In his Genesis Commentary, Martin Luther recognizes that there are three great estates: the family, the Church, and the state.1 God established each of these estates to channel creational goods to his creatures. Luther terms these primal and universal institutions of human life the “three estates” (status, ordines, regimina, stände). Later Lutherans, following the early-nineteenth century theologian Adolf von Harless, began calling them the “Orders of Creation” (schöpfungsordnung).2 Other modern theologians, however, divided the estates somewhat differently. When economic production split from the home during the industrial revolution, many Lutherans (including Dietrich Bonhoeffer) designated the “economy” as its own separate order.3
For Luther, the most primal Order of Creation is the Church, since it began when God gave Adam the Word before he had created Eve.4 This being said, it could be argued that there is no real estate of the Church until Adam could preach to Eve. For this reason, we will begin with the Order of the Family.5 The discussion below will provide an opportunity to flesh out many of the issues regarding the theology of gender as well as marriage and the family.
The Purpose of Marriage
In Eden, God established marriage for the propagation of the human race in order to fulfill the mandate of creation. Bearing and raising children was part of primal humans’ priestly calling. As John Walton notes, the first couple would be able to cultivate more and more land as they had more children. Eventually, the first family could have expanded the Garden until the garden-temple enveloped the whole of creation.6
In the second century, biblical teaching about the Trinity very quickly degenerated into the heresy of Subordinationism. The Subordinationist heresy held that the Son and the Spirit are inferior to the Father. Ante-Nicene Fathers held this view partially due to their over reliance on contemporary Platonic metaphysics. Middle Platonists believed that held that any act of self-communication entailed tragic degeneracy. In Middle Platonism, the world of sense was an inferior copy of the forms in the eternal divine mind. Not surprisingly, Christians influenced by Middle Platonism began claiming the Son was an inferior copy of the Father.
Confusing the Economic and Immanent Trinity
Catherine LaCugna suggests that the failure of Ante-Nicene theologians to make a clear distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity might also have contributed to the rise of Subordinationism.1 For those unfamiliar, the “immanent Trinity” refers to God in himself apart from his missions of creation and redemption. The “economic Trinity” refers to the Trinity as God acts in time in order to redeem humanity in the economy of salvation.2 In the immanent Trinity, all persons are co-equal and co-eternal. There is no subordination whatsoever. Each person fully and co-equally embodies the divine substance (Jn. 1:1, Philip. 2:6, Heb. 1:2-3).
Nevertheless, in time, the Son and the Spirit voluntarily take on missions to accomplish the Father’s bidding. Jesus speaks throughout the Gospels of his obedience to the Father and his subordination to the Father (Lk. 22:42, Jn. 4:34, 8:29, 14:31). In time, the Son and the Father also send the Spirit (Lk 24:49, Jn. 14:16).3
Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease
Part III: The Second Part of Our Epic Critique
Making of Biblical Womanhood presents several convincing historical arguments that deconstruct the assumed uniformity of biblical womanhood throughout the church’s history, but Barr falters when attempting to address modern controversies of the twentieth century. Barr’s conclusion that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy “became important because it provided a way to push women out of the pulpit” may well be true.1 Barr does show evidence of correlation. But she did not present enough evidence to convince us that this was in fact a case of causation, that inerrancy became important primarilybecause it served as a helpful item in the patriarchal toolkit and not merely that promotion of inerrancy and the solidification of “biblical womanhood” among evangelicals happened to occur around the same time. We suspect Barr is correct, but we would have liked to have seen more evidence.
Additionally, Barr’s argument regarding inerrancy is built around an insufficiently nuanced doctrine of inerrancy. One way to think about the doctrine of inerrancy is to make it the foundation of one’s belief system. This is common among both fundamentalists and evangelicals. According to this line of thinking, Christians believe in the Bible because it is inerrant. Since the Bible is inerrant, Christians believe everything it says about Jesus and can trust Him. Therefore, if inerrancy is undermined, by, for example, questioning Paul’s directives regarding women, all of Christianity comes crashing down. A better, and we would argue more biblical, approach is to begin with Christ. We believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. His divine authority then leads us to trust His authorized Scriptures completely.2 In this way, inerrancy flows from belief in Christ, rather than belief in Christ resting precariously on inerrancy.
Unfortunately, this dismissal of inerrancy as a tool of the patriarchy leaves Barr vulnerable to the argument that she rejects complementarianism because she rejects the authority of Scripture, which would be an unfair characterization of her work. In an earlier chapter, for example, she invites the reader to reexamine Paul’s writing on women by way of cultural and historical context, whereas someone less committed to the veracity of Scripture might either argue for non-Pauline authorship or blatant rejection of difficult passages. However, despite her problematic approach to inerrancy, Barr’s broader point that inerrancy has been weaponized against women has validity. Indeed, literalist readings of 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14 are often used a litmus test for biblical faithfulness, whereas other Pauline texts that are not directed specifically at women rarely receive the same sort of rigid application.
Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease
Part II: The First Part of Our Epic Critique
Barr’s real contribution in The Making of Biblical Womanhoodis to finally make scholarship detailing the historical development of the threads constituting biblical womanhood accessible to the public. Her main argument that biblical womanhood, which tells women they must be domestic, housebound, and married mothers at the expense of other vocations is important and prophetic. As such, her book deserves to be widely read throughout the Church. She demonstrates that the way we often read even the Bible through a patriarchal lens has led the Church to discount the significance of named women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, and Junia. Moreover, the chapters on the history of women in the Church during the Middle Ages and Reformation period are alone worth the cost of admission. Her chapter on the Reformation, for example, helps explain why Katharina von Bora Luther died impoverished. Her tragedy extended beyond an individual failure on the part of the Church. Rather, it was a product of a newly constructed economic system that limited women’s opportunities outside the home.
People! Go read this book!
The Making of Biblical Womanhood is a tour de force, but there are also spots where Barr could strengthen her historical arguments and where we, as confessional Lutherans, disagree with her theological conclusions. Again, historically speaking, Barr’s argument that “biblical womanhood” is essentially an evangelical version of the patriarchal cult of domesticity is accurate. There is nothing in the Bible that confines women to the domestic sphere and subordinates them to all men in all contexts. As the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) noted in 2009:1
"The Bible’s clear direction regarding responsible male leadership in the home and male ordination to pastoral ministry may not be assumed to mean that only men can exercise any kind of leadership or authority in home, church, or society. Some view this as an inconsistency, but it is not. In Baptism every believer is called to service in his or her vocations within the various spheres of life. The body of Christ requires that its individual members exercise the wide variety of their gifts, whether that individual is male or female (1 Cor 12:7).... Such leadership of women is not inconsistent with Scriptural teaching. On the contrary, it exists in the very context of our church’s life and teaching which upholds and promulgates the divinely ordered responsibility of pastors and husbands. When women serve in this way they are enhancing the work of the priesthood of all believers, serving as members of the body of Christ, and not usurping pastoral authority or violating the 'order of creation.' Scripture provides numerous examples of such service, for instance Priscilla’s instruction of Apollos (Acts 18:26) or the teaching Timothy received from his mother and grandmother (2 Tim 1:5)."2
However, this is not to say that we support approach Barr’s exegesis uncritically. She does not adequately address the distinction between biblical texts dealing with the vertical relationship between humans and God and those addressing the horizontal relationships between humans and other humans.3 For example, Galatians 3:26-29 relates to the vertical relationship between believers and God in Christ. But the other passages, such as those in 1 Corinthians 14, deal with horizontal relations within the Church or between spouses. Others, such as Ephesians 5, may address both.
Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease
Part I: Here’s What’s In This Book
Beth Allison Barr’s book is one of a bevy of new books attempting to deconstruct (white) patriarchy in American evangelicalism hot on the heels of the #metoo movement and anti-racism protests of 2020. As an evangelical Baptist with a high view of Scripture, Barr grew up in the world of biblical womanhood. In contrast, neither of us grew up with complementarianism, although as adults we have become more conscious of the gendered ideals of “biblical womanhood” promoted within our own corner of Christianity.
The categories of complementarian and egalitarian are often assumed to be the only two interpretive lenses available when considering of the role of women in the church: denominations that ordain women are “egalitarian” and those that do not are “complementarian.” However, these categories do not simply address whether or not women may be pastors, or if men and women are interchangeable. Complementarianism packages the distinctions between men and women into a broader cultural and social hierarchy—biblical man/womanhood—governing gendered roles in church, family, and society. Barr’s experiences with complementarianism, including biblical womanhood, clashed with her scholarly training, causing her to wonder, is biblical womanhood actually biblical? Did God ordain patriarchy? Does Jesus want women to live in “complementary” marriages under male headship? Eventually, the “evidence” showed her “how Christian patriarchy was built, stone by stone, throughout the centuries, [and as a result] arguments for women’s subordination reflect historical circumstances more than the face of God.”1 As an historian and a youth pastor’s wife, Barr is now on a mission to get the word out that biblical womanhood is far from biblical.2
