Yesterday I posted the seven pillars of egalitarianism taken from Stef Liston’s excellent book Gender Quality. So now it is time to see what he think the seven pillars of complementarianism are.

Pillar 1: Genesis 2 tells a story within a story. Adam and Eve are gloriously equal, but not interchangeable. Adam, alone in the garden, needs help that only Eve can bring. Before Eve is built from Adam, God entrusts Adam with a task and a command. This asymmetry speaks of his prominent responsibility and her unique contribution.

Pillar 2: Humanity is a household, and households need headship; someone who will answer to God for the good of the members. God appointed Adam to that role which is why he is uniquely blamed for the human predicament. The coming of the promised Christ brings hope as a New Head – One Who will crush the enemy – appears!

Pillar 3. The fall introduces us to a cursed power struggle between men and women. Women will struggle with all manner of warped desires towards men and men will use their superior physical strength to dominate women. The harmony is over – blame and shame are now the name of the game.

Pillar 4. Jesus shows us what true headship is like in the way that He leads generally, and very specifically in the way that He treats women. He values, honours, befriends, invests in and gladly receives from women. His appointment of the 12 as apostles is evidence that representative responsibility for His new movement was to rest with certain men; Jesus’ undoing of the curse did not involve Him doing away with male headship.

Pillar 5. The notion of headship does not disappear in the new community; Paul is clear that God is the head of Christ and husbands are the heads of wives. It’s not something to avoid but something to embrace and something that exists, in some mysterious way, even between the Father and Jesus!

Pillar 6. The way the early church is organised points to local churches overseen by male elders. The qualifications for elders that we find in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1 are aimed explicitly at men and these men in their leadership as under-shepherds are to represent something of Jesus, who is non-coincidentally both a man and the Chief Shepherd – the True Head of God’s household.

Pillar 7. The relationship between husbands and wives is bigger than itself and is telling the transcendent story of Jesus and the church (Ephesians 5). Marriage is about something more than equality and points to this heavenly relationship in a way that relational dynamics of symmetrical interchangeability will never manage to do.

What do you think?