What is the difference between men and women? What does it mean to be a man or to be a woman?
Hi, I’m Fred Zaspel, executive editor here at Books At a Glance, and we’re talking to Owen Strachan again, co-author with Gavin Peacock of the new book, The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them. We talked to him last week and we ran out of time so he has come back to us again and we’re going to finish our discussion. Owen, would you like to summarize what we’ve said so far? We’ve talked about what complementarity is and what it means to be a man and a woman. Can you give us a 30 second version of that?
Strachan:
Absolutely. What I was trying to say was that basically that men are called to positions of leadership in the home and the church and you really have women in Scripture called to welcome that leadership and affirm it and gladly follow it. Of course there’s a certain structure to following that manly leadership that we can talk about and probe here, but basically in Christ men and women are called to become what they were created to be. And that does not mean throwing off any kind of role or given identity, it means embracing it. Of course we note that all of this is rooted in the equality of the image of God and also equality through the gospel of grace. So that’s important to note as well.
Zaspel:
You were talking about the essence of manhood, the essence of womanhood and the question occurred to me, it often comes up, to using the word completed or completeness. Adam was created, it was not good that he was alone. Is there a sense in which the woman completes the man in that sense and how does that relate to all of this?
Strachan:
Yes, I would pick up on that, Fred, by going to how Genesis 2 has the Lord himself saying something that is very strong in the pre-fall world that it is not good for the man to be alone. That is the only thing that Scripture indicates was not good about the pre-fall creation was man’s aloneness. So the Lord clearly has in mind a complementary design for manhood and womanhood. He doesn’t create man to be a Lone Ranger and find full satisfaction in himself, he creates the man for the purpose of covenant relationship and this is what, in God’s economy, most men are called to enter – this relationship of marriage to one woman that is lifelong and pursued by the power of God for the glory of God.
This is especially important for us today. I just saw the Washington Post and other outlets commenting on new data that shows that there are more men apparently living with their parents then living with a romantic partner. I believe that was the language that was used, so not just a wife but a girlfriend or whatever. And that shows us that men today, as they had throughout history but perhaps in special measure today, are struggling to recognize both culturally and within the church, I might add, that marriage is this tremendous blessing. And much as our culture has trained us to see marriage as a bad state to enter, shackles on our feet, or something like that, marriage in God’s mind is what will bring a shower of blessing.
Zaspel:
In our last part of the interview you mentioned in broad terms that women are called to submit to the man in the home and also women are called to submit to men in the church. Just how broad do you mean that?
Strachan:
That’s an important question and we don’t mean that all women should submit to all men in the sense of the marital relationship. A wife submits to her husband and she does not submit to other men in that way. In the context of the local church women are called to submit to the leadership of those men who are called by God to shepherd the flock of God. And of course that’s something every Christian is called to do. We are all called to submit to our elders in so far as they are following Christ in a Hebrews 13 sense so that’s not a special burden placed on women. But the distinction we need to draw is that women are called to embrace godly leadership of elders in a church.
We want to make very clear that there is this supporting role that is given to women. Women, for example, do not provide, according to 1 Timothy 2, the teaching and leadership of the mixed group, the whole church. Women are very much called per Titus 2 to teach other women. So it’s not accurate to say that all women submit to all men. My wife does not need to submit to the post office worker or even just a random guy sitting next to her a church who is a Christian. But there is a sense in which women do welcome masculine leadership in the context of the church where they find it. We want to make several things clear here that can be dicey to unpack.
Zaspel:
You emphasize that “complementarity shows us that humanity is brimming with purpose.” How is that so?
Strachan:
We are made by God. God himself forms and fashions Adam and Eve, so Gavin and I wanted to note that we are not working from a materialistic angle here when we talk about humanity. We’re not working from and a merely physical perspective and talking about the human race. We are created by Almighty God himself. In fact, Genesis 2 has Yahweh directly making the man and directly making the woman from the man, indicating her physical connection to him and even dependence upon him. So that’s really important because we are finding ourselves today in a contest of worldviews and some of the major worldviews out there have man as merely the product of chance, random forces, clashing or crashing together and eventually creating mankind.
And we want to note that God, in Scripture, makes the man and the woman directly according to his own portrait and makes them in the image of God. I mean what could be a more promising comment about humanity than that? That we bear God’s image. So that means that every person, whatever we look like, whatever our background is, whatever we might feel about ourselves psychologically, every person has basically infinite potential worth and dignity given them by God. And that does not mean a kind of business side, you know, everybody’s an All-Star, everybody gets a trophy anthropology. It does mean every person deserves to be treated with dignity and worth and is valued by God himself. There’s all sorts of things we could unpack there, Fred, for the dignity of human life, whether it’s babies in the womb or disabled persons or the elderly or all sorts of folks like that. All of us in some way need this concept of the image of God to thrive.
Zaspel:
And how does complementarity show us “what our marriages most need”?
Strachan:
What we most need as Christians, fundamentally, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We most need the good news of Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection; his triumph through his life and death and ascension. We need that every single day of our lives and our marriages. We orient ourselves around the good news of Christ. Not simply when we become a Christian, but every single day that we live. But we can’t stop there and simply say that we want to be grace focused in our marriages. We definitely do, but we also want to note that Ephesians 5 is really the Bible’s peak statement on what marriage is and is to be.
In other words, God is profoundly honored and glorified when a woman strives, by the power of the spirit, to be like the church and to submit to and follow her husband, and when a husband dies to himself over and over and in a Christ-like, self-sacrificial way seeks to lead his wife. There are going to be many dimensions of marriage where we share duties. We mourn together and we comfort one another and we forgive one another. So there’s all kinds of overlap in a Christian marriage in terms of duty and responsibility. But we also do need to note that when the apostle Paul is really exploring the cosmic purpose, the greatest significance of marriage, what he goes to are roles in marriage and calls the Ephesian Christians to live out those roles. He is still calling us to that kind of display, Fred, because when we live in a Christ-like kind of way in our homes we are doing nothing less than displaying the gospel.
Zaspel:
What’s at stake in the question? What makes it so important for us to recognize complementarity?
Strachan:
Just about the first subject taught in Scripture is what we call anthropology in theological circles. Yes, we have a doctrine of God; we have a doctrine of revelation introduced in Genesis 1 and certainly a doctrine of creation. But humanity comes as the peak of God’s creative work just before he rests. This is his masterwork. You’re not supposed to look at the Grand Canyon, contrary to the way Christians often talk, and think, “that’s the height of everything God could do.” You’re actually supposed to look at a fellow human being, 5’8” a scruff of hair or whatever, man or woman, and think, “Wow! That is incredible. God can create a living being such that that person can become walking and talking doxology.” That’s what God wants out of the human race. We’re the ones. It’s not the birds; it’s not the sea creatures; it’s not the mountains; it’s not the clouds; it’s not the sun itself that most images the glory of God. It is the human race that is created to display his glory and even sensibly know it and treasure it by the converting work of the Spirit.
All this means when we’re talking about the doctrine of humanity, we are on sacred ground. This is really important stuff. And we know from Matthew 5:18 and 19 that nothing from the law, Jesus said, has passed away. And in the older language, neither jot nor tittle. So nothing, not even a little bit of the law has passed away. So we just want to note that this doctrine of humanity, which includes this discussion of complementarity we are having, is not some kind of substandard or fourth level conversation. Evangelicals will talk that way. They will say that when we talk about the Trinity that’s really important; when we’re talking about the cross that’s super important. When we’re talking about what a man is or what a woman is and what their roles are supposed to be, well that’s maybe third order for fourth order.
At CBMW and in my ministry we have the joyful privilege of saying, “You are right about the glory of the Trinity and the cross and other doctrines but we are not in the business, and we’re not called by God to be in the business of ranking doctrine.” 20th century evangelicals did a fair bit of that and I understand why. There are some doctrines that are the burning core of our faith but nonetheless Jesus indicates, as I was saying a minute ago, that he loves all his work; he loves all his gospel; he loves the whole counsel of God. Psalm 119 says that the law of the Lord is perfect.
So what I’m trying to say in sum, Fred, is we don’t want to have a ranking system when it comes to biblical doctrines. We want to have every doctrine taught by the word of God to be cherished and lived out in a doxological way by the church of Jesus Christ. So that’s my goal in this work at CBMW, to do our very, very small part to encourage the church to see that complementarity is not a weight hung around our necks that we have to drag around for the rest of our lives and slavishly represent when we teach and preach. We wish we really didn’t have to talk about this stuff, but we do. Complementarity is a summons to joy. It’s the way that we as humans recognize the depths and the beauty of our humanity and when we are following Scripture, live out the plan of God for our lives whether married or single or whatever state we may be in.
Zaspel:
Attack another question on to the end of that. It’s related and it certainly one of the big contemporary issues today. It’s the matter of transgenderism. How do you think Christians should speak to this issue? How does the Bible address the question?
Strachan:
That’s a really important matter. Fundamentally in a cultural sense we have to recognize that transgender ideology is not its own stand-alone cog. It is the fruit of a project that seeks to re-envision our humanity such that our identity is not constituted or defined or given to us by anyone. Whether that’s God or parents or anyone else. Instead we are all involved in this kind of self-creation project where we all are impossibly unlike one another and thus we must find out who we truly are and who we truly want to be. In the biblical minds, God shows us that so much of our identity is fixed by him already. Every person has dignity and worth as we been talking about and that includes the full range of human personality and gifting and bent and temperament and all the rest. But here’s the truth – manhood and womanhood are fixed realities in Scripture. God creates a man and God creates a woman. And that’s a huge part of who you are as a human being. Evangelicals have been trained to see that as a kind of incidental fact and not really important so they don’t want to overdo in a stereotype driven way being a manly man’s man or being some sort of daughterly creating woman in the Victorian sense.
But here’s the reality – that’s actually really important stuff. To be a man or a woman constitutes a great deal of who you are. The Scripture itself recognizes that we are going to struggle because of the fall of Genesis 3 to embrace and on our God-given identity or our God-given sex. So you have in Deuteronomy 22:5, for example, a prohibition of cross-dressing. You have in the new covenant era, in 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul taking time to tell the Corinthian church in a gender-bending, Corinthian, sexually licentious culture that they need to present themselves as men or as women in distinctive ways.
And so what the Bible is telling us is that people have always struggled with gender dysphoria. People have always wanted to bend the boundaries of their sex. This is not new. This owes ultimately to human sin and is accompanied in many places by abuse or failure to have a great relationship with your same-sex parent, these sorts of things. There’s all sorts of factors. We know the ultimate cause though, and that is depravity of this instinct and so we need to be very clear that you are not going to find satisfaction fulfillment and identity in rebelling against your God-given biology. Biology is destiny. Biology is a gift of God. We may not always feel that way, we have compassion for those who don’t, but we recognize that ultimately you will be fulfilled not by rejecting God’s design, but by embracing and loving it through the power of Christ.
Zaspel:
Most people are at least vaguely familiar with complementary roles in the home and the church, but how – and it seems to me we have to be very careful here not to overstep our biblical ground – how does all this affect life outside the home and the church? Should it?
Strachan:
That’s a tough question. That’s where we get into some real gray area. I would fundamentally say I believe, as with historic complementarian conviction, that men are called to provide for their families. There’s no sense in which a man is called a ‘worker at home’ in a Titus 2:5 sense. That’s said of women who are called by the apostle Paul to bear and raise children as God enables them to do and then to make a home to his glory. We really have been trained to see that kind of life and calling as secondary and in some instances, as a culture near a domestic life, but we want to make very plain and clear, as believers, that the Bible highly esteems the work of the home. The Bible enchants the family where the culture seems to try to scrub away the natural dignity of the family.
In the biblical mind, being called to raise children and tend the home and these sorts of things is not a lesser call for lesser minds or lesser abilities. It’s actually a highly valued role. It requires skill. It requires all sorts of labor and care and hard work as Proverbs 31 shows. And so that’s really important for us to state. That doesn’t answer all of the gray area questions, Fred, which was your good question itself raises. It does say that if men are going to be men and are going to provide well, that means that they are going to have a certain identity beyond the home in society. And that means that women, as they historically did, are going to have a certain identity in the home. Things can change as kids get older and the sorts of things. I think there’s opportunity for women to do a whole range of things when the children are raised and that sort of thing and so I don’t have a problem, and many complementarians would not have a problem with women doing all sorts of things – careers, vocations, professions in that season of life, but many of us would want to say that we want men to feel the weight of that call to provision and even to leadership in their community, however they can be plugged in.
Zaspel:
What about the single Christian adult? How ought a right understanding of complementarity affect him or her?
Strachan:
I think it’s really important for us to note to single men and women of God that they are not a sub-person because of their marital status. Sometimes they feel that way. Sometimes the church has to really raise the banner for marriage and the home and the family and singles can feel left out and isolated. We have great compassion for singles who feel those things.
We want to just note that you don’t become a man when you get married. You don’t become a woman when you have kids, right? You are a man. You are a woman. Which is why I think it’s so important, and Gavin and I give attention to this in The Grand Design; it’s so important to help men and women understand who they are in the biblical mind even before marriage happens. So, if I’m training my son, for example, I’m training him out of in Ephesians 5 mindset. I want him to see himself as one who would take initiative on behalf of others and who would lead women well and put them before him. I have no idea if my five-year-old boy is going to get married. I don’t know if he’s actually going to become the head of one wife. But I do want him to become a godly man and recognize that that begins with all the choices he is making now and especially when God gives him new life in Christ and enables him to lead a godly way of life.
Zaspel:
This has always been an important subject ever since creation, but today of course it’s taken a new significance, and we’re glad for this new book. We’re talking to Owen Strachan, co-author with Gavin Peacock of the new book, The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them. We encourage you to get a copy and enjoy!
Owen, many thanks for talking to us today.
Strachan:
Thanks a lot, Fred. It’s been great talking with you.
Buy the books
The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them