In his excellent book Gender Quality Stef Liston outlines what he sees as the pillars of both egalitarian & complementarian arguments. It is, as we are regularly reminded, that we are understand and are able to articulate the best version of each sides arguments. No burning straw men but deal with the best and deal it with generously and kindly. I think Stef has managed to do that.

Here are what he sees as the seven pillars of egalitarians. What do you think?

Pillar 1. Genesis 1 makes it explicit that men and women are created equally in the image of God and both are destined to rule. There is nothing in Genesis 2 to undermine or significantly alter this equality.

Pillar 2. Genesis 3 makes it clear that any kind of rule of a man over a woman is a result of the fall and God’s judgement and is therefore never an expression of God’s perfect will but rather an expression of a fallen world.

Pillar 3. The patriarchal backdrop of the society in which the biblical narrative is set, is a result of Genesis 3 and so the male/female dynamic we see is not prescriptive of how life in God’s Kingdom should be, but merely descriptive of what life in a fallen world is like with occasional redemptive rays of hope bursting through from time to time.

Pillar 4. The coming of Jesus into our fallen world is the moment where new creation breaks in. As we observe Jesus’ way of relating with and honouring women we see God’s perfect way and it’s very different to what we have seen before. Jesus’ treatment of women makes sense of Paul’s quote in Galatians 3:28 that there is no male and female in Christ – he’s pointing back to the original creation and letting the readers know that even that has been transcended in what Christ has ushered in with the new creation. The revolution has begun!

Pillar 5. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was indiscriminate by nature – ‘all flesh’ – young, old, male and female. This is the only qualification for ministry – Spirit-giftedness. If the Spirit chooses to gift someone for a particular task then they are good to go; gender, age or any kind of social ‘status’ does not come into it. Following on from this, Paul’s understanding of the Spirit-filled life issues in his charge to the church to submit ‘to one another’, casting a fresh light on traditional ideas of submission and headship. Zero discrimination and total equality are the name of the game in the New Covenant.

Pillar 6. Paul’s list of co-workers in Romans 16 is at least 25% female. Given the patriarchal backdrop of the wider society, this is quite extraordinary and points to the kind of scenario, in different cultural circumstances (like ours today?), where we could easily imagine a 50/50 gender split of Gospel ministry.

Pillar 7. When we consider certain gender specific prohibitions or cautions that we find in the New Testament, they are to be understood as no more than culturally binding; they were written in order to protect the church in that age from charges of disorder and inappropriateness in the wider culture; they are not timeless reflections of God’s Kingdom; we must read particularly the epistles with both a much keener eye for context and a keen discernment of the trajectory or direction of travel apparent in the text.

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