Men and women, then and now
The backdrop
A car winds its way through the lonely Australian countryside in the dead of night. Three young women and two young men (one of them myself) are en route to visit a close friend’s family farm. The backdrop was undoubtedly influential in a conversational shift to our fears. We were surprised to find that they were highly gendered. The men feared abstract things, like the road suddenly curving downwards or upwards in some impossible direction, or being tortured in a country we were unlikely to ever find ourselves in. For the women one fear was universal - being attacked while alone at night. On the surface, this picture reveals that gender is predominantly differential. However, one might just as well note the features of this anecdote so obvious that we no longer notice them. The idea of five adult friends, including women, travelling together for leisure; having the freedom and time to do so, and in particular the women not being constrained by social convention, is highly anomalous historically. The landscape has changed, but are we moving through the dead of night? Or can we make out the figures with more clarity?
In Christian circles, arguments over “complementarianism” and “egalitarianism” are overshadowed and sometimes eclipsed by social realities. Complementarianism is a belief that women and men are equal in essence but have different and complementary roles. Egalitarianism is a belief that men and women are equal and that this implies no real distinction in roles. These beliefs have enormous consequences today given the general upheaval around gender. For Christians too, it is essential that this conversation is carried out with intellectual honesty and grace. No matter whether a Christian is conservative, progressive, or somewhere in between, the stakes are high. At stake is the natural flourishing of millions of Christian women, whether of their natural femininity, their voice, or both - and bound up with women, the flourishing of Christian men. Many people inhabit various theological positions along this complementarian/egalitarian spectrum. However, in my experience, both the motivation and outworking of these positions is significantly influenced by conscious cultural beliefs and the manifestation of unconscious gender expectations. Egalitarian positions unfortunately often coincide with statements about the bible so loose that a reader might wonder whether the author has not in private shrugged off Christianity completely. My conversations are usually with complementarians who have a healthy respect for the bible. But recently I’ve noticed that complementarian theology is also often underpinned by ideas about what men and women should be like that are not clearly biblical. In addition, it seems that most of the time complementarian and egalitarian marriages look the same - husbands and wives will each find that exercising leadership in this or that domain will fall to whoever is the more invested and interested and therefore competent. I am not advocating that we resign ourselves to the fact of this cultural dominance. I am using it as a starting point to the conversation because it is already the starting point of the conversation, both for us and in the biblical texts. I will then discuss three false dichotomies when it comes to men and women. Finally, I will do my best to bring theology to bear on the practice of faith as men and women.
A conservative lens
Conservatism and progressivism are the lenses through which people view this topic today. I will firstly present a nuanced conservative narrative. Men and women have been living for at least the past two thousand years in a stable equilibrium. In this paradigm, men carried out physical and intellectual labour. Women carried out labour related to the household and to children. For some women this was a grim existence; for some it was happy, and men and women existed all somewhere along this spectrum. For the most part these marriages were stable, helped greatly by an emphasis on grounded locality and community.
Today, we are aiming for a higher goal - one with more equality and flexibility for both men and women to act according to their temperaments and preferences - but this higher goal is frustrated by how it plays out. Because roles are less well defined, men and women are less certain about what they are “meant” to do. Individualism has eroded community and religious commitments are either skated over or abandoned, and this all constitutes a taking hold of freedom and equality at the expense of solidarity and stability. The current epoch is also characterised by conflict. Women in particular are faced with an identity crisis; not a hopeless situation, but certainly a challenge. The modern strong, independent woman is superimposed on top of the 1950s housewife. Although the former is supposed to be preferable to the other, there remains a strong historical, cultural and biological undercurrent that the modern woman must swim against. Thus the situation for women is not as flexible as it first appears.
Couples expect nothing but the best from each other in the age of social media. We see and therefore desire perfection, but this turns out to be a highly unstable perfection. The dream is to be a power couple - using modern work arrangements to their fullest capacity, deftly sharing parental leave, and unlocking dual income credit rating benefits. This is to many men and women an utopia, unreachable and unreasonable - because we have invested everything in our partner due once again to individualism. Women must be income earners, erudite, bosses, mothers. The power couple must be partners in crime - equals in every respect. Men must have integrated the Jungian anima and women the animus such that typically masculine and feminine virtues are no longer characterised as such. She must be his interlocutor, partner in crime, lover; they must be able to laugh together, cry together, rhapsodize on life’s poignancy together. This is because the village is rolled into the one person - individualism requires it.¹ We have another equilibrium, but this time much less stable, a fertile paradise at the top of an impossibly high mountain. It is all too tempting to roll back down the hill and start again.
As such, some long for the old days, where roles were more simply defined and one could settle into the comfort of a stable marriage. This conservative longing is worth considering, not only for the sake of those men and women who feel disconnected from society and its norms, but also because of its growing influence.
A progressive lens
A more progressive point of view might use historical comparisons to shed light on other dimensions of gender. It is worth looking at ancient Greece for a point of comparison. Often when we think of ancient Greece, we think of democracy, education, debate, philosophy, art, and culture. However, this great breakthrough in the ancient world did not seem to improve the lot of women. Women were unable to vote in Athens. They remained uneducated. They needed a man to represent them in court. They were married off at the age of fourteen and had no choice in the groom. It was thought best to avoid addressing women - in fact, it was better if they remained unseen. Poorer women nevertheless had to go outside to run errands and faced judgement for doing so.²
Women had limited roles in Ancient Greece, and these roles were often viewed in a negative light. The figure of Aspasia exemplifies some of these problems. It is unsurprising given the marginalisation of women that we do not know whether arguably the most famous Athenian woman was a high-class prostitute or not. This can be attributed to the sidelining of women, but greatly adding to the confusion is the habit of attacking men by attacking women associated with them - in this case Pericles.³ It was easier to view women in a negative light when viewing them at all - whether this was because they were too visible (as a wife) or too scandalous (despite the fact men carved out these scandalous roles of hetaira, courtesan, porneia, etc to meet their sexual and intellectual entertainment needs). In ancient Greece more generally, education for women was almost never organised by the state. And where was this education channeled? Both mothers and hetaira could benefit from education, the latter to converse more eloquently with men and thus entertain them more holistically. Here instead of the modern picture of a woman encompassing everything, we have a polarity: women for marriage (restricted, uneducated, dependent), and women for entertainment. These roles are simply means to the twin ends of children and pleasure. There were other places for women of course - to be midwives, to engage in medicine with other women, to perform cultic functions in religious ritual. For the most part, however, women had tightly defined roles, and great restrictions in public life - and this is in the great civilisation of ancient Greece.⁴
Today, there are opportunities for women to engage in any vocation - and this contributes positively to womens’ freedoms. We might argue that introducing women to the industrial world is not so great a favour, and that modern jobs are dull and dehumanising. However, the choice to engage in such jobs or not is the important thing - and women as well as men will choose the extent and type of work that best suits temperament and life situation. Furthermore, the possible problem of women being propelled into the workforce by economic force is eased by the fact that things women toiled over in the past are now being done by washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, pressure cookers and the like. I have not even yet mentioned the possibility of women in toxic family/social situations escaping marriages to people likely to be abusive by being able to provide for themselves. Such opportunities provide the mobility necessary to find new friends, new families where necessary, and new ways of looking at the world. All in all, what can we say? In this tale of two epochs, we can certainly say that we are living in much different times than in Ancient Athens. Whether this is for better or for worse might depend on whether women or men are asked, say progressives - and this narrative is also worth considering.
Christian conservatives might protest that I could have compared our times to the twentieth century. This is fair enough; discussing Ancient Greece was useful for me however to set up the discussion of two passages - 1 Timothy 2: 11-15 and Ephesians 5:22-33.
False dichotomies: Provision and authority
In the course of reading these pivotal biblical texts, we have read all sorts of false dichotomies into them. Let us begin with this statement from Paul in Ephesians 5:23 - “The husband is the head of the wife.” The first false dichotomy is the “provision/authority” dichotomy. To illustrate, I will briefly discuss the greek word “Kephale.” Gregory Dawes argues persuasively that “Kephale” has been well translated “head” and translators are to be commended for avoiding collapsing the metaphor into either of the typically designated meanings: “authority” and “source of life”. This means “Kephale” is a “living metaphor” although we must conclude that it is an ancient Greek, not English, metaphor (which is why these two possible meanings have been arrived at, having their sources in ancient Greek literature). The head was understood as controlling and providing life to the rest of the body, both meanings arguably present in the previous chapter of Ephesians as Paul “fleshes out” his metaphor. So the husband can be seen as the life source of, and the authority over, the wife.⁵
This polarity is consistent with the ambiguous connotations of the three dualities in Ephesians 5-6: husbands and wives, masters and slaves, parents and children. In every case, the former has a natural authority over, and a provision for, the latter. It is also difficult to separate these things out and thus suppose that these relationships should be thought of exclusively in terms of power or provision, since it is natural and good for the provider to be respected as someone with authority.
To take a slightly wider view, however, we should acknowledge that neither “source of life” nor “authority over” nor a complete combination of both can be said to fit all of Paul’s usages of the word “head”. Each time Paul uses the “head” metaphor, it has a slightly different resonance, but these different resonances cohere into a whole. (I will dip into additional passages to obtain a wider sample). In Ephesians, the head relates to the body by encouraging the growth of the body (Ephesians 4:15-16, 5:23-26). This understanding is also present in Colossians 2 (v10 and v19). In Ephesians 1:22 we see the vertical position of the head compared to the feet: “And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church”. This signifies authority over rulers and authorities. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul plays with the head language: “Every man who prays or prophesies with something on his head dishonours his head. 5 Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head”.⁶ In the same chapter we have source language: “For man did not come from woman, but woman came from man.”⁷ One interpretation of verse 10 is that a head covering signifies the husband’s authority over the wife.⁸ So 1 Corinthians 11 contains source and perhaps authority language. Taking into account these five chapters, Paul’s use of head carries a variety of resonances. It is appropriate to understand Paul’s emphasis in each case. He finds different resonances each time. But these are not incompatible; rather, they fit together in a unified picture. What differs in each case is how the reality played out, and how men and women were to respond to it.
False dichotomies: Normative and descriptive
The second false dichotomy is that between whether these texts are normative or descriptive. At least, an absolute dichotomy is simplifying things too much. However, before we make any definitive statements, let us explore the usage of this living metaphor. Paul repeatedly uses this metaphor to characterise the relationship between husbands and wives. There is some aspect of this relationship that leads Paul to make this representation. It is not as straightforward as, for example, the designation of terms “male” to describe the husband and “female” to describe the wife. The use of a metaphor necessitates a communicative distance between the idea of husband and the idea of his being the “head” of the wife. It might be tempting to conclude, therefore, that this is a normative statement in itself. According to Hilary Putnam, influential thinker Rudolph Carnap only counts words as meaningful if they are “observational”, having a simple, scientifically definable meaning. Carnap might unhelpfully designate the “head” metaphor as “theoretical” rather than “observational” since it does not have the clarity of a simple scientific description. While Carnap and logical positivists in general might relegate such terms to the bin of subjective nonsense, Christians might on the other hand recognise that terms without scientific meaning regardless can have real meaning, conferred perhaps by God. However, Christians can still fall into the trap of separating “fact” from “value” regardless of how important we thought these “values” were. In reality, the “head” concept is not simply value, or simply fact. Rather, I believe that it is one of many words and concepts wherein fact and value are “entangled” as Putnam would say.⁹ How this plays out is explored below.
Firstly, these texts are partly normative of authority, because they are descriptive of a natural social, cultural, physical, and intellectual hierarchy. Why would this be the case? Husbands were in a position to “save” their wives from a position of social ignominy, legal isolation, and economic destitution. This is the reason that Paul can draw an analogy between the Christ-church relationship and the husband-wife relationship in Ephesians 5. This analogy would have had greater resonance in the Ephesian context than it does in our own, and even when Christ is referred to as the saviour¹⁰ of the church we can understand that likewise, the husbands in Ephesus were in these (different, and limited) senses “saving” their wives. The “head” metaphor resonates in both of the senses mentioned in the previous section (source of life and authority). The husband was the source of life for the wife, because without the husband, the wife had no place in society. The husband also worked and brought in the income in the majority of cases. As such it was somewhat natural for a leadership role to be associated with the husband. Where should they live? In what sort of house? What should they eat? These are conditional on the husband’s place of work and income. There would also be a sense of wrongness in a wife exercising authority over her husband, when her husband provided for her in such an absolute way. I suspect that Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 2:12¹¹ should be read in a tone of at least mild outrage for this reason.
It is not appropriate, however, to entirely justify a husband having authority over his wife by appealing to these cultural realities, however. If we were to imagine in a vacuum a relationship in which one party provided for the other, we could not necessarily conclude that complete authority was normative. This would tilt too far towards a “might makes right” ideology, since if one extends their hand in provision, one also retains the power to withdraw it. Paul does not even need to imply that this authority is normative in Ephesus. I made that point in the previous paragraph because it helps to see why Paul might not wish to critique the cultural reality of “headship” in Ephesus. However, Paul’s objective is really to describe what husbands and wives should do in the light of the relationships they actually have, and to do this he provides a brief description of these relationships - the husband is the head of the wife. So, what can we conclude? Paul’s statement about the husband being the head of the wife is primarily descriptive, with both normative and non-normative elements with respect to the gender power/provision balance in that time and place.
Some might contend that I am overcomplicating things. Isn’t it possible that the passage aims to be normative as a first priority, and just so happens to also be descriptive? To answer this question, we must discuss how Paul conveys his points and the flow of his argument. He does not justify his statement. He also does not critique it. This suggests that to him, the statement is self-evident. It is an observation, and not the main point of the passage (the main point is how a husband enacts this headship). Therefore it makes the most sense to conclude that he is primarily describing the reality that the husband is the source of life and the authority over the wife, and that his main objective is to teach about how a Christian might live in light of this reality.¹²
False dichotomies: the spiritual and civil kingdoms
The third false dichotomy is the existence of the civil and spiritual kingdoms.¹³ Both kingdoms coexist. One is fallen and the other is not. We must not pretend that there is only the civil kingdom, or we will co-opt Christianity into the state. We must not believe that there is only the spiritual kingdom, or we will neglect the importance of history and culture for our understanding of Christianity. If we force ourselves to choose, it may not matter which one we say we choose. We don’t purely collapse into one or the other kingdom; the collapse is more likely to be somewhere in between - and this inevitably pollutes our understanding of the spiritual kingdom. Both Calvin and Luther see headship and essential equality as belonging to two separate kingdoms. There is no male or female in Christ (spiritual kingdom). However, the husband is the head of the wife with respect to the civil kingdom, which we must respect.¹⁴ (With respect to men and women, Calvin, Luther and Paul saw a different world to the one we currently see, begging the question of what we are now to associate with the civil kingdom as it currently stands).
Primogeniture is one example of the civil kingdom. The Civil kingdom is informed by “natural law” or the natural logic of things. Primogeniture is described in the bible, and has its own natural logic, carrying some degree of normativity. Why would the parents give their estate and entrust the resources accompanying their family line to their youngest and therefore most inexperienced child? As an oldest child myself, I can say (free from bias) that there is a natural logic to giving the eldest child the inheritance.¹⁵ A natural logic similar to primogeniture operates in the creation story.¹⁶ God created Adam, and told him directly that he would surely die if he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve was created later, and we don’t know how, but she also knew that she would surely die if she ate the fruit. But we don’t know how she found the information out. It is likely that Adam told her. If this was the case, she did not have the knowledge in the same sense that Adam had it, having the memory of being told by God himself not to eat of the fruit. Paul references this account in 1 Timothy 2:13-14. He says that Adam was “formed” first, and it was Eve that was deceived. Perhaps Adam being “formed” first contributed to Eve’s being deceived.¹⁷ Another way of understanding this is that Adam was more fully formed¹⁸; but how could this be if they were both “one flesh”? Eve likely didn’t understand God’s prohibition with the full force that Adam did. This causal relationship also makes sense of the Ephesian situation and Paul’s perspective on it, since women in Greece did not have the education men did, meaning they were vulnerable to being deceived.¹⁹ The connection between learning and deception is brought together again in 2 Timothy 3:6-7 in an almost heartbreaking description of what was happening: “For among them are those who worm their way into households and deceive gullible women overwhelmed by sins and led astray by a variety of passions, 7 always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” These women were not fully “formed” in the sense that the men were. If women were to learn from men, it was again because men were by default the “firstborn”, the “head”, the historical leaders, women lagging behind in power and education due to natural, cultural factors.²⁰ Do we say that men will always be the head? Or is this to confuse the spiritual and civil kingdoms - to take what is civil, and say that it must be spiritual - or to take what is descriptive for the time, and say that it must be normative for all time?
The main question
Should we join John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Claire Smith and others to say that there is a “Creation order” which Paul is referring to in 1 Timothy 2 and Ephesians 5? Is “headship” in marriage a timeless concept? Did God create a husband to lead and a wife to help? There is an alternative reading to these passages in which the original readers/hearers received the “plain meaning” of the texts, and we (as is often the case) are too far removed culturally for this meaning to be “plain”. This cultural remove is why it was necessary to lay out these false dichotomies and to engage in such nuance. The main contention is that in Greece women were relatively stifled compared to men, and as a result in the Ephesian context were spiritually immature and prone to being deceived by opportunistic false teachers. Paul’s decision on that basis was to instruct wives to learn, and husbands to use their position of influence to help the wives to grow spiritually. It should become clear from reading these passages that applying them in perpetuity is quite strained.
A reading of these passages in which the meaning does not change is ultimately a strange one. Beginning with Ephesians, it is clear that Christ remains the saviour of the church. This is an enduring truth, but it does not follow that the comparison to husbands and wives endures in every aspect. Christ’s work on our behalf radically reshapes every aspect of our lives, and it is only natural that Paul would use Christ as a model in the Ephesian context. But the way that it is applied suggests a time-bound application. Due to the aspects of Christ’s relationship to the church that are highlighted in Ephesians 5, it is implied that husbands are to have a role in bringing their wife to a position of greater purity and spiritual maturity. This is a one way relationship that is best understood in the specific context. Likewise, 1 Timothy 2: 11-14 strains at a universal reading. According to the “creation order” view, Adam’s being created first indicates that he was created as leader. Additionally, we should say that if the creation story highlights a universal truth, then women are more easily deceived. We cannot just say the point about Adam is universal but the point about Eve is contextual. Both must be universal truths - and if this is the case, then they would appear at first glance to support each other. But Paul disregards the idea that men are more easily corrupted (Adam stood by and thus also sinned). So we cannot say that Adam is created as a better leader because of his greater aptitude. Why would Paul expect men to be able to teach their wives anything if the Genesis story is meant to convey universal attributes of men and women? And how can complementarians hope to see men behaving in a new way to Adam? If this is Christ’s redemptive work, why does it not apply to women’s propensity to be deceived? We see a double standard where men are permanently defined by their potential for success, and women are permanently defined by their susceptibility to failure. Women are “always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth” not only in the timeline of Paul’s observations, but for all time. Rather than Paul’s drawing this one sided gender essentialism out of Genesis, he may be drawing out the idea that being formed first has certain advantages, and applying this to the Greek, particularly Ephesian, context.
Conclusion
What can we take away from these passages about men and women that can help us today? We must allow Paul’s pastoralism to tug at the heart-strings. He candidly pointed out that these women were to seek marriage rather than to be idle and gossip. But even those who were married were being deceived. What was happening to these Ephesian women? Greek society liked to shut women out of the schools and shut them in the home. They were isolated, and in Paul’s surprisingly tender words had become “overwhelmed” by sins and passions. To the husbands of these same women Paul said the following: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.” Paul did not give up on the idea of their learning, instructing them to learn in quietness and instructing husbands to give themselves for their wives in order to best care for them. It must be emphasised that the situation Paul is addressing involved women who were “gullible” because of their lack of formation and their spiritual immaturity. This is an exhortation towards patience, grace, and an outpouring of love towards such people.
There is something to the idea that women are different from men. What does it mean for women to be (or to have been) the “weaker vessel”²¹ as Peter termed it? If men are on average stronger than women, how deeply does that knowledge permeate to our fears, and the actions we take to avoid harm? There is a joy in a wife being able to relax walking down the street with her husband who loves her, for once being able to put aside these fears. There is a natural goodness in acknowledging that women are more vulnerable when bearing children, and preferring men to go to the front line. If we subscribe to the narrative that men and women are psychologically the same, we risk losing sight of any uniqueness or complementarity stemming from physiology to psychology. However, the contributions of nature and nurture remain complex and can seem impossible to disentangle. A handful of passages referencing gender in the bible are not enough to disentangle these threads, since our nature and nurture were well and truly at play in both the Ancient Near East and Ancient Greece, and the texts do not operate in a vacuum. We know that both men and women are called to strength and compassion, to emulate a God who is strong and compassionate. To my mind, gender-based types pale in comparison to these general exhortations. I struggle to believe that the 1 Timothy 2:11-15 mandates a universal ban on women preaching, given everything that I have outlined in this piece. A specific question remains; should husbands “lead” their wives? Perhaps, sometimes, wives will want to be led! Perhaps, at other times, wives will need direction. Additionally, however, I have no doubt that at times, wives will need to be as direct as Abigail in the context of a husband’s sin.²² Is this a directive? Is that too authoritative? Is it too domineering? We have our own cultural background, which gives rise to certain moral intuitions, whether progressive or conservative. Paul’s letters to the ancient Greek churches do not, I believe, give rise to a moral dilemma wherein we feel compelled to stifle the conscience or even “quench the Spirit” to put it more strongly - no matter the extent to which we are influenced by valid concerns arising from conservative or progressive narratives. I believe that understanding these passages will allow us to see how Paul pastorally saw into the cultural situation of his time, and beautifully captured ways of being that allowed a Christian expression in light of the gendered realities present then. Similarly, we should allow both a conservative and a progressive narrative to shape our understanding of gender, acknowledging the ways in which both of them articulate valid concerns arising in our society. I further hope that Paul’s pastoral nature can give us grace in this time of contestation, as we point each other back to the sword of Christ and the grace of Christ.
Thank you to Johnson Wang and Hung Nguyen for the interesting and thoughtful conversations which have motivated and critiqued this piece.
Notes
1. Johnson Wang
2. https://www.thecollector.com/athenian-women-in-ancient-greece/
3. https://rfkclassics.blogspot.com/2021/11/aspasia-of-miletus.html
4. Women’s education, knowledge and competence in Ancient Greece - Lada Stevanovic
5. The Body in Question: Metaphor and meaning in the interpretation of Ephesians 5:21-33 (chapter 5)
6. 1 Corinthians 11 4-5a
7. 1 Corinthians 11:8
8. The language of authority in verse 10 is arguably better translated as the woman’s own right to choose (implying that she would choose a head covering to protect herself from unwanted attention - see https://margmowczko.com/women-authority-exousia-subordination-1-corinthians-11-10/).
9. The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays - Hilary Putnam
10. Ephesians 5:23
11. “I do not permit a wife to have authority over a husband” is a translation that the NIV offers in the margins instead of the “woman/man” version. This is more compelling to me since Paul shifts from women and men (previous verses) to “a woman” and “a man” (here) and the Greek words for “woman” and “man” can also be translated “husband” and “wife.” Paul also goes on to reference Adam and Eve who are singular people in the biblical narrative, although they do represent men and women in general sometimes. Paul interweaves this with references back to the “woman” and “man” or “husband” and “wife”; the latter making sense of the reference to the primordial couple. See Michael Bird’s youtube video on this: “Challenging Mike Winger on Paul, Artemis, and Women in the Church”
12. It can be objected that Paul is “grounding” this exact description of the husband and wife’s relationship in eternal norm by relating it to the eternal “mystery” of Christ and the church. However, it is entirely likely that Paul is using his observations on a husband/wife relationship to teach us about how Christ relates to the church; and that the latter relationship is the mystery. In terms of how we can experience a taste of this reality, please see the conclusion.
13. This paragraph relies heavily on the following article: A historian looks at 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (J. G. Brown)
14. A historian looks at 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (J. G. Brown)
15. This is not a universal logic, but there are general advantages to giving the firstborn the inheritance. The logical of primogeniture in terms of gender, unitary inheritance, and the firstborn is discussed extensively here: Darwin and the puzzle of primogeniture (Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Debra S. Judge)
16. Why am I using the words “natural logic” when it comes to a deliberate, intentional creation of God? We can tend to assume that God created Adam first deliberately in order to establish Adam as the leader, for all time, but this is really an interpretation of Paul, not Genesis, which ascribes no such leadership role to Adam. Furthermore, as we will see in this analysis, neither does a careful reading of Paul. Why did God create Adam and Eve separately then? Perhaps to illustrate the need for relationship - “it is not good for the man to be alone.” It is widely known that attention to the Hebrew words “rib” and “helper” further diminishes confidence in the idea of creation order.
17. It could be that these are two separate statements and that there is no causal link between them. In this case Paul is most likely implying that there is a natural authority given to Adam (and therefore husbands) because he was created first, and separately, a natural tendency for Eve to be deceived. This is axiomatic and therefore universal. However, this does not adequately connect to the issue at hand, involves sweeping statements with no justification, contradicts Paul’s choices to involve women in other types of ministry, and ignores the problems that Adam’s leadership poses, namely that of passivity and corruption.
18. Some might argue that there is no need to move beyond the idea of physical formation. Psalm 139 presents a challenge to this line of thought. David says “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” But the context of this discussion of physical formation is a spiritual and moral knowing: “Lord, you have searched me and known me” and “Where can I flee from your presence?” This physical formation entails an intimate knowing and also accountability to God. In this case, the idea of physical formation has associated moral and spiritual elements. In addition, Adam’s exultation “This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” clearly imbues the physical with great emotional and relational meaning. Paul thinks it is important that Adam was formed first. I think given the context, it is plausible for Paul to think that “formation” itself refers to more than just something physical.
19. As some have argued, this is not a purely intellectual issue, but also a moral issue. This is true, as Paul demonstrates in 2 Timothy 3:6-7. But spiritual/moral formation goes hand in hand with the knowledge of God. As Paul says in Romans 10:14: "How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher?”
20. This sociological understanding of formation is also persuasive. Male philoptary and patrilocality, combined with greater physical strength of men, have reinforced power in the hands of men and created patrilineage. This is self-reinforcing, since if women were to receive the inheritance, the family line is endangered since the husband is more likely to be able to take control of it. (See Darwin and the puzzle of primogeniture (Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Debra S. Judge). Men have had advantages over physical, and therefore also later intellectual work because of greater physical strength and the absence of vulnerability associated with childbearing. This has led over time to a concentration of power in the hands of men.
21. 1 Peter 3:7
22. 1 Samuel 25
