments, and teach. Christians have come to many different conclusions on nonessentials, and we need to be gracious in receiving the richness that our global fellowship provides us. Some churches limit women’s participation in worship on biblical and/or traditional grounds. That is their prerogative and we should honor that, so long as women are respected and are given meaningful ways to participate in the body of Christ.

In such a divided world, Christians in the West should humbly learn from the majority church, seeking deeper unity around essentials and not letting nonessentials like gender roles divide us. The world needs to see unity through gracious, Christian humility.

- More from Interview by Kara Bettis Carvalho

Ideas

Our Gender on Earth as In Heaven

Fellipe do Vale

Will our gender be removed or renewed in the Resurrection?

Illustration by Pete Ryan

I find much of what’s written today about gender to be oddly abstract and otherworldly. Debates about gender in the church and culture often orbit around questions relating to authority and submission or whether gender is a binary or a spectrum.

And while such discussions may be valuable to a certain extent, they don’t go very far in addressing the roots of the gendered pain we experience in this “present evil age” (Gal. 1:4). Offering abstract principles ignores the particulars of a person’s life—which are often what cause the greatest pain.

This is why, whenever we think theologically about gender, we must be careful not to draw a clear line between the theoretical and the personal. A theology of gender that does not witness to the open wounds of God’s people remains detached and ethereal, unable to speak the right words of hope to a gendered world longing for flourishing.

I learned this lesson firsthand. After publishing an article about gender in the resurrection, I heard from a faithful and thoughtful intersex individual—someone who was born with diversities in sex development—who asked if she would be resurrected as her current gender or not. This was an important question for this person, because the hope of resurrection meant something to her as a believer.

For us, “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1) is morally normative—indicating the way God intends the world to be—unlike the fallen state of our earth today. Rather than some distant situation that bears no connection to our ordinary lives, the eschaton defines what a flourishing life ought to look like. Eschatology deals with questions like “What does a life free of the destructive forces of sin look like?” “What does God’s justice look like when it has fully blossomed?” “What would it feel like for us to truly flourish?”

I tell my students that thinking about the new creation is kind of like that kids’ activity where you “spot the differences” between two pictures. By identifying the disparities between the way the world is now and the way it ought to be—and will be someday—we can learn how to act today.

If eschatology gives us an idea of creation as it ought to be, then the resurrection gives us a sense of our bodies as they ought to be. This means that whatever we say about our bodies in the resurrection influences what we say about our bodies now.

It is no coincidence, therefore, that individuals for whom gender is a point of pain and difficulty often reach for the language of resurrection to describe what it feels like to be delivered from that pain. By associating gender with resurrection, we instinctively conceive of how gender should be—which, in turn, testifies to the ways our paradigms for gender have been broken and distorted by sin.

Christians affirm that when our bodies are resurrected in the new creation, they will become all they were created to be and our hopes for holistic healing will be fulfilled. The problem is, we have different understandings of how the resurrection is meant to cure the brokenness in our gendered bodies.

If someone’s arm is bitten by a venomous snake, there seem to be two options: Amputate the poisoned limb, or extract the venom. While both yield the same result—saving the person from a life-threatening toxin—they achieve it in starkly different ways: one by removal, the other by renewal. Likewise, how believers envision the resolution of our gendered pain often boils down to whether our genders are removed or renewed in the resurrection.

To ask whether our bodies will be gendered in the new creation is to ask what the ultimate healing and flourishing of our God-given genders might look like.

While it may seem like this question would only have been relevant in recent decades, it turns out it’s been asked for centuries—and I believe the way we answer it has real-world significance for how we understand what a flourishing gendered life looks like today.

There is a long and impressive lineage in Christian history and contemporary theology that says the best way to envision the redemption of our gender is to picture its removal. Drawing on figures like Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor, this strand argues that we will not be gendered when we are raised.

According to this view, some aspects of humanity are part of God’s image, while others are shared with nonhuman creatures—and this includes gender. In fact, they say, gender was an attribute given to us only because God foreknew humanity would sin. It was meant to sustain us only until the restoration of creation. Therefore, attributes like gender, race, and disability, which they believe cause us the most pain and struggle in this life, will not remain in the resurrection.

Foundational to these thinkers’ arguments—and those of contemporary theologians who have retrieved their line of thought—is Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (emphasis added). True creation is creation in Christ—and in Christ, they infer literally here, there is no male and female. Even if gender was originally part of the old creation, they argue, it’s not the right kind of creaturely attribute to persist into the new creation.

Some recent theology has gone so far as to reconsider what we think our bodies were created to be to begin with. Maybe, they argue, the human beings described in the creation narrative aren’t a model for how we were meant to end up in the first place. For this reason, they believe attributes like gender will be displaced when our redemption is complete—kind of like maternity clothes. Although useful for a time, eventually they become unnecessary.

There is much to appreciate in this view, especially in the connection it makes between gender and the gospel. Nevertheless, it strikes me as self-defeating to tell someone who has experienced pain, difficulty, or any other kind of burden on account of their gender that their hope lies in its removal. Gender seems too vital an element of our life stories for it to be healed merely by erasure. What’s more, if we believe Jesus sets our expectations for resurrection and if he was raised with his gender, then why wouldn’t we expect to be resurrected in a similar way?

Another strand of the Christian tradition goes back to figures like Irenaeus and Augustine, who argued that we are resurrected with our genders precisely because of the hope for justice found in Christ. Something suspicious was going on when people said there would be no gender in the resurrection, Augustine said, when what they really meant was that everyone would be resurrected as a man by default and in exact imitation of Christ.

As Augustine put it, “both sexes will rise again,” for “all faults will be removed from those bodies, but their nature will be preserved.” Since the “female sex is not a sin” nor a defect of creation, women will be resurrected as women. For “the woman … is just as much God’s creation as is the man.” Rather, to be a woman is a glorious gift of the Creator as a bearer of the divine image—just as it is to be a man. God makes all things right by curing creation of its sin, and not by doing away with creation itself.

Therefore, a theology of resurrection that removes all gendered aspects of creation is a theology of erasure that leaves our laments for gendered suffering and injustice—such as dysphoria and discrimination—unaddressed. The resurrection is not a cosmic Etch A Sketch, where God shakes everything to start over; it is a divine commitment to what has already been made and declared very good (Gen. 1:31), which includes our genders.

Irenaeus and Augustine envision the resurrection in terms of a garden. In the beginning, God’s creation was like a seed planted in the earth, intended to blossom into a magnificent tree (Luke 13:18–19). Instead, the tree grew sick with sin. But rather than taking an axe to it, God meticulously cures the tree at the root, and at God’s own expense. Then, and only then, does the tree begin to bloom again.

Today, gender is a source of suffering and confusion for many—both our experience and our notions of gender are sick with sin. All around us, we see the ways sexism, abuse, and other forms of harm have hurt God’s creatures, especially women. The virtues that are needed to be a Christlike presence—such as listening well, showing tenderhearted compassion, and not jumping to simplistic conclusions when people share stories about their experiences of gender—are sorely lacking in Christians of all ideological persuasions.

Together, as the body of Christ, we can begin to picture a life where undue and unbiblical burdens associated with gender are alleviated. How can those in the church come alongside each other—our imaginations alight with faith, love, and hope—and envision a world where the work of Christ illuminates our gendered lives? This work begins by recovering the virtues mentioned above: listening well to peoples’ stories, showing compassion to those who hurt, and remaining convinced that there will be no more gendered pain in the kingdom of God. What would our Christian communities look like if we held these virtues in common as expressions of love?

Ultimately, I believe we will remain gendered in the eschaton because of the Christian hope for abundant life and justice. This hope persists because of a conviction that Jesus loves those who are most vulnerable, including those for whom gender is a point of pain.

And while I cannot say with certainty what sex or gender my intersex friend will be raised as, I know her body will be the body God has been helping her cultivate friendship with now. A surprising switch at the end of all things would seem quite out of character with God’s redemptive action.

God is not done with us, nor is God done with our genders. Even now, God is curing us of our sin and giving us a foretaste of what it will feel like to flourish as resurrected women and men.

Fellipe do Vale is assistant professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and author of Gender As Love: A Theological Account of Human Identity, Embodied Desire, and Our Social Worlds.

- More from Fellipe do Vale

Ideas

Heaven Isn’t Our Eternal Escape from Work

Jen Wilkin

Columnist

Only on our best days do we get a glimpse of the joyful labor to come.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash

There’s an old saying regarding work: “Find something you love to do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

It’s a nice idea—albeit a tall order to achieve. Some jobs are harder to love than others, and even the most meaningful work can exhaust or frustrate us. Our relationships with work can be complicated; even the most diligent among us succumb to quitting fantasies from time to time.

And often, the demands of life mean we can’t devote ourselves to finding work we love to do. We simply have to do the work necessary. Stacks of bills don’t care about our job satisfaction or our inherent gifts. That weird pink mold growing in the shower doesn’t take vacations. A good few of us are doing jobs we don’t love to do, and we may very well be doing them until the Lord returns.

Most of us picture endless years of vacation in the New Jerusalem. In the ongoing debate over whether the best vacations happen in the mountains or at the beach, the oceanless description of the new heavens and earth has threatened more than one saint’s concept of eternal bliss. But no matter the landscape, few think of the hereafter as a place of work.

For many, heaven is the ultimate quitting fantasy. After all, it’s the eternal Sabbath where we cease our labors, right? Well, yes and no.

Revelation 14:13 does promise that the saints will “rest from their labor.” But in Revelation, that word labor means “toil,” as in the travail of persecution the saints will face in this life.

In Isaiah 65, God speaks of work occurring in the new creation:

[My people] will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. … My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain. (vv. 21–23)

This is the poetry of productivity unhindered by sin. In Zion we will rest from sin, sorrow, temptation, and persecution. But we will work with joy and gladness, as we were created to do. We will finally fulfill our vocational callings, free from frustration or toil. We don’t know specifically what our labor will be, but we know it will be fruitful, as it should have been all along.

Since the rebellion in Eden, our relationship with work has been fraught. We have no memory of work as it was meant to be: always fulfilling, always an expression of love for others, always bringing glory to God. Never thwarted. Never purposeless or dehumanizing. No cogs in the wheel, only humans bearing the image of God in the work of their hands.

Perhaps we have a faint sense of how work should be. Picture your most satisfying day of work ever. For me, it’s the satisfaction of all the cooking and cleaning that culminates in our family gathering together, or the good exhaustion of having taught my heart out in a difficult passage of Scripture. That day is an echo of Eden and a foretaste of the New Jerusalem.

We are made for work as surely as we are made for rest. Because of sin, we make idols of both, bending them to serve our self-promotion and sloth. Our work does not fully satisfy, and our rest does not fully restore.

But one day, we will labor again as we were created to labor. And we will sabbath as we were created to sabbath. Our labor will not frustrate, and our rest will not bore.

For now, we can and should still do our jobs with all our hearts, as working for the Lord (Col. 3:23). When we see our labor as serving the Lord Christ, even menial tasks are transformed from work into worship. Our efforts become offerings, whether as expressions of our gifts or as acts of simple obedience.

I have cleaned a lot of showers as unto the Lord, and I will likely clean many more before I walk the streets of gold. There will be no bills to pay in that celestial city, and there will be no pink mold. But there will be good work to do. May our joyful labor here and now serve as the firstfruits of our fruitful labor to come.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "We Won’t Retire in Heaven".

Beginning of Wisdom: The Beginning of Wisdom offers a Bible teacher’s perspective on spiritual growth and scriptural study in our churches, small groups, and families.

Theology

What Kind of Man Is This?

John Koessler

We’ve got little information on Jesus’ appearance and personality. But that’s the way God designed it.

Illustration by Chloe Cushman

Not long ago, I came across several portraits of Christ that someone had posted online. Using the image on the Shroud of Turin as a basis and employing artificial intelligence, the pictures speculated what Jesus might have looked like before his crucifixion.

I viewed the images with interest, wondering if they would produce a sense of recognition in me as someone who is in Christ. But I can’t say my heart was moved in any particular way about them.

I certainly did not feel the way I usually do when someone I care about deeply comes into view. I could not say, “Oh, that’s Jesus! I would know him anywhere!”

No figure is as familiar to us as Jesus Christ. At the same time, no figure is as unfamiliar.

I first began to read about Jesus over 50 years ago as I worked the midnight shift at a fast-food restaurant. Having recently graduated from high school, I was trying to decide what direction my life should take. I thought it would be good to have a spiritual dimension and had been exploring Eastern mysticism and the occult, though not very seriously.

One day, it dawned on me that the Bible was a spiritual book. So during my breaks at the restaurant, I started reading the New Testament.

It didn’t take long before Jesus Christ—not so much his message as his personality—captured my attention. Or maybe I should say what attracted me was the mystery of his personality.

What kind of person is so compelling that someone would give up career or family to follow him? I’d read in the Gospels how Peter walked away from the security of his fishing nets and Matthew abandoned the lucrative returns of the tax table. Although the Jesus I encountered in the Gospels was not entirely new to me, he was strange.

I have been reading about Jesus ever since, and he still puzzles me. Although I have been a pastor and a Bible college professor, there are times when I wonder if I know Jesus at all. I don’t mean that I question whether I am truly a Christian or whether he is my Savior.

But often, when I read the Gospels, the Jesus I find is not what I expected. He will speak or act in ways that disturb me. Sometimes, like the disciples, I am irritated and want to ask Jesus, “What were you thinking?” Other times I am struck with wonder and want to say, “What kind of man is this?”

In ordinary relationships, we tend to keenly observe the kinds of details Scripture withholds about Jesus. Not only do we note face and form, but we pay attention to all the little details that contribute to personality: the glint in someone’s eye, the curve of a crooked smile, the jokes that make them laugh.

Personality is the word we use most often to speak of such attributes. It isn’t simply a synonym for individuality but is a description of the distinctive ways a person expresses that individuality. Personality is the blend of characteristics that identifies the individual as an individual.

The Bible has little to say about such details where Christ is concerned. The information it does provide is relatively sparse; it’s scattered throughout the four Gospels in a piecemeal fashion or can only be guessed. The apostle John could speak of what he had heard with his own ears, seen with his own eyes, and touched, but we cannot (1 John 1:1). We depend on what is written.

Consequently, if we are to know Christ on a personal level, that intimacy must come in a way that differs from most of our other relationships. At the same time, Jesus promised a special blessing to those who have not seen him yet have believed (John 20:29).

God has provided us with two primary vehicles to mediate this knowledge of Christ to us.

The first is what has been recorded about him in the Scriptures. The other is the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, who is also called “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9).

In 2 Corinthians 4:6, the apostle Paul observes: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” This is a curious thing to say to those who have never seen the face of Jesus.

Apparently, despite the Bible’s lack of any detailed description of the appearance or personality of Jesus, we know more than we think.

There is a light that shines in our hearts that reveals the unseen face of Christ. Not in a literal sense. But by the Spirit, we come to know Jesus personally and intimately. He, in turn, displays the glory of the invisible God to us through his humanity.

Theologians have much to say about the personhood of God, especially in connection with the church’s doctrine of the Trinity. They have had less to say about God’s personality. One reason for this reluctance may be a concern not to anthropomorphize God. The Scriptures repeatedly assert that God is not a man (Num. 23:19; Job 9:32; Hos. 11:9).

Theologian Helmut Thielicke warns in The Evangelical Faith that making the human person a model of God is a mistake:

Any equation of God and person, or any attempt to make the human person a model in thinking of God, is thus ruled out from the very outset. … Equations of this kind would again make God an image of the creaturely in the sense of human religion or idolatry.

Yet what analog could be more anthropomorphic than the one God chose for himself? According to Genesis 1:26–27,

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

It is hard to see how one could have a personal relationship with God as he presents himself in these verses without some correspondence between God’s nature and what we think of as personality. Even if it can be proved that the notion of personality is not relevant in this context, it cannot be meaningless where Jesus Christ is concerned. Hebrews 2:17 states that Jesus was made like us in the Incarnation, “fully human in every way.”

Jesus was not an empty shell into which the divine nature was poured. He was not merely wearing a fleshly body. Although he existed as a divine person prior to the Incarnation, when he became flesh, the Logos took on a new dimension (John 1:1, 14). Jesus did not cease to be what he was before but added human nature to his person. In doing so, both natures retained their fullness.

Jesus is not two persons, one human and the other divine, who cohabit in the same flesh. He is the one person of Christ who is both truly human and truly divine in every sense. As such, he possesses a personality. One reason Jesus became human was in order to provide an “exact representation” of God’s being (Heb. 1:3). The humanity of Jesus tells us what God is like.

“Personality,” wrote Francis Rogers in 1921, is “the incarnation of individuality.” When we talk about someone’s personality, we are usually speaking of the impression they leave us with. Are they friendly or unfriendly? Do they have a sense of humor, or are they serious? Are they shy or outgoing? Personality inventories tend to describe these traits in polarities. Introversion is the opposite of extroversion. A person focuses on either tasks or relationships. They are a leader or a follower. In reality, these qualities exist on a continuum.

Personality is a description of our ways of acting and relating to others. It includes temperament, habits of behavior, values, and preferences. Character is also expressed through personality but is not necessarily identical to it.

Graces like the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23) that shape a Christian’s character may be the same for all believers, but we do not all express those qualities in the same way.

The Gospels reveal relatively little of what typically interests us about people when they speak of Jesus’ personality.

We know nothing exact about the Savior’s physical appearance and next to nothing about the sound of his voice. We know that he was a builder but not what he did in his spare time other than pray, go to dinners, weddings, and take at least one nap. How did he act when he was among friends? We know that Jesus cried but do not know what made him laugh.

There are occasional moments in the Gospels, though, when the clouds of silence part and the rays of Jesus’ personality peek through.

The religious leaders set a trap for Jesus by waiting for him to heal on the Sabbath, and he gazes at them angrily, “deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts” (Mark 3:5).

A misguided youth believes he is already good enough to inherit eternal life and asks what else he must do, and Jesus looks at him with love (Mark 10:21).

Jesus touches a leper and speaks tenderly to a shy woman (Luke 5:13; 8:48). Jesus weeps, comforts, rebukes, and threatens. The God revealed to us through the humanity of Christ is someone who not only thunders but also sobs and sighs.

Personality is our point of connection with other human beings. We know them as individuals through their personalities. We bond with people who have personalities similar to ours. Just as often, we take note of our differences. Identity is not only a matter of knowing who we are; it is also a function of knowing who we are not.

In the face of the Gospels’ scant detail about Jesus’ personality, we can be tempted to model him after ourselves.

In a 2010 essay in Christianity Today about the failure of historians to reconstruct a “historical Jesus,” Scot McKnight described how he gave students a standardized psychological test divided into two parts. On the first part, the students described Jesus’ personality. On the second, they described and compared their own. “The test is not about right or wrong answers, nor is it designed to help students understand Jesus,” McKnight explained.

Instead, the test revealed that people tend to think Jesus is like them. Introverts think Jesus is introverted, for example. Extroverts think the opposite.

“If the test were given to a random sample of adults,” McKnight wrote, “the results would be measurably similar. To one degree or another, we all conform Jesus to our own image.”

Our mental image of Jesus is often shaped as much by cultural assumptions and personal experiences as by Scripture. This is why the Jesus in our mind often feels so familiar and comfortable. We believe that he looks like us. That he shares our tastes and reflects our expectations. That the truths he espouses are those of which we are already convinced. That the Christian life Jesus demands looks like the one we are already living. Republican Jesus, woke Jesus, rugged manly Jesus, gentle Jesus, mythical archetype Jesus—they are all, to some degree, self-curated versions of the biblical Jesus.

At best, they may emphasize certain features that we see in the Gospels’ portrayal of him. But mostly, they are images that resonate with values that we already hold. At worst, they are idols we have fashioned in our own image.

We do not need a photograph to see God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ, but we do need the Word and the Spirit. Christ’s revelation of the Father is made known each time we read about Jesus’ words and actions in Scripture. God’s Spirit uses that Word to shine in our hearts and disclose both the Father and the Son to us. As Jesus reveals the Father to us, the Spirit makes Christ known.

This understanding, which is gained by the Word and applied by the Spirit in conjunction with our experiences, provides us with a clearer sense of who Jesus is than any picture could, because it provides a personal knowledge of Christ that works from the inside out.

There is more to this knowledge than a set of traits—from which we would doubtless draw the wrong conclusions. Much of our interest in the personality of Jesus does not spring from a desire to understand Jesus better but from a desire to show that Jesus thinks and acts like us. Instead, the understanding the Spirit provides moves in the other direction.

The knowledge of Jesus that we actually have goes beyond the list of likes and dislikes or awareness of the sort of quirks we usually attribute to personality. For the believer, knowing Jesus involves the incorporation of Christ himself into our way of thinking and acting.

In other words, we come to know Jesus personally not only by reading about him but by becoming like him. There are two important features of this experience. One is that it is progressive. This transformation does not happen instantly when we are born again. It is ongoing and only brought to perfection in eternity.

The other is that this experience is integrated with the uniqueness of our distinctive personalities. As we become more and more like Christ, the distinctiveness is not wiped away. Instead, Christ displays himself through the various personality styles of those who belong to him.

If personality truly is the incarnation of individuality, you would think we would know our personality better than anyone else. It is, after all, who we are. Yet the popularity of tests and inventories that promise to summarize our personality traits for us seems to suggest otherwise. Perhaps it is easier to be aware of what others are like than ourselves. Or maybe we take these tests hoping to confirm what we already know about ourselves, to identify with our particular social tribe.

However, while personality inventories and surveys can be a valuable way of synthesizing data about people, they can also be too reductionistic to tell the whole story. Instead of highlighting the unique ways Christ works through each individual, they may slot individuals into categories that are often too broad or vague to be helpful.

What is more, they do not do justice to the mysterious way God works through the unlikely to accomplish his goals. God often works despite our personalities as much as he works through them.

In a sermon on the white stone and new name of Revelation 2:17, George MacDonald describes each person as having an individual and unique relationship with God. “He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else,” he said.

For MacDonald, this meant that each person is blessed with a distinctive angle of vision when it comes to understanding God:

Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him—can understand God as no man else can understand him. This or that man may understand God more, may understand God better than he, but no other man can understand God as he understands him.

As truth is worked out in our daily experience, we not only learn about Jesus; we put him on display in a way that is just as unique as the insight that MacDonald describes. In MacDonald’s words, each one of us is “to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else.” We may share some traits with others, but nobody else is exactly like us. This experiential knowledge of Christ mediated through our experience is also refracted through our distinctive personalities, the way light shines through stained glass.

Perhaps the students who completed the psychological profile on Jesus in McKnight’s class were on to something after all—not in thinking that Jesus was like them, but the other way around.

As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says in “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,”

Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Those who know Christ by experience serve as a medium through which others see Jesus. Their lives are the stage upon which he plays, and his beauty is revealed through them. More than the beauty of a single personality profile, this is an image with untold variety. And while Jesus is a human being with a real personality, he is also the God who has chosen to reveal himself through those he has created and saved.

As we are “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor. 3:18), Jesus shows himself as, riffing on Joseph Campbell’s theory of heroes, the Savior with 1,000 faces. We put Jesus on display the way a diamond reveals its glory: in countless facets.

John Koessler is a writer, podcaster, and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. His latest book is When God Is Silent, published by Lexham Press.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "The Ultimate Personality".

- More from John Koessler

The Kingdom Demands We Cross Tribal Lines

Joy Allmond

Secondary church issues have the potential to divide us, but we can choose to stay united as the body of Christ.

Image by CT / Original Illustrations by María Jesús Contreras

One of the great privileges of working at Christianity Today is the opportunity to labor alongside people who share core convictions: Jesus is the Son of God, he is the only way to the Father, we serve a crucified and resurrected Messiah, his gospel is real and at work in our daily lives, we are citizens of a greater kingdom, and one day God will make all things new.

CT is also unwavering on biblical stances on things such as marriage being between one man and one woman and ordained by God (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4–6) and all life—from womb to tomb—being precious to our Creator (Ps. 139:13–16; Deut. 10:17–19).

Another life-giving component of kingdom work here at CT is the convening of believers who see secondary issues through different perspectives. We might hold opposing views on divisive topics within our own ranks, but we long to together contribute our gifts in ways we hope serve you, our community.

One of the areas of Christian thought in which we exercise diversity at CT is how we approach the roles of women in the church and the home. Among our staff, you will find faithful egalitarian brothers and sisters working alongside faithful complementarian brothers and sisters. I have been sharpened and invigorated in thought through our camaraderie and colaboring.

In this issue, we not only hear from egalitarian and complementarian leaders on cultivating a healthy way forward for those who share their respective philosophies, but we also explore a third way—one that is underdiscussed. I hope you will dig into it and gain a new appreciation for those who differ from you within the bounds of orthodoxy—whether it’s on this topic or another secondary issue. I know I have.

There is a high likelihood that some of you reading this issue find yourselves not at home on either end of the spectrum of views on this topic or perhaps another. CT’s founder, Billy Graham, envisioned a convening point for Christians who don’t belong in progressive settings or fundamentalist contexts but who long to link arms with other sojourners somewhere in between. I suspect that’s most of us, and that’s the spirit of the space we want to continue to cultivate. We’re so glad you’re here.

Joy Allmond is executive editor at CT.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Editor's Note".

- More from Joy Allmond

Ideas

Are the Global Methodists Evangelical?

Daniel Silliman

CT Staff

Here’s why the new denomination may or may not fit the label.

Screenshot of Google Maps / Edits by CT

Religious historians have often divided American Protestantism into two neat camps: mainline and evangelical.

Mainliners are seen as more liberal, more ecumenical, and more concerned with ministerial education. They belong to the National Council of Churches, their pastors read The Christian Century, and they’re often very invested in denominational institutions. Evangelicals, on the other hand, like revivals and conversion experiences. They like Billy Graham. They are theologically conservative but also entrepreneurial, starting new organizations and innovating with a focus on outreach. They belong to the National Association of Evangelicals and read Christianity Today.

But new traditionalist denominations—formed through splits from mainline churches including the Episcopal Church USA, the Reformed Church in America, and now the United Methodist Church—may challenge the simple sorting method. Are the Methodists who have left the UMC evangelical?

Wouldn’t Use that Word

Keith Boyette, transitional head of the Global Methodist Church:

I don’t think you will find anywhere on our website that we use the word evangelical. And that’s largely because of how beat-up the term has become. I’ve ended up saying we’re theologically conservative.

Caroline Franks, pastor of Mt. Vernon Church, Trinity, North Carolina:

I think evangelical has been overused and people don’t know the definition. I don’t know what other denominations mean when they use that word. We’re reclaiming Christ as supreme Lord over all.

Maybe, but it’s complicated

Ryan Danker, director of the John Wesley Institute:

They are classically evangelical in terms of theology but not by social position. For the Global Methodist Church, these people have all been mainliners for the last 60 years. Is there a shift in their identity as Christians in this country, where they were mainliners and now they’re not? I think that’s a question.

Dale M. Coulter, professor of historical theology, Pentecostal Theological Seminary:

Historically yes, because they claim the 19th-century holiness heritage. As a contemporary moniker, it’s a real debate, with some preferring “traditionalist” or “historic Christianity” or “orthodox,” as in early creeds and Wesleyan standards.

Of course they are evangelical

Jeff Patterson, pastor of Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, High Point, North Carolina:

Absolutely. We proudly claim that evangelical Wesleyan heritage.

Elesha Coffman, historian and author of Turning Points in American Church History:

I think that the new denomination is best described as evangelical, based on its self-identification as conservative and its nonmembership (as far as I can tell) in the National Council of Churches. The impulse to split rather than merge or stay is also historically evangelical.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Are the Global Methodists Evangelicals?".

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Global Methodists Want to Check Bishops

Daniel Silliman

Ahead of the first general conference, the new denomination is weighing possible limits on leaders.

Illustration by Tim Bouckley

There were too many meetings.

When Mike Lowry became a bishop in the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) in 2008, he also became responsible for the governance of two universities, two seminaries, a hospital, and seven or eight other institutions.

“And I realized I could spend my entire professional life in committee meetings and board meetings and never enter a church,” Lowry told CT.

The new bishop believed in the work the Methodists were doing, but it didn’t seem right that the episcopal role should be so busy with bureaucracy. He felt bogged down.

“Bishops should be the champions and the guardians of the mission and orthodoxy, not administrative,” Lowry said. “But the way the office was structured, it was primarily an administrative management position.”

In 2022, Lowry became the first bishop to leave the UMC and join the new Global Methodist Church (GMC). The issue that drove the separation, for Lowry and the more than 1.9 million Americans who left between 2019 and 2023, was same-sex marriages and LGBTQ clergy. In his letter of resignation, Lowry wrote, “The institutional expression of the United Methodist Church has strayed in significant ways from faithfully upholding its own stated Discipline and, even more so, departed from the full truth of the gospel.”

But the bishop and many leaders of the GMC also saw serious structural problems with the UMC. The Methodists had adopted a corporate model of church governance, and bishops became bureaucrats instead of shepherds. Then, when some leaders strayed from traditional teaching on issues of human sexuality, there were no corrective mechanisms to check their authority. The General Conference voted not to change the denomination’s Book of Discipline and to keep the traditional stance, but the bishops over some regions announced they would just ignore it and affirm LGBTQ ministers. And there were no consequences.

“I would say the separation was as much about authority and accountability as it was about any theological issue,” said Keith Boyette, transitional head of the GMC.

The members of the new denomination are now preparing for their first annual gathering, a convening General Conference, to be held in Costa Rica in September. They’re not debating sexuality anymore. But they are wrestling with the question of bishops and the shape of the episcopacy.

What should governing roles look like? What responsibilities should a bishop have? And, most urgently, Boyette said, “What are you going to do to hold the bishops accountable?”

Some have been so hurt by the UMC hierarchy that they wonder “if the office is even salvageable,” according to Boyette. But the GMC is not considering doing away with the episcopal structure.

“You’re going to have somebody who’s in charge,” Boyette said. “You may call them something else—it’s not about the title; it’s about how you structure the office, how they’re selected, and how they’re held accountable—but you’re going to have that person.”

For a denomination that wants to recover an older expression of Wesleyanism, it also makes sense to construct an episcopal governance structure.

“You can’t reject what you see as a revisionist position on marriage and at the same time embrace revisionism on something much more important,” said Ryan Danker, director of the John Wesley Institute. “To change something as fundamental as the episcopacy, that’s a kind of reactionary pragmatism. That’s not Methodism. You’re not Methodists anymore.”

The Methodist history of bishops is a little complicated, however. John Wesley never became a bishop, and never called himself a bishop, but he believed he was ordained by God and exercised extensive authority over the Methodist movement, according to religious historian John Wigger.

In America, meanwhile, Francis Asbury was ordained as a Methodist bishop and claimed apostolic authority, but he also was elected by ministers at an annual conference.

“He took the title of bishop, but he made it more democratic,” said Wigger, who wrote a biography of Asbury. “In theory he was bishop and his word was final, but in practice he negotiated. He was pragmatic. And much of his authority came from the fact that people saw him as a servant—an old man on a horse with one change of clothes.”

For many of the faithful, churchgoing Methodists joining the GMC, these questions about bishops are all new.

They know someone is over their pastor. But they don’t have positions on polity. Some Methodist laypeople say they only thought about the episcopacy when they wondered at the mysteries of ministerial appointments.

Others say they never thought about bishops until a few years ago.

“Not until they tried to start making us do things that weren’t right,” said Angie Fary, a member of Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in High Point, North Carolina.

Still, many want to be part of a denomination with bishops. June Fulton, a lifelong member at Mt. Vernon Methodist in Trinity, North Carolina, said she was relieved when her congregation joined the GMC.

“The general consensus was, we don’t want to be floating around out there,” Fulton said. “I thought we needed the direction and to be connected to something. I thought that would work better for us, and most everybody felt the same way.”

Caroline Franks, the GMC minister who serves at Mt. Vernon now, said that not having a bishop would be like “going out in the rain without a raincoat.”

But this year, GMC leadership will have to decide what kind of raincoat they want. They are, after all, designing it themselves.

David Watson, dean of United Theological Seminary and one of the members of the GMC’s episcopacy task force, said one thing that’s being considered is term limits. The convention may vote on a proposal that bishops won’t have lifetime appointments but will be elected to a six-year term with the possibility of serving one additional term.

A lot of people in the GMC want congregations to have more of a role in choosing their ministers. Churches shouldn’t have to just accept the bishops’ appointments. And the task force is also considering offloading administrative responsibilities to the president pro tem and other officers elected or hired by the general and regional conferences.

Bishops in the GMC may not be assigned specific regions. That way, they could focus on teaching and spiritual leadership without the distraction of the minutiae of day-to-day governance of a specific district. But perhaps they should be tethered to a place, so a bishop in Ohio isn’t responsible for guarding the mission and orthodoxy of ministers in Kenya or a bishop in Bulgaria isn’t overseeing a conference in Kentucky.

“All of this is theoretical,” Watson said. “Everything has to be ratified at the General Conference. We will decide these things as a church. But now is the time to build and plan and work.”

While the question of the shape of the episcopacy has provoked discussion and debate in the fledgling denomination, there’s also a sense of unity, according to Watson. The details are being worked out, but everyone is in accord about the ultimate goal.

“The main thing that people want to see,” he said, “is bishops as spiritual leaders who will preach and teach the faith, who will hold people under their charge accountable, and will be held accountable themselves.”

The specifics are, of course, impor-tant, and some have strong opinions about the right way to do things. Decisions that the GMC makes in 2024 will affect the denomination for years—perhaps generations—to come.

There will no doubt be challenges with accountability. And probably, for some bishops, too many meetings. But the newly christened Global Methodists, hoping for a vibrant future, say the real test will be faithfulness.

“I think we need a good checks-and-balances kind of system,” said Laura Ballinger, copastor of First Methodist Martinsville in Indiana, “but if they just love and follow Jesus and the Scripture, I’m good.”

Daniel Silliman is news editor for CT.

This article appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Checking Bishops".

- More from Daniel Silliman

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Wouldn’t Use that Word

Maybe, but it’s complicated

Of course they are evangelical

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