Thread by @AlsoACarpenter

1/ Honestly, I think I was pretty generous to Complementarianism, especially as a movement, with the age of 40 years.

A thread:

https://twitter.com/AlsoACarpenter/status/1138151466177257472

2/ The first historical statement of this novel approach, after much research a couple years ago, was from Dr. W. Brenton Greene, early in the 20th century, though it was still noticeably entrenched in the “traditionalist view” (and it is interestingly also tied to the Trinity):

3/ “[T]he relationship of husband and wife…is such that the position of the wife is distinct from and dependent on that of the husband. This does not imply that the wife as a person is of inferior worth to her husband: in this respect there is neither male nor female; ...

4/ ... for they are both 'one in Christ Jesus.' Neither does it mean that the mission of the wife is of less importance than that of the husband. There are certain functions, moral and intellectual as well as physical, which she fulfills far better than her husband; ...

5/ ... and there are other functions of supreme necessity which only she can fulfill at all. What is meant, however, is that as there are some things of primary importance that only a wife can do; so there are other indispensable functions that only the husband ought to ...

6/ ... discharge, and chief among these is the direction of their common life. He, therefore, should be the ‘head’ of the ‘one body’ that husband wife together form. Whether we can understand it or not, such a relationship is not inconsistent with perfect equality.

7/ ... It is not in the case of the Trinity. Father, Son and Spirit are equal in power and glory. Yet the Son is second to the Father, and the Spirit is second to both the Father and the Son, as to the ‘mode of their subsistence and operation.’

8/ Whatever, therefore, the secondary position of the wife as regards her husband may imply, it need not imply even the least inferiority.” (W. B. Greene, as quoted by Boettner on the Trinity)

9/ But, according to Grudem himself, the seminal work that kicked off the modern movement was OPC minister George Knight III’s “The New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Male and Female With Special Reference to the Teaching/Ruling Functions in the Church” (1975),...

10/ ... and the larger work, The New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women(1977). In these works, Knight eschews the use of “superior” and “inferior” and presses the argument of the full equality of women and men, just as the persons of the Trinity, ...

11/ ... yet subordination of “roles” and “functions.” On 1 Cor. 11 he concludes:

“This chain of subordination with its implications is apparently given to help with the objection which some would bring to the headship of man in reference to women.”

12/ (Read it here: etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDF… )

In truth, these works sparked the trajectory that would lead to the Danvers Statement and the creation of CBMW.

13/ And let there be no further dispute, the work of Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and the CBMW was self-consciously done to supersede the “traditional view” of earlier commentators, as well as answer Egalitarian contemporaries.

14/ They write of their “new vision” in the preface to the foundational so-called “Blue Book,” Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (1991):

“Men and women simply are not sure what their roles should be. ...

15/ ... Traditional positions have not been totally satisfactory, because they have not fully answered the recent evangelical feminist arguments. Moreover, most Christians will admit that selfishness, irresponsibility, passivity, and abuse have often contaminated ‘traditional’...

16/ ...patterns of how men and women relate to each other.” (p. xiv)

“… We want to help Christians recover a noble vision of manhood and womanhood as God created them to be —hence the main title, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

17/ Our vision is not entirely the same as ‘a traditional view.’ We affirm that the evangelical feminist movement has pointed out many selfish and hurtful practices that have previously gone unquestioned.

18/ But we hope that this new vision—a vision of Biblical ‘complementarity’—will both correct the previous mistakes and avoid the opposite mistakes that come from the feminist blurring of God-given sexual distinctions. ...

19/ … If one word must be used to describe our position, we prefer the term complementarian, since it suggests both equality and beneficial differences between men and women. We are uncomfortable with the term ‘traditionalist’ because it implies an unwillingness to let ...

20/ ...Scripture challenge traditional patterns of behavior, and we certainly reject the term ‘hierarchicalist’ because it overemphasizes structured authority while giving no suggestion of equality or the beauty of mutual interdependence.” (p. xv)

21/ (And, of course, even the term “Complementarianism” was already in use by evangelical egalitarians, as Giles has adequately proven.)

22/ The fact of the matter is, “Complementarianism” may be God’s own eternal truth, but it is a matter of historical fact that it's a new approach and new system of interpretation that markedly contradicts much of the traditional, patriarchal, approaches to the relevant passages.

23/ It will not be found in Chrysostom, Aquinas, Calvin, or anyone prior to the 20th century, and was never a movement until a little over 30 years ago. Those who came before taught the natural inequality of men and women and imputed prescriptive hierarchy to the fall.

24/24 "Traditionalists" interpreted 1 Cor. 11, 14, 1 Tim. 2, etc., entirely differently than do modern Complementarians.

And those who primarily developed the new approach were quite aware of this, and we ought to be as well. It won't hurt, I promise.

*Correction: not the first, but the first that was most similar to Comp that *I* have found.