Ch 3 The Gender Equation in Our Theology

This chapter is pivotal for the study of gender and will distinguish what is essential for both our theology and practice. As Jesus made definitive in the above statement for his followers’ theology and practice, the measure of our person we give and thus use in the theological task will be the measure we get in our gender equation—nothing more, even though we have conviction that we do.

All Christians from all walks of life (at whatever age) who are trying to make sense of what they believe about God and their everyday life of faith are engaged in ‘the theological task’—a task often mistakenly ascribed to only church pastors or academic folks. Now set this reality into the big picture of God’s global church, which is more diverse and complex than in any other period of Christian history due to globalization. With the shift of the center of Christianity from the Global North to the Global South, Western Christianity’s theological dominance is called into question, whether as the byproduct of worldwide missions, or due to postmodernism’s breaking down of metanarratives.

The result is the emergence of a wide diversity of theological voices, causing no little consternation among white male Christian leaders and academics, with some digging in of the heels to preserve “biblical” (read their) viewpoints. But diversity indeed raises legitimate concerns and questions about how we are to understand the one true God, and God’s design and purpose for us in this life. Whose interpretation of Scripture should we listen to? How do we know what God is really saying? Does God speak through such diversity that can end up being contradictory? Doesn’t diversity in theology make impossible the idea of becoming ‘one’ as Jesus prayed for (Jn 17:11,21-23)?

Antecedent to these questions is the issue of whether God does indeed speak. Evangelicals, of course, assume that the Word of God is the primary authority, though they vary in emphasis on either ‘the words of God’ or ‘the words from God’. The words of God have been routinely transposed to merely referential language, which becomes about the transmission of information about God that becomes definitive for our theological task. The words from God, however, are distinguished only in God’s relational language, which signify the relational context and process of God’s communication to human persons—communication not about mere information but for the primacy of relationship together on the integral basis of God’s relational terms (e.g. as signified by God’s law). This basis of communication was challenged in the primordial garden, in which persons pursued the question “Did God really say that?” in their theological task. Given that those words from God were communicated, the focus then switched to “Well, then, what did God mean by those words?” This subtly opened the door to speculation in the theological task and the redefining of God’s words, whereby persons began speaking for God while using the words of God. And this theological engagement has evolved distinctly in adaptations of the gender equation.

The related questions pertinent to this study on gender are: How do we distinguish God’s voice from all the divergent voices and diversity of interpretations of Scripture regarding gender and gender relations—distinguished from the adaptation in the prevailing gender equation(s) that currently pervades the church, including egalitarian and complementarian versions? How do the workings of human biases in the theological task figure in all this? This chapter focuses on these questions from the position that God must speak for himself. And since the most compelling communicator of God is God himself, our examination of the gender equation in our theology must unfold with Jesus’ life, his words to us, and his relational involvement with particular women and men. No less than Jesus is the hermeneutical key to understanding and knowing the whole of God, the Trinity, which integrally also illuminates his whole person as the epistemological, functional, and relational keys for all life.[1] Furthermore, the Spirit is here to help us hear him in depth beyond human limits (Jn 16:13-14; 1 Cor 2:9-13). This examination also must become part of our ongoing journey (as individuals and corporately as church family) in the defining relationship of following Jesus, and not be undertaken merely as an intellectual pursuit so we can be right (and the other “side” wrong). Unavoidably, therefore, this journey centers on our own theological anthropology, which for all of us requires some chastening and correction as we engage this theological task.

During his earthly life, Jesus embodied the whole and uncommon (whole-ly) God—God’s being, nature, and involvement (all of which compose God’s glory)—for face-to-face relationship together (e.g. Jn 1:14,18; 2 Cor 4:6).[2] Jesus also embodied in his humanness the whole and uncommon theological anthropology (human ontology and function) necessary for the human person’s reciprocal response to be compatible with God’s whole-ly presence, and congruent with God’s vulnerable relational involvement with us. That is to say, “the Word became flesh” in historic relational terms, and only on this uncommon relational basis could persons receive and make significant connection with the Word (Jn 1:10-14). Therefore, on the Word’s terms, the vast majority who encountered Jesus didn’t make the necessary shift from the common to make relational connection necessary for their wholeness (cf. Mt 7:22-23); but the minority who did make the shift experienced transformation to wholeness that’s available to all of us (as in 2 Cor 3:18)—even now as we continue in this study.

Yet, for Jesus, how his followers would ‘see’ and also ‘hear’ was a critical issue that is addressed in all four Gospels—indeed throughout both Testaments. Just how vital ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ are for any of us who follow Jesus is summarized in the following:

These are the qualitative relational terms embodied by Jesus as the hermeneutical key for the relational epistemic process to the whole. God’s terms are clearly definitive, and thus irreducible and nonnegotiable, which is why the Father made it the key imperative: “Listen to my Son” (Mt 17:5). And why Jesus makes it the relational imperative: “Pay attention to how you listen” (Lk 8:18) and “Pay attention to what you hear; the level of relational involvement you give will be the extent of reciprocal relationship together you get” (Mk 4:24), and then “Follow me.” The imperative in Mark 4:24 needs to be integrated with Luke 10:21. The “measure” (metron) we give and get that Jesus refers to involves our perceptual-interpretive framework that we use, which determines (measures, limits) the level of participation in the epistemic process for God’s self-disclosures. The above difference in frameworks signified by the child-person and the wise and learned [stated in Lk 10:21] is clearly made definitive by Jesus for “the level of relational involvement you give will be the extent of reciprocal relationship you get, both in the relational epistemic process and in relationship together”—for either a relational outcome or relational consequence (Mk 4:24-25). Therefore, the relational context and process—that Jesus embodied for our participation in the relational epistemic process to the whole of God, God’s whole and our wholeness—cannot be diminished or minimalized by human shaping and construction without the loss of whole knowledge and understanding, as well as what it means to be whole. Nothing less and no substitutes are the irreducible and nonnegotiable terms the whole of God embodied.[3]

Thus, just as Jesus responded to two future disciples who asked Jesus where he was staying, “Come and see” (Jn 1:39), he invites us to ‘come and see’ what’s ahead for us together. May our journey into these next chapters encourage you, and even challenge you wherever you are in your journey with the Trinity. Part of this journey is to practice Jesus’ paradigm for our reciprocal involvement in the process, as paraphrased above: “the level of relational involvement you give will be the extent of reciprocal relationship together you get” (Mk 4:24), and then “Follow me.” Lead the way, whole-ly Spirit.

Facing all Christians today is the global reality routinely ignored: The diversity in theology is due to diversity of human biases, not due to the diverse meaning of the words from God. All of us have biases (whether you believe it or not), which have been shaped by our human contexts such as family, church, community, schools, culture (e.g. news, TV, movies, music, and social media), and society—as well as our experiences. These biases become embedded in our brains by repeated input and reinforcement through messages we hear, from what we observe, and from what we experience in everyday life. Our biases become so firmly entrenched that they feel as if they are absolute objective truth. That is, our brains become wired in patterns consonant with our bias, which the brain would interpret as normal (or natural) whereas dissonance would be abnormal (unnatural).

This leads us to our common susceptibility to confirmation bias, which functions like a filter for what we see, read, and hear. For example, when we read and hear a variety of news reports, our bias-filter focuses our attention on what supports our perspectives, and it subtly filters out (ignores or conveniently misses) whatever doesn’t confirm our beliefs and values. This connection between bias and perception is important to understand, as together they form our perceptual-interpretive framework and lens for processing all input. Furthermore, we tend to feel connected on a deep level to others who share the same biases and viewpoints. When confirmation bias becomes the glue for a group of persons, it becomes further reinforced, especially when that group feels threatened; then we have coalition instinct (or coalition psychology), which accounts for the increasingly vitriolic tribalism in the U.S. of “I’m right and you’re wrong” divisiveness over the very identity of the U.S.[4]

A recent op-ed article demonstrates this point. The writer pointed out how persons can listen to the same audio clip, but hear two different words—either “laurel” or “yanny.”[5] When I first heard the audio clip on TV, I heard “laurel,” but when I listened on my computer, I heard “yanny” and my husband heard “laurel.” I could not get over the fact of our different perceptions—two differing realities.[6]

Friedman uses this meme and the resulting polarity among people on the internet to make the point that “we’re burrowed so deeply in our own beliefs it can be hard to conceptualize that there is another way of seeing [or hearing] the world.” She laments about our “modern tendency to turn every dilemma into a binary—yes-or-no, good-bad—debate. As she makes the connection between contrasting perceptions to the sense that ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’, the deeper issue is the connection of bias with ‘who I understand myself to be’—that is, identity.

All of this strongly suggests that gender differences also feed into this coalition instinct, more so for males than for females. That is, there’s an undeniable social dynamic about shared bias that influences even our identity based on gender. I suggest this is why the ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ dichotomy was so popular, which merely reinforces those persons who make the greatest distinctions between femininity and masculinity. The greater the distinctions from others we make, after all, the clearer one’s own identity. This distinction-making, however, has had dire consequences on our identity as God’s daughters and sons, as this chapter illuminates.

But not everyone’s biases can be right—unless we resign ourselves to diversity to allow everyone to be right and nobody wrong. Multiculturalism is important to affirm in order not to stratify human distinctions, but it cannot be the theological basis of our theology and theological anthropology, nor the primary determinant for church life and practice.

We all have biases about gender that shape our theology and biblical interpretation —that is, our view of Jesus and the Father, and interpretation of what God says in Scripture. We usually see in Scripture what we want to see or have been taught what is there, and conveniently ignore what doesn’t confirm our gender bias. Some persons believe they have no biases (like the judge I mentioned in Chap. 1). Sociologist Michael Kimmel observes that inequality of genders (certainly a bias) “is almost always invisible to those who benefit from it—in fact, that’s one of the chief benefits.”[7] Males who believe they have no gender bias, and don’t perceive other males’ bias, are blind to it because they look from their position of privilege, not to mention the dominant pattern of their brains. This is also why many white persons in the U.S. have a hard time perceiving racism—their own, others’, and systemic racism.

Our biases, beliefs, and values shape our identity (our self-understanding), which then determines how we function in everyday life in relation to others. For Christians, there is the correct assumption that being a Christian involves change in our identity, although just what this change involves can be extremely variable, and in reality is usually an outer-in approach. There are also assumptions made as to who and what define those changes, and these assumptions need to be challenged. Jesus made conclusive that change must be redemptive, the redemptive change in which the old—the old normal, including the prevailing gender equation—must die in order for the new creation to emerge. Paul further clarified the difference between outer-in change (metaschematizō, 2 Cor 11:13-15) and inner-out change (metamorphoō, Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18).

The difficulty is that redemptive change requires vulnerability on our part to change our biases, beliefs, values, and practices because that means changing one’s self-understanding. Having to change from one’s old source or basis for identity and function is quite threatening, particularly if we don’t have a significant alternative to base our new identity on. This is especially crucial for Christians, who supposedly find our primary identity in God and in our relationship together. Much of Christian practice manifests otherwise. Consider the following:

Identity formation is not a simple process. No single identity forms the whole of a person’s identity, which can include physical, family, social, cultural, ethnic, racial, class, age and gender identities. Yet, there are primary and secondary identities that go into defining who and what persons are. The determining process for our identities involves the extent and depth of our relationships. It is not only critical for any anthropology to understand this but vital in theological anthropology for who emerges and what develops and survives.[8]

Jesus knows all about our biases and preconceived notions, and that these serve as our default mindset which predisposes us to hearing him only in a limited and narrowed- down way. This mindset is what we can call our perceptual-interpretive framework and lens. As noted in the block quote above, Jesus pointed his disciples to this problem from early on, such as when they sought to understand his parables (see Mk 4:10-13): “Pay attention to what you hear from me; the measure you give and thus use will be the measure you get” (Mk 4:24). Moreover, in addition to “what you hear,” Jesus said to “pay attention to how you listen” (Lk 8:18). For these first disciples, Jesus revealed the keys to what’s involved in relationship with him, which those disciples didn’t embrace to truly know him after their years together (Jn 14:9). Here Jesus points the way to the relational experience necessary as our significant alternative to integrally be the relational basis of a new identity and new function.

How we listen—that is “the measure you use”—critically determines the quality and depth of our involvement in relationship together with God. To paraphrase, Jesus tells us: “You have biases to recognize and reject before you can listen and hear what I say, not what you think I say, nor what you want me to say.” Individually and corporately, we all need to identify our current biases about gender (i.e. the prevailing gender equation) rooted in cultural definitions. We need to distinguish what we hear him saying from what we want to hear. We also need to reflect on our assumptions about the meanings of his words, and consider the possibility that these assumptions were wrong or distorted. Then we need to vulnerably and honestly lay our biases and preconceptions before the Lord to relinquish them, and ask him to correct us with his gender equation, and help us grow in our new identity as whole daughters and sons in his new creation family in likeness of the Trinity. This latter relational process to wholeness in our theological anthropology is how we will experientially grow into our uncommon identity and function in likeness of the uncommon Trinity.

Furthermore, the measure we use in how we listen to Jesus must undergo the shift from hearing God’s Word (the words of God) as referential information to collect in our brains; the measure we use to listen to Jesus must become congruent with the qualitative and relational depth of his communication as the Word from God. This brings us to a further related integral matter that Jesus makes definitive for us to embrace for deeper understanding: Whose language do we speak?

It is well established now by science that language influences and shapes how we think (the dynamic referred to as linguistic relativity).[9] Language, therefore, is directly related to informing our biases. The reality that language influences our thinking is extremely vital to understand as Christians, because language shapes our self-understanding, that is, our identity and how we define our person, and thereby determines our function in daily life and relationships.

Alongside the human language(s) we use in daily life, such as English or Spanish, there is another set of languages we need to become attuned to: relational language and referential language, both of which are present in all human tongues. All humans are able to speak referentially and relationally. In the Gospels, Jesus differentiated between these two incompatible languages that are involved in whether or not we can ‘hear’ God—that is, hear the words of God in referential language, or listen to the words from God in relational language, as noted earlier. Just as Jesus challenged persons’ biases, he also challenged which of these languages persons used (as in Jn 8:43).

Referential language is any form of communication engaged merely for the purpose of transmitting information; there is no personal connection involved. Of course there’s a place and use of referential language in performing certain tasks, in certain types of lectures, and giving instructions, notably in science and technology. However, for God’s purposes, such as for sermons (i.e. to fulfill ‘feed my sheep’), Bible study, and engaging in the theological task, using referential language just to transmit and receive information about God has no relational significance for either the speaker or the listeners. The use of referential language in theology reflects that the speaker is not vulnerably involved in the primacy of relationship with God to receive the words communicated from God distinguished only in relational language. Sermons delivered referentially assume to speak for God, but they are also in essence ontological simulations based on illusions of relationally knowing God (i.e. epistemological illusions, just as the early disciples practiced in their theological task, Jn 14:9).

In contrast, relational language is person-to-person communication in God’s relational context for the purpose of making relational connection. Both the speaker and listener must be vulnerably engaged in the communication dynamic so that relational connection is made.

Relational language is simply communication which includes two interrelated
levels of meaning: (1) the content aspect of the words themselves, and (2) the relationship aspect which can be expressed verbally or nonverbally, directly or indirectly, usually implied by the words yet a distinct part of the communication. Since relational messages are always attached to the content of messages and help us understand its significance or any deeper meaning the content may have or its message includes, it is consequential not to pay attention to them—as Jesus made conclusive (Mk 4:24). If just the content of messages is considered, the significance of the communication may not be fully understood—notably the relational significance conveying the further and deeper meaning of the communication….[10]

Relational language is qualitative in function and is composed of these relational messages:

(1) What one is communicating about you, how one sees and feels about you (e.g. “you are important to me").

(2) What one is saying about your relationship together, how that person sees and feels about the relationship (e.g. “our relationship is important to me”).

(3) What one is saying about one’s own person in the relationship (e.g. “you can count on me”).

The prevalence of referential language was the reality that Jesus encountered in the common human context. Relational language is what Jesus distinguished as “my language” (lalian tēn emēn, Jn 8:43), whereby Jesus vulnerably disclosed the intimate family relationships within the Trinity in only relational terms, from the Father (e.g. Mk 1:11; Mt 3:17; 17:5; Jn 12:28b) and the Son (e.g. Mt 6:9-13; Jn 11:41; 12:28; 17:1-26) to the Spirit (e.g. Lk 3:22; 4:1,4; Jn 15:26; 16:13-15). This is not some mysterious spiritual language that only mystics can understand, but relational language for everyday life that, notably, children readily digest (Lk 10:21). God’s relational language (Jesus’ family language, as in Mt 12:48-50) discloses the Trinity’s intimate relational being and vulnerable involvement together for our benefit (e.g. Jn 12:30) because “my language” also defines the primacy of Jesus’ relational work to make us whole together in relationship to compose his new creation family.^{^[11]} “My language” as Jesus illuminated, was the whole of the embodied Word, vulnerably present and intimately involved with persons, composing the self-revelation of the Trinity in this uncommon relational context and process that can be engaged only by his relational terms.

Moreover, the further language challenge for Jesus’ disciples (including us today), also involved the necessity to listen and relationally reflect on what he communicated. For example, Jesus got frustrated with the disciples for failing to perceive and understand him (syniēmi, Mk 8:17,21). Syniēmi refers to the involved process of putting together pieces (as with a puzzle) to comprehend. The disciples’ referential language lens narrowed their focus on the immediate situation, unable to put information pieces together with the qualitative sensitivity to perceive the bigger relational picture that was unfolding before their very eyes. That is, Jesus didn’t come just to give information about the Father, but in his person he whole-ly embodied the whole and uncommon relational context of the Trinity and the trinitarian relational process of family love, thereby to vulnerably involve his disciples in intimate relationship together. This illustrates that the language we use will determine the depth of hearing and understanding God; and this is a pivotal issue for the church if it is to hear, receive, and respond to what God says about gender and genderization of his church family. Accordingly, language is an essential issue in our theological task and is necessary to address to clarify any theological fog, and to correct our biases.

Therefore, if we honestly want to make sense of God and our beliefs, then in the theological task we need to distinguish God’s voice in God’s relational language, and we need to syniēmi and put the pieces together using the relational language lens (certainly a bias) in order to understand God’s big (read whole) picture purposes for us. This is particularly true for the processes that egalitarians and complementarians engage in as they pursue their good but short-sighted (self-interested?) intentions.

When we receive God’s words merely as information, whether in personal Bible study or sermons, what part of us engages God? Only our intellect that processes information (cf. Jn 5:39-42; Lk 10:21), while it is unlikely any part of us is involved with God. But to understand and speak Jesus’ relational language means we must be directly involved with Jesus on his relational terms of being vulnerable, to open ourselves to the whole-ly (whole + holy/uncommon) God. Why is it necessary to be vulnerable with God (cf. Jn 4:23-24)? This is Jesus’ meaning when he told his disciples “unless you change and become like little children” and “humbles himself like a child” (Mt 18:3; cf. Lk 10:21). To be like a little child isn’t to be childish, but to reject our grown-up masks, self-importance, and relational barriers kept in place by our biases, including our old gender equations. In short, this is the theological anthropology of whole persons vulnerably involved with God on God’s relational terms of grace, which renders human distinctions without significance and our identity and function based on them as insignificant to God and to those created in God’s image.

This is how we must pay attention to how we listen, for ‘the level of relational involvement you give will be the Jesus you get’. Nothing is more critical for our theological anthropology—that is, our identity and function—as we seek understanding about gender in our theology and practice. If we don’t understand Jesus’ relational language—indeed God’s relational language throughout Scripture—we have no basis to be confident in our theology as relates to gender. How can we then respond in obedience to him? As long as we use a referential language lens—which is our default bias—we will remain stuck essentially where we are. This is why the complementarian-egalitarian divide persists despite decades of earnest Bible study, speaking with the words of God at the expense of the words from God in the primacy of relationship together.

Therefore, we all (individually and corporately) must ongoingly ask ourselves, Whose language do I use when listening to God? If referential language, then we may know a lot of information about God (good for static doctrines), but not really know God’s heart and what matters most to God (as the early disciples lacked), including how to view his creation of us with gender. If relational language, then we will experientially know and understand God since God is able to reveal “these things”, which pleases God (Lk 10:21). Furthermore, as God has stated unequivocally, knowing him with a relational depth of understanding is our only legitimate reason for boasting (Jer 9:23-24). The reality facing us is: The language we use will be the measure of depth we know God; and the depth level we know God will be the identity and function we live by as our everyday theological anthropology.

The primary underlying issue involved in referential language is that its lens sees only partially, in outer-focused, quantitative narrowed-down terms, all of which is fragmentary, lacking wholeness. Gender discrimination and other forms of reducing persons to less than the qualitative whole person created in God’s image is this same underlying issue, defined next.

As noted earlier, my dad was a physician who wanted me to follow in his professional footsteps into medicine. On the one hand, he didn’t define me by my gender and thereby discriminate against me by eliminating my person from such participation. On the other hand, however, he reduced my person to merely the abilities of what I could do. This was the bias he imposed on everyone, measuring all persons, groups, peoples, and so forth on this comparative basis. Our relationship didn’t make me feel any better about myself as a female, but in reality consistently made me feel ‘less’ in a process of trying to measure up on his reduced terms. This points to the human dynamic common to gender issues.

Despite all the attention that sexual abuse is currently receiving (as important as it is in both the church and society), concerned Christians and the church must place sexualized gender harassment and abuse into the two broader interrelated dynamics encompassing (1) all expressions of prejudice and discrimination against females (including microaggressions and benevolent sexism with its implicit bias), and also (2) place sexism in the even bigger picture that encompasses all forms of distinction-making and discrimination. This encompassing picture (see Fig. 1) helps us perceive and identify the shared root sin of these human dynamics, and this deeper context is not the sin of pride or fear, as is often taught in church. Many Christians sincerely don’t want to be sexist, racist, or even “merely” prejudiced against any person or group; and it’s likely that many of us have sincerely come before God to repent of pride or fear that makes us think we’re better than others, or that makes us want to avoid associating with others—common patterns wired in our brains. Pride and fear certainly factor into these dynamics, but we have to dig deeper to the very tap root.

Sex > gender > sexism
Skin color > race > racism ñ Age, abilities, job, achievements,

To remove or destroy a tree completely, you have to dig up the tree roots, including the tap root, the main root that helps anchor the tree. Likewise, until the church gets to the tap root, all our efforts to eliminate sexism (and racism, and all others types of discrimination against ‘other’) will fail; and sexism will resprout (cf. Mt 3:10; 7:18). Related, for egalitarians, it’s futile to work for gender equality if they don’t also recognize that racism and other discriminations all have the same roots and tap root, and can only be eliminated also at that source. Again, it’s futile to try to lop off those forms of discrimination, because significant change must eliminate their tap root.

Reductionism defines persons from such ‘outer in’ criteria, giving primacy to the ‘outer in’ aspects which are the quantitative aspects of persons. At the same time, the sin of reductionism de-emphasizes, ignores, or masks the ‘inner out’ aspect of persons, which is the qualitative function of our heart (not only feelings and emotions) needed to integrate the ‘outer’ to compose the whole person, thus reducing our qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness. Consequently, we diminish relational awareness, and lack sensitivity of our hearts, whereby we do not make our hearts vulnerable to ourselves, God, or other persons. This simply extends the inner shame, dissatisfaction, and deception (the scope of bôsh) that emerged from reductionism in the primordial garden. Ostensibly or subtly, reductionism’s “fruit” is consequential to persons and relationships:

Reductionism, which pervades all of human life, shapes our gender identity and function—which many egalitarians have yet to recognize in their own persons—causing us to make distinctions based on the difference of our biological makeup. Reductionism not only wires our brains in these common patterns but it also desensitizes our hearts to the deeper implications of their practice, likely rendering us complicit to reductionism’s counter-relational workings. Unless our minds and related brain circuits are consciously intervened by the whole person, the reductionist process forms a gender equation that keeps women in a second-class place in God’s church, while men enjoy first class. Even in churches that may identify themselves as egalitarian, yet because of institutionalized sexism and implicit bias, the prominence of men implies still holding greater power, privilege, and prestige in the church than women do. The sin of reductionism is the critical process that has birthed the genderization of persons, which in turn pervasively influences how we see, think, and act on who and what we are—that is, our identity (our nature, or ontology) and our function in everyday life. This prevailing reality can no longer be shrouded by human trappings, as witnessed from the beginning of human history.

Up until now, the church has typically ignored reductionism and therefore has not embraced a complete view of sin. This lack also exists in the theological academy. Therefore, it is time for the church, the academy, and all leaders to own up to this lack (intentional or unintentional), and finally deal with this most consequential dimension of sin that encompasses the breadth and depth of the human condition.

We know, at least intellectually, that our hearts are necessary for close relationships—specifically that without our hearts being vulnerable to another, there can be no deep relational connection. Such depth of relational connection—intimate relational connection of hearts vulnerable and coming together—is God’s quest for and with us (Jn 4:23-24; Rev 3:20). Both female and male persons were created for this purpose by God, and both our function and inherent human need are fulfilled when this wholeness in relationship becomes our experiential truth. This qualifies, critically and essentially, any quantification in the theological task.

Importantly, all these outer-in aspects are of only secondary importance to God (e.g. 1 Sam 16:7). God gives primacy to the inner-out aspect that defines the whole human person, our heart. Our heart’s function integrates our person from inner out (Prov 4:23; 14:30 NIV; 27:19); that is, the qualitative function of our person determines who and what we present to others and how we are involved with them in relationships, presenting nothing less and no substitutes for our whole person. Our heart’s qualitative-relational function is thus indispensable for our being the whole persons whom God created in his likeness for relational connection together; and this unmistakably composes our righteousness—defined as the whole of who, what, and how one is—to be compatible with the righteousness of God.

God is distinguished by his righteousness, whereby we can fully count on the whole of who, what, and how God is in relationship together—with nothing less than and no substitutes for the whole of God. In most theology, the righteousness of God is limited to an attribute, and thus relegated to a functional constraint. Yet, righteousness (Heb. sedaqah) is a legal term used to determine if someone can be counted on in relationship to function as defined. In other words, God’s righteousness has significance only in relationship together, involving God’s relational context and process (signifying on God’s relational terms); it must not be reduced to some abstract attribute about God.[12] Moreover, God seeks those whom he can count on—our righteousness—for face-to-face relationship together without the veil, that is, without relational barriers such as masks composed of secondary aspects of our person (cf. Mt 5:6,20). For example, when Mary of Bethany refused to define her relationship with Jesus by the secondary aspect (and constraints) of gender, she functioned in her righteousness, thereby being able to respond reciprocally to Jesus (to be discussed further below).

It is important to emphasize here that the sin of reductionism always works in opposition to wholeness of persons and relationships, working against God’s design and purpose for us. So, as we continue our discussion about females (and males), keep in view that we are building the case both against reductionism and for wholeness. The journey to wholeness that we are faced with is an oppositional journey, a journey that distinctly unites us in a minority group vis-à-vis the common and popular—and identity and function that many Christians resist participating in. It cannot be stressed enough that we must recognize and “die to” the tap root sin of reductionism—individually and corporately as God’s family—in order to be raised up whole in the image and relational likeness of the Trinity, equalized without sexism, racism, and all other false distinctions and divisions among us (cf. Rom 8:13; Col 3:10-11; Gal 3:26-28). Without this turn-around change, our gender equation will not yield the good fruit of wholeness (biblical peace) in our practice, even if our theology is qualified with intense bias training or adding female lead pastors.

For clarification, wholeness doesn’t reduce us to asexual beings, does not eliminate skin color or ethnic differences, and does not make us all the same as each other. Rather, to be whole persons in the qualitative significance of God’s image—that is, whole in who, what, and how we are—is to function without deference to distinctions in the primacy of relationship together, whereby our secondary individual differences (our ‘outer’ aspects) are integrated from inner out. That is, the secondary aspects about us are put into the perspective of God’s wholeness for us, as the early church had to learn in order to change.[13]

The earlier discussion about language, bias, interpretive lenses, and sin of reductionism may sound conceptual at times, but their importance in the gender equation we use in everyday life and relationships can’t be emphasized enough. Together they form our perceptual-interpretive framework and lens that shape our thoughts and understanding of ourselves, other persons, and the world around us. When we talk about our interpretive framework and lens in the process of reading and interpreting the Bible, this is our hermeneutic, which is our methodology of interpretation. It functions in the same way as our biased interpretive lens, that is, by determining what we pay attention to and what we ignore (intentionally or unintentionally)—notably whether we center on merely the words of God, or we embrace the words from God.

Our default hermeneutic is shaped by the sin of reductionism, which narrows down the perceptual field and focuses on certain things and ignores other things, depending on our bias. Thus influenced by reductionism, we pay attention to the outer-in matters of what persons do/have, including gender, while overlooking or ignoring their inner out; we also pay more attention to events, situations, and circumstances rather than any qualitative or relational significance taking place.

The hermeneutic commonly used by most Christians to perceive Jesus, the embodied Word, tends to be this default hermeneutic. The consequence has been that our main perception of Jesus gets narrowed down to what Jesus does and has. What Jesus does includes his role as rabbi, his miracles, having sacrificed his life; what Jesus has includes his teachings, his divine attributes of power and authority, together with his human attributes, including his male gender. Our gendered bias from our human context becomes the genderized hermeneutic for perceiving the Word, by which we impose our gendered stereotypes onto Jesus and others in Scripture as well. This interpretive process is not readily apparent to those using this hermeneutic because their bias skews the issues involved—for example, in a particular situation or interaction with Jesus—and thereby distorts what is significant or not.

Jesus encountered this genderized hermeneutic during his ministry on earth, whereby others tried to narrow down Jesus’ whole person to fit into their common gendered stereotypes for men, as well as for his role as rabbi.

The Gospels include three narratives in particular in which religious men (notably including his disciples) imposed their genderized hermeneutic on Jesus as he interacted with women: the Samaritan woman, the former prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet, and Mary of Bethany. It is critical for us to examine how the three parties engaged in these interactions: (1) how Jesus was involved with the women, (2) how the women were involved with Jesus, and (3) how the men perceived and were involved with the women and Jesus. Of particular note is how the men’s genderized hermeneutic gave priority to the secondary aspect of persons’ gender—Jesus’ gender and that of the women—over the primacy of relational connection taking place in the interactions. We need to focus on both how the men objected to or were stymied by Jesus’ involvement with women, and their expressed or unspoken true feelings about what they assumed was misguided or uninformed behavior by Jesus. What unfolds in these interactions is a specific interpretation of the Word. It becomes apparent that speculations are made about the words of God, because the words from God unmistakably communicated by the Word are not received and embraced. This hermeneutic process interpreting the Word keeps unfolding today in similar narratives.

These three women, furthermore, distinctly represent the spectrum of women’s status in society, with Jewish religio-cultural human order representing the human context. The Samaritan woman was marginalized, the former prostitute was ostracized from society, and Mary belonged to the dominant group.

The first of Jesus’ interactions is the familiar narrative of the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4:4-31). By engaging with this woman, Jesus embodied the strategic shift in God’s redemptive plan in response to the human condition,[14] demonstrating his primary purpose to bring wholeness to persons in face-to-face relationship with persons together as family, regardless of their human distinctions of gender, race, ethnicity, and the like. His whole person vulnerably present and relationally involved with the Samaritan woman broke down the ‘double jeopardy’ social barrier of gender and race discrimination that had been imposed on her. However, what the disciples saw in Jesus’ interaction with this woman was based on gender and ethnic taboos, notably for a Jewish (male) rabbi. The religious and cultural rules at that time prohibited men from talking with women in public, and prohibited Jews from involvement with Samaritans, so the disciples were astonished by Jesus, but apparently not moved, for example, with any compassion for her. That’s how they interpreted the Word in their theological task.

This passage exposes the disciples’ genderized hermeneutic being challenged—if not confronted; they were “astonished that he was speaking with a woman”, because they defined Jesus and the woman in the narrowed-down secondary terms of gender roles. Their genderized hermeneutic was obviously incompatible with Jesus’ hermeneutic. Jesus’ perceptual lens first and foremost saw a person created whole in the image of God, who also needed to be redeemed from her life as a doubly-reduced woman having questionable morals, and thus transformed to wholeness of her person made new from inner out by his relational grace in relationship together. What Jesus revealed to her wasn’t the mere plan of salvation in an evangelistic opportunity. Jesus enacted the whole of God to her face to face and vulnerably connected with her person to reveal who and what are important to God, and that anything less and any substitutes are insignificant to God (Jn 4:21-24).

The rest of their improbable interaction illuminates also the significance of the woman’s vulnerable and reciprocal involvement with Jesus—engaging Jesus on his relational terms at the risk of further social consequences on her. Jesus only sees whole persons and their inherent human need, whose place in the human order is diminished by prevailing genderized biases, and are made to live as relational orphans by the limits put in place by religion and culture. In this vulnerable relational connection with the Word, her person embraced the words from God as the experiential truth that now constituted her relational reality (4:25-26,28,39).

As the narrative continues, the issue of the disciples’ hermeneutic continued to be exposed—not only about gender here, but on their reduced identity and function, from which making gender distinctions sprouts. John’s Gospel records about the disciples that “no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you speaking with her?’” which signals the strength of their discomfort and lack of honesty with Jesus. Instead of openly sharing their questions or feelings, they relationally hid in silence. Then they tried to change the subject by urging Jesus to eat something. Jesus claimed to have food “that you do not know about,” which prompted the disciples to wonder—not to Jesus but among themselves—if someone else had brought him food. Their narrowed-down hermeneutic could not understand the Word (as in Mk 8:17-18) and were thus unable to perceive the import of Jesus’ interaction with the woman. In their relational distance, they didn’t receive the words from God, and thus they failed to perceive God’s strategic shift in his coming vulnerably into their midst—which John later understood (Jn 1:10,14; 1 Jn 1:1-2), and Paul illuminated (2 Cor 4:4,6).

Patiently Jesus clarified what he meant by having food to eat, pointing to the primacy of his relational purpose for coming, “to do the will of my Father and to complete his work to make persons whole” (v. 34). Three things are important to

understand in this narrative: (1) the disciples’ genderized hermeneutic narrowed Jesus’ person and the Samaritan woman’s person down to the common secondary aspect of their gender, thereby (2) exposing their condition of reduced identity and function, (3) with the consequence of not being able to perceive Jesus’ uncommon relational involvement and the strategic shift in God’s theological trajectory composing the gospel. Therefore, the genderized hermeneutic they used was the (lack of) relational experience with Jesus they got—to further apply Jesus’ paradigm (Mk 4:24). In contrast with the Samaritan woman, they didn’t receive the experiential truth of the words from God, and thus couldn’t embrace the relational reality necessary to constitute their identity and function in wholeness.

The second situation involving a man’s genderized hermeneutic took place at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 7:36-50). Jesus was dining as Simon’s dinner guest, when a woman known to be a prostitute (sinner) entered the house. She immediately began washing Jesus’ feet with her tears, dry them with her hair, and kiss and pour perfume on them. Simon was appalled because he could only perceive the gendered taboos being ignored: this immoral woman was touching Jesus, a rabbi, with loosened hair (a moral no-no), using a tool of her immoral trade (perfume).

Jesus allowed her to do this, while Simon inwardly criticized Jesus for letting the prostitute touch him in what Simon saw as shameful display. Simon’s genderized hermeneutic could see only in the gendered constraints from religion, culture, and morality—and judged Jesus with that biased lens. Coinciding with Simon’s genderized hermeneutic is the relational distance Simon maintained with Jesus, just as the disciples did in the previous example. Jesus pointed out Simon’s lack of even the minimal relational involvement with him (signified in their cultural norms, 7:44-46), as contrasted with the vulnerable involvement of the woman. This is an important two-pronged consequence of the sin of reductionism: reducing persons to secondary outer-in criteria, together with keeping relational distance from God and, by extension, others—resulting in a lack of qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness. It was on this reduced basis with a reductionist bias that Simon interpreted the Word.

As this remarkable narrative continued, the relational depth of redemptive reconciliation between God and a person, considered to be among ‘the least’, unfolded. When we reflect on intimacy as heart-to-heart depth of relational connection, it is undeniable that this is what took place between the woman and Jesus. But a genderized equation would sanction this intimacy by its reduced terms, interpreting the Word accordingly. This intimate relational connection, however, had nothing to do with gender or sexuality, rather only with the experiential reality for the woman of face to-face connection with the embodied Word of God, being forgiven, redeemed, and reconciled to be one who “has shown great love” (v.47).

Having received God’s relational grace was the experiential reality of her person being made whole (“go in peace”) in this face-to-face connection with Jesus. This is the relational outcome distinguished in the words from God, which eludes the theological task composed by the words of God. There is a relational progression from the Samaritan woman to this former prostitute that is critical for us to experience also with Jesus. Yet, as witnessed in the next interaction, this is contingent on our interpretation of the Word.

The third interaction is one of the most moving interactions involving any of his disciples with Jesus in the Gospels. It takes place between Jesus and whole-ly Mary, who is in this study not the Holy Mary in the Catholic Church, but the different Mary who was truly whole-ly, that is, uncommon in the significance of the gospel distinguished by Jesus. Six days before Jesus’ last table fellowship, Jesus and the other disciples participated in a dinner in his honor (Jn 12:1-7; cf. Mt 26:6-13, Mk 14:3-9). Despite minor differences between John’s Gospel account and that of Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, it is clear that the woman who anointed Jesus was Mary, Martha’s sister. This is because in all three Gospel accounts, Jesus said that the woman saved the perfume to prepare him for his burial, and John’s Gospel identifies this woman as Mary.

Previous to this defining interaction, Mary had a pivotal encounter with Jesus that interpreted the Word beyond what was common to the religious status quo (Lk 10:38-42). This established Mary as a true follower of Jesus’ whole person, preparing her for an unlikely function of leadership among his disciples, as this next interaction implies.

While Jesus was reclining at the table, Mary anointed Jesus with expensive perfume to prepare Jesus for his burial. All the disciples were exposed to the fact that Jesus would be soon killed, but it was Mary who received Jesus’ relational language, and responded to his person in reciprocal and vulnerable involvement with her whole person from inner out. I imagine that her heart was breaking knowing that her beloved Jesus was on his way to his suffering and death. Even so, she surely had also embraced Jesus’ words that he would rise again on the third day following his death (e.g. Mt 16:21).

Meanwhile, the male disciples (including Judas) were indignant (as in ‘holier than thou’) that Mary hadn’t sold the perfume so the money could be given to the poor. So they “rebuked her harshly” (Mk 14:5, NIV). They were undoubtedly using their genderized hermeneutic and viewed Mary as less, thus having no qualms about treating her this way. Consider, for example, if a male disciple had done what Mary did, would they have spoken so harshly to him? Their reductionist hermeneutic also interpreted the Word, and thus they assumed that serving the poor was a greater priority, exposing their reduced identity and function embedded in what they did. They unmistakably lacked qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness to be involved with both Jesus and Mary in the primacy of relationship together. Therefore, Jesus admonished them, saying “Let her alone; why do you trouble her?” (14:6). “Trouble her” signifies that they were hassling her and wearing her down, which suggests that this wasn’t the first time the male disciples belittled Mary (or other women disciples) just because they were females.

Mary’s hermeneutic of the Word was not influenced by gender, neither Jesus’ male gender nor her female gender. Just as Mary had moved beyond the religio-cultural constraints for females that Martha was controlled by in the earlier interaction (Lk 10:38-42), Mary now ventured even further and deeper in her unconstrained involvement as a whole person (defined and determined from inner out), heart to heart with Jesus. It is highly imaginable that the male disciples felt threatened by, or even envious of, the contrast that Mary presented before their eyes, seeing the depth of relational connection that Mary experienced with Jesus. In reality, most gender equations don’t allow for the qualitative sensitivity or relational awareness to be envious. We cannot talk about Mary’s interaction with Jesus in this moving scene without highlighting the pivotal significance Mary has for us today, especially Jesus’ pronouncement about her. Jesus concluded his feedback to the male disciples by saying that “wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (Mt 26:13; Mk 14:9). Can Jesus be any clearer that Mary’s vulnerable and intimate involvement with Jesus’ whole person is the relational connection that illuminates the good news and its relational outcome? But Mary didn’t say anything that to our ears sounds like proclaiming the gospel as we know it, did she? Obviously there is a strange dissonance and troubling incongruence between our gospel and the gospel that Mary ‘proclaimed’ without words. This points to the difference between a gospel composed by the words of God and the gospel composed by the words from God.

The gospel that Mary embodied and enacted in reciprocal response to Jesus is composed as follows:

1. The gospel confronts the scope of reductionism in human life in all its variations of sin.

2. The gospel restores the theological anthropology of the whole person created in God’s image and likeness, redeemed from anything less and any substitutes for the whole person.

3. The gospel reconciles persons to wholeness in the primacy of relationship together integrally intimate and equalized—the nonnegotiable relational outcome of the gospel.

The above are what Mary distinguished in her relational response to and involvement with Jesus, which is the heart of the gospel. She witnesses to whole-ly theological anthropology (identity and function) whereby her person is defined in the primacy of relationship together, with the relational barrier of gender removed. That isn’t to say she was no longer female; that would be a contradiction of creation. Yet, what Mary clearly demonstrated in her person is the paragender identity and function from creation, the equation of which will be discussed shortly. As a paragender, Mary’s female gender became only a secondary aspect of her identity and function, which no longer could have the significance to distinguish her person, the Word, and the whole gospel.

The relational outcome Mary experienced in her theological task signifies what Jesus highlighted in his pronouncement about her. This relational outcome is not unique to Mary, but is the outcome for all who interpret the Word, in their theological task, as the words from God communicated in relational language. Jesus unmistakably guarantees the outcome we get in our theological task directly from the measure we use for the Word (Mk 4:24).

From the composite of the above three interactions, these religious men—a Pharisee and the first disciples—demonstrated the norm-alization of a genderized hermeneutic of the Word. In very generalized terms, it is apparent that large conservative segments of Protestant Christianity (along with the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church) continue to use and thereby reinforce this genderized hermeneutic of the Word by their insistence on male-only clergy, or at least male-dominant clergy. The notion that males are somehow closer to the image of Christ on the basis of their maleness simply reflects the norm-alization of the genderization of the Word, which mistakenly assumes the Word’s human gender as a primary aspect of his identity and thus would act according to the prevailing norm. Yet, those who critique male dominance of church leadership—while correctly using a hermeneutic of suspicion—have failed to provide the needed corrective to the genderized hermeneutic of the Word, since they continue to use the words of God in referential language as the norm for the theological task. It is not sufficient to merely add females to the clerical leadership to correct male dominance on the basis of alternative interpretations about the Word. As emerged from the primordial garden, (1) that hermeneutic further speculates about the words of God, which (2) misguides their theological task to be occupied by secondary matters at the expense of the primary. Thus, they don’t recognize the underlying cause of gender distinctions, namely the tap root sin of reductionism. This is why egalitarians aren’t able to adequately counter the norm-alized gender hermeneutic used by complementarians. In reality, egalitarians and complementarians have a basic similarity to them that renders their differences secondary, if not insignificant to the Word.

In a study on the gender equation in our theology, it is necessary to comment on both the complementarian or egalitarian viewpoints in terms of their biases (their hermeneutic interpretive lenses) and whose language they use. Bias and language most certainly are critical issues among evangelical complementarians and egalitarians, especially regarding Scripture. It should be noted that there aren’t only two “sides,” but a spectrum among those who self-identify as evangelicals; yet, for the purpose of this discussion, it’s reasonable to speak of two sides. The range of positions and the representative organizations can be depicted along this spectrum:

¬-------------------------------------------------------------------------------®

(Note: EEWC/Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus; CFT/Christian Feminists Today; CBE/Christians for Biblical Equality International; CBMW/Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood)

One the one hand, complementarians and egalitarians are as different as heads is from tails on a coin. On the other hand, the two sides have a lot in common in critical ways, so much so that they are essentially bearing the same shape on two sides of the hermeneutical coin. While both sides insist that they give primacy to the authority of Scripture, they do approach Scripture using their respective biases, interests, and concerns—however well-intentioned they are. What follows next is a summary of the two sides and how they both bear the same shape in their respective theological tasks.

The overt concern of egalitarians (biblical feminists) is to counter patriarchal traditions and elevate women’s status all over the world to equal status with men. Equality is especially desired for women to gain positions of authority and leadership in church, family, and all of life—that is, to achieve equality with men.

Egalitarian theology emphasizes the equal personhood, worth, and roles for women and men; their view is most visibly represented by Christians for Biblical Equality International (CBE International)[15]:

CBE International (CBE) is a nonprofit organization of Christian men and women who believe that the Bible, properly interpreted, teaches the fundamental equality of men and women of all ethnic groups, all economic classes, and all age groups, based on the teachings of Scriptures such as Galatians 3:28.[16]

CBE exists to promote biblical justice and community by educating Christians that the Bible calls women and men to share authority equally in service and leadership in the home, church, and world.

Regarding women in church leadership, they promote the view that women who are so gifted should be able to become senior pastors as well as teach men. Among CBE’s core values is the rejection of patriarchy (a result of sin), and “the unrestricted use of women’s gifts is integral to the work of the Holy Spirit and essential for the advancement of the gospel in the world.”

The egalitarian position is based on a combination of theological factors: (1) the creation account, which states that God created humanity “in the image of God…male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27; 5:1-2); (2) there were prominent women leaders in the OT (e.g. Miriam, Deborah, Huldah) and the NT (e.g. Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, others); (3) Jesus’ affirmation of female disciples (e.g. Mary and Martha); and (4) the theology of equality in Paul (e.g. Eph 2:14; Gal 3:28). Their focus on women leaders of God’s people emphasizes the view that God’s spiritual gifts such as leadership, prophecy, and teaching qualify women equally to men for such roles and functions.

Egalitarians take a wide view of Scripture to highlight the significance of women’s lives in God’s overarching theological trajectory. They view the church and domestic instructions in Paul’s letters and other epistles that appear to subordinate women to men in church and family as limited to those particular contexts, and not applicable to today. Rather, because egalitarians believe in the equality between women and men in all spheres of life, they promote the notion of mutuality (Eph 5:21), or complementarity without hierarchy, the latter phrase to emphasize that the two (primary) genders complement each other.[17]

CBE originated when some members of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus (part of Evangelicals for Social Action) split off in disagreement over including supporting same-sex couples among other social action resolutions. This is to say that CBE has always leaned toward issues involving equal rights and justice for girls and women globally, not just in the church. Much of their language focuses on equality between females and males, and gender justice, but their particular emphasis centers on giftedness of women for leadership positions in the church.

Especially for the Western church, egalitarians focus on equality of leadership and authority, highlighting giftedness and the call of women to leadership. What egalitarians don’t recognize is how this focus calls into question the critical issue of the theological anthropology being used in the theological task. Giving primacy to these areas renders egalitarians to be narrowly focused on and susceptible to (1) defining women, as well as men, based on the secondary outer criteria of what they do and have (incongruent with God’s relational grace), which inadvertently (2) reinforces the root cause underlying human inequality—the tap root of reductionism (discussed above) which exposes how sexism and all other forms of discrimination have their roots in a reduced theological anthropology and weak view of sin not encompassing reductionism. Overlooking, ignoring, or not understanding reductionism is determinative for the theological task and has an impervious effect on those so engaged. Accordingly, a reduced theological anthropology includes the hermeneutic with which we perceive and interpret God’s Word merely as the words of God in referential language to quantify the information used in our theological task. This common theological process is the ‘coin’ that represents both egalitarians and complementarians and reflects the measure they get in their theological task.

The complementarian theology of conservative evangelicals emerged to protect the church against the rising tide of secular feminism, and a nascent feminism in the church in the 1970s. Those persons perceived an erosion of the authority of Scripture and tradition family values. In this context, the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) was founded to champion fidelity to having male-only clergy, the traditional male-headed Christian family, subordination of women to men, along with opposition to homosexuality and abortion—all of which they feared evangelical feminism would change.[18]

In 1987, CBMW was established primarily to help the church defend against the accommodation of secular feminism. At this time many evangelicals were beginning to experiment with an ideology that would later become known as evangelical feminism. This was a significant departure from what the church had practiced from its beginning regarding the role of men and women in the home and local church. The effects of this departure have not been benign. As evangelical feminism continues to spread, the evangelical community needs to be aware that this debate reaches ultimately to the heart of the gospel.[19]

The mission of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is to set forth the teachings of the Bible about the complementary differences between men and women, created equally in the image of God, because these teachings are essential for obedience to Scripture and for the health of the family and the church.

CBMW’s specific concerns as to what’s at stake are: (1) the authority of Scripture; (2) the health of the home (Eph 5, 1 Pet 3, Col 3); (3) the health of the church (1 Tim 2, 1 Cor 11); (4) our worship; (5) Bible translations; and (6) the advance of the gospel (Eph 5).

Notably, CBMW perceives in Scripture prescriptions for structures that ensure the thriving of God’s churches and biological families. Theologically, Christian complementarians claim the inherent equality of males and females, and hold fast to their position of women’s subordinate complementary status to men in church and family. This position is based on a particular theology of the Trinity, which Wayne Grudem, co-founder of Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), states thus:

“The Son is both subject to the authority of the Father and at the same time equal in every attribute and in value and in personhood forever. Equality in being and eternal differences in role exist together in the Trinity. Therefore equality in being and in value and in honor can exist together with differences in roles between husband and wife as well.[20]

On the basis of the interpretation that the Son is equal to the Father, yet eternally subordinate in function (i.e. the Son’s subordinate status “never began”), complementarians formulated their theological anthropology for females as equal in being yet subordinate in function in church and family. (This theology is responded to later in this chapter.)[21] Hard complementarians believe that women are barred from the position of senior pastor and preacher, citing “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12), while other soft complementarians allow for women to teach men in some situations, but are still subordinate to their husbands at home.[22]

Complementarians interpret Paul’s instructions to specific church settings (e.g. 1 Cor 11:3; 14:34), and domestic instructions in other epistles (Eph 5:22-24) as imperatives addressed to present day Christians, in keeping with the authority of Scripture; in contrast, egalitarians only affirm this as applying to the original texts. Regarding the instructions to wives and slaves, complementarians believe that Paul’s instructions to wives are rooted to the created order in Genesis, but say Paul’s instructions about slaves are limited to Paul’s context and time (Eph 6:5; Col 3:18,20).

Complementarians are correct to be wary of using the lens of culture to interpret Scripture today. Yet, the complementarian approach doesn’t account for its own shaping by the human context; that is, the prevailing language in all human contexts is referential language, which Christians readily use to transpose the words from God communicated in relational language to the words of God for the information needed to formulate doctrine. Furthermore, the prevailing anthropology in all human contexts is a reduced identity and function from creation, which emerges from the sin of reductionism that pervades Christian contexts as well as the world. Under this common influence, the complementarian view of gender roles gives primacy to maintaining Scriptural/doctrinal purity and church and family structures that ensure definitive roles based on gender. This process feeds into persons’ “need” to know “what to do” to maintain biblical purity and moral purity, rather than “how to be involved” in relationships, with God and others—that is, rather than what is primary to God, God’s purpose in creation, and for the gospel. The susceptibility inherent in an outer-in approach giving primacy to what to do in everyday life is consequential to persons’ theological anthropology: (1) defines women and men, based on the secondary outer criteria of what they do and have (incongruent with God’s relational grace), especially with respect to fulfilling assigned roles, which then (2) easily reinforces sexism in the practice of making gender distinctions of ‘better’ and ‘less’, despite the claim of equality of being in females and males. Such reinforcement equally sustains all discrimination based on distinctions of race, ethnicity, class, age, ability, and the like.

In a similar way, egalitarians also need to account for the cultural shaping of their theology and gender equation, its reinforcing of reduced identity and function by defining persons based on the fulfilling of roles, not to mention based on their giftedness. Consider it this way: men have authority and the positions of leadership in church and family, and egalitarians want women to have access to those in equal measure. But the measure egalitarians (and complementarians) use will be the measure they get. Therefore, the distinctions of persons (whether in church or family) based on a reduced theological anthropology focused on what persons do and have, will be reinforced in a comparative process that highlights those distinctions. The result will continue to sustain a measure of inequality (more gifted, less gifted), because you can’t get equality when you use a measure of inequality. The so-called equality that egalitarians want to get continues to have the human shaping of a reduced identity and function. What this reveals underneath the theological fog about gender is that egalitarians bear the same shape as complementarians on two sides of the same coin.

What needs to be transformed is the entire theological system of how we understand church, so that the reductionist dynamic of “who is the greatest” (Mt 18:1) is deconstructed. We all need to forego dreams and turn from illusions that the measure we get will go beyond and be deeper than the measure we use. This requires that those persons in positions of authority and power (predominantly men) join in to work for transformation, beginning with their own theological anthropology. But whether they’re willing to do that is a big question mark because they would have to “change and become vulnerable like children” (Mt 18:3). And many males in positions of power, privilege, and prestige in the church (including those on church boards of trustees) don’t show such humbleness, even though it is an imperative from Jesus himself. At the same time, females need to be transformed in how they define their persons, and thereby be vulnerable to the primary as witnessed in Mary—the primary whose qualitative-relational terms are irreducible and nonnegotiable.

I believe that the complementarian and egalitarian camps have pretty much run their courses in terms of trying to change the other. They both generally suffer under some amount of illusion of being right and therefore the other side is wrong. What this theological divide reflects is simply that they function largely by their preferred interpretive lens without perceiving their own bias. The mutual consequence for both sides is that they (1) fail to put together the pieces of God’s self-revelation throughout Scripture in the interpretive process of syniēmi—which Jesus admonished his disciples for (Mk 8:17-18)—thereby to (2) miss, downplay, or even ignore the whole picture (not just big) of God’s theological trajectory and purpose for communicating his self-disclosures vulnerably in the human context, distinguishing the whole context for God’s purpose for creating us with gender. Not surprisingly, both sides have tried to construct God’s view of gender from ‘bottom up’ in their theological task; that is, they have assembled the gender-roles pieces of information in the words of God according to what they’re looking for, not unlike confirmation bias. They have defined persons’ identity and function for Christians using a genderized hermeneutic, just as persons did in Jesus’ time (demonstrated in the three interactions above). But such practice reflects the defining influence of our sociocultural context, which they bring into the theological task, into discipleship, and just generally into relationship with God, both individually and collectively.

As an ironic side note, not unexpected, this two-sides-of-the-same-coin status between complementarians and egalitarians mirrors the same hermeneutical coin represented by biblical patriarchalism and liberal biblical feminism. Biblical patriarchalism and liberal biblical feminism both use the same narrowed-down referential language and interpretive lens, which includes selective attention to Scripture. Patriarchal and liberal feminist interpretations alike also use experience and essentialism (our gender determines our ontological essence) to confirm their biases, while failing to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the whole of the embodied Word, communicating the essential words from God that compose the experiential truth.

The existing theological fog raises the question: Is there a place for compromise between complementarians and egalitarians, and their related positions? Yes and no. There is room for theological compromise whenever God’s words are transposed from relational language to referential language. As emerged from the primordial garden, referential language opened the door for theological speculation about what God meant by those words of God. Referential language allows for God’s messages and meaning to be reduced to selective focus, which then (1) fragments God’s whole message to incomplete or distorted parts, and (2) reduces God’s meaning from primary to secondary significance open to variable interpretation. Referential language thus speaks for God with diverse voices; and to the extent that the words of God have been negotiated, there is compromise available among those who make this choice in the theological task.

No compromise is available, however, when relational language composes the words from God for communicating God’s message and meaning in only relational terms. In the communication process of God’s relational language, only God speaks for God. Of course, God’s words are always subject to our interpretation, but our interpretation cannot be the determining key to God’s message and meaning. Only God determines their primacy and significance, which renders the words from God irreducible to human shaping and nonnegotiable to human terms.

Therefore, there can be no compromise available for what is primary to God: the whole persons, whether female or male, created in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity for the primacy of relationship together—nothing less and no substitutes. And the significance of this primacy is now the new creation reconciling both females and males in relationship together of wholeness (2 Cor 5:17-18), which fulfills God’s definitive blessing face to face, heart to heart (Num 6:24). This whole picture cannot be compromised in our theology and practice without reducing God’s ontology and function, as well as fragmenting the essential identity and function of all human persons.

Compromise is indeed on the minds of some newer voices to the gender debate landscape. These persons call for complementarians and egalitarians to come together to find consensus as evangelicals, as “comembers in the body of Christ.”[23] This call to a middle way turns the primary focus away from the key Scriptures dealing with gender roles, and turns to wider themes, such as unity, love, and inclusion. These voices want complementarians and egalitarians to come together for the sake of the gospel witness to outsiders, yet these newer voices also use referential language; and they have not made any significant impact since their theological anthropology and view of sin have not developed beyond the theological status quo to make the difference distinguished by the whole gospel—the only gospel embodied by the Word. And this status quo pervades both the church and the academy to sustain a theological fog, which has constrained significant change and rendered any apparent progress to epistemological illusion and ontological simulation.

To these middle-way seekers, along with complementarians and egalitarians, I strongly urge them to take up the challenge that Jesus makes to all his followers. As evidenced in his three interactions above, Jesus challenges all of us to vulnerably examine: our genderized hermeneutic in the theological task, related assumptions about gender, the bases that define our identity and determine our function in everyday life, and understand the sin of reductionism, all of which requires obedience to the Father’s imperative to Jesus’ disciples to “Listen to my Son” (Mt 17:5), and Jesus' admonishment to “pay attention to how you listen” (Lk 8:18). In order to listen to Jesus, as Paul wrote, “remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to stop wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening” (2 Tim 2:14), and “let the wholeness of Christ rule [be the only determinant] in your inner-out person, to which, indeed you were called to one body” (Col 3:15). These imperatives are relational imperatives for determining our theological task; and the results from our theological task are always governed by Jesus’ paradigm of ‘the measure we use equals the measure we get’.

There really is no other way forward for God’s new creation family to emerge as ‘one’ just as the persons of the Trinity are one, as Jesus prayed (Jn 17:11,22-23). This challenge also goes out to church leaders and persons in the academy who wonder why we seem to keep starting the gender conversations over and over (e.g. Mark Labberton and Roberta Hestenes, mentioned in Chap.2).

The reality of human life is that there are females and males, with some persons having anatomical features of both. From this reality have evolved axioms, theories, and hypotheses that have formed fragmentary gender equations in our theology using that genderized hermeneutic:

Therefore, complementarians and egalitarians must go beyond their hypotheses, theologically and biblically, and get to the depth of who, what, and how God is, and thereby to the qualitative relational significance of persons created in God’s image and likeness. For this outcome there can be no compromise, but in reality requires the redemptive change from the Word for the old to die so that the new will rise.

The gender equation composed integrally by the words from God—distinguished by and thus in relational language—unfolds from the interrelation of two primary theological realities: (1) the who and what that emerged from creation, that is, before any adaptations evolved, and (2) the how this person(s) is determined by the image and likeness of God, without variations adapted from human image and likeness. This theology is essential in order for our identity to be defined and our function to be determined by the primary gender equation integrated in the words from God.

Keeping this primary focus at the core of our theological task, there is an unmistakable and unbreakable theological trajectory between creation and Jesus’ pivotal family prayer (Jn 17), when Jesus prayed to the Father that “they may be one as we are one” (17:11,21-23). “In the beginning, when God created” included “the Word was…” (Jn 1:1-4), and the strategic shift of God’s improbable theological trajectory embodied by the Word (as the Samaritan woman learned). God’s theological trajectory and relational path constitute the communication process that highlights why both Testaments expressing the words from God are needed to compose the irreducible whole of God’s self-revelation—the sum of which composes biblical theology. Thus, consider what is essential for this theological task: Jesus is the necessary hermeneutical key to knowing the whole of God (the Trinity), as he embodied in his whole person what was only alluded to in the creation account about God; and, integrally, Jesus is also the relational and functional keys to the who, what, and how constituting the identity and function of persons created in the image and likeness of God. In other relational words, Jesus is indispensable for our identity as God’s daughters and sons in order for our persons to relationally know through our own experiential truth, what is meant by “in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:26) and thereby “be one as we are one.” The theological basis for this experiential truth is essential for the relational reality of the primary gender equation from the Word.

During his time on earth and summarized in his pivotal prayer, Jesus vulnerably revealed, at least partially, both for our understanding, and for our reciprocal relational response, his intimate relationship with his Father and the Spirit. John’s Gospel highlights Jesus’ words revealing (1) the irreducible whole ontology (i.e. being and nature) of the trinitarian persons, and (2) the intimate relational function (whole relational involvement) within the Trinity, composing the “integrally person-al inter-person-al Trinity,”[24] expanded on here by T. Dave Matsuo:

In his formative family prayer, Jesus asked the Father that all his followers together may “be one as we are one” (Jn 17:11,21-22). To “be one” (heis eimi) is the same ontological oneness among his followers “just as” (kathos, in accordance with, have congruity with) God’s ontological oneness (heis eimi); yet his followers’ oneness does not include having ontological oneness with the triune God such that either they would be deified or God’s being would become all of them (pantheism).

What Jesus prayed for that is included, however, involves his second declaration about his relationship with the Father that overlaps with their ontological oneness (heis eimi). “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (en eimi, Jn 14:10-11) further reveals the ongoing existence (eimi) of their persons in the presence of and accompanied by (en) the other, thereby also signifying their essential relational oneness constituted by their intimate involvement with each other in full communion—just as their relationship demonstrated at his baptism, in his transfiguration, in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, along with the presence and function (meno) of the Spirit. This deep intimacy in relationship together (en eimi, their relational wholeness) is integrated in the integral qualitative substance of their ontological oneness (heis eimi) to constitute the trinitarian persons in the indivisible and interdependent person-al relationships together to be the whole of God, the Trinity as whole family. The integral reciprocating interaction of the ontological One and the relational Whole provides further functional understanding of perichoresis.[25]

Here again, we can only come to this understanding in our theological task by receiving the words from God in their communicated form. Therefore, we need to hear Jesus’ words with the hermeneutic of his relational language, as when Jesus declared that the relationship between Jesus and the Father is so intimate that they are “one” (Jn 10:30,38; 17:20-26), such that to know Jesus is to know the Father, and to see Jesus is to see the Father (Jn 8:19; 12:45; 14:7,9). Jesus wasn’t conveying information for a static theology, or giving concepts for theological reference; rather, in contrast and even in conflict, he vulnerably revealed the primacy of relationship that integrally constituted who, what, and how the Trinity is: the ontological One and the relational Whole.

A short-hand term used throughout Scripture to refer to the presence of the whole of who, what, and how of the Trinity is “glory” (kāḇôḏ in the OT, doxa in the NT), defined further as:

All of God’s being, nature and presence function for relationship together. That which is God’s glory is “his glory.” Who, what and how God is is who, what and how Jesus is (Jn 10:38b; 12:45; 14:9).^{^[26]}

The whole of the Trinity’s glory is vulnerably presented for relationship in the face of Jesus (2 Cor 4:6; Jn 1:14). Accordingly, it is essential for the theological task that its theology emerge from the Trinity’s theological trajectory and relational path based on the following: only the relational words from God compose the Word embodied, and the Word enacts only the words from God in relational language—nothing less and no substitutes.

In creation, this inter-person-al Trinity (not a static existence) extended the trinitarian relational context and relational process constituted by the Trinity’s vulnerable presence and intimate relational involvement (Gen 1:2; Jn 1:1-5; 1 Jn 1:1-2). This is the whole of God (neither a mere concept nor merely an attribute) to whom Jesus came to reconcile us back as the Father’s new creation family. The primacy of this trinitarian relational context and relational process (the whole of God) is what was “not good” for the original human person in God’s likeness to “be apart” from, in the creation narrative in Genesis; and this primacy gives us the context of and perspective for gender in creation and what is essential for the new creation.

As we continue on this journey, it’s important to keep in mind that wholeness of persons and relationships together were and are always primary to God. Their wholeness individually and together fulfills God’s purpose and design for us in the Trinity’s image and likeness, thus nothing in the theological task matters more or has more significance to God.

Given what is primary in, for, and to the Word, this raises an important question: Is God a transgender? This is not to ask if God changed his sex/gender after she had begotten the Son; nor is it to suggest that God’s sex/gender is ambiguous and exists in an equivocal state. What is implied by transgender, however, is that (1) God is beyond gender, and (2) God does not give primacy to gender to distinguish the human person created in God’s image. That is to better say, God transcends gender, and should never be reduced to its limits and constraints. Therefore, to be in God’s image is to transcend gender also. And it is this person existing today whose identity must be defined beyond gender, and whose function must be determined further than gender. Thus, our persons must be transformed from the prevailing gender equation to the primary gender equation, namely, integral to the new creation (2 Cor 5:16-17).

However, we must qualify transcending gender for humans, since at creation, God did in fact create humans with the biological sex difference of male and female “in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:26). God created persons with gender, but they also should not be reduced by it, just as God is not. Stated in the wholeness of creation: Created in God’s image, persons are paragender—that is, both (1) beyond gender like God (gender does not define the identity of persons), and (2) beside gender (gender is a secondary reality of life) in daily function always determined by the primacy of relationship together in God’s likeness. The persons at creation originally were paragenders, in that they were persons created whole and uncommon (in God’s whole-ly image and likeness); later, of course, they were reduced by giving primacy to gender to define their identity and determine their function—a shame that covered up their whole persons.

Significantly, in the creation account, God had defined everything he had made as “very good” (tôv, pleasing, beautiful, and right, Gen 1:31), but the one thing God said was “not good” was that the man was “apart” (bad, often translated as “alone,” Gen 2:18), illuminated as follows:

“To be alone”…is necessarily rendered “to be apart” in God’s created order, because it illuminates the whole in creation from which “is not good to be apart.” The difference between “to be alone” and “to be apart” is immeasurable since for Adam it was not just the secondary matter of having no one to share space with, no one to keep him company or to do things with (particularly the work). “To be apart” is not just a situational condition but most importantly a relational condition. A person can be alone in a situation but also feel lonely in the company of others, at church, even in a family or marriage because of relational distance—“to be apart.” This rendering is more reflective of the dynamic process of relationship in God’s created design and purpose—and needs to replace the conventional “to be alone” not only in our reading but in our theology and practice.[27]

Therefore, in order to further enact in creation the primacy of God’s relational context and relational process, God brought forth Eve to fill Adam’s inherent relational need for a compatible person to be involved in the created context beyond merely a marriage arrangement. For the primary, these two persons more deeply formed whole relationship together in the image and likeness of God (Gen 2:18,25). Moreover, because God’s creation of whole persons for whole relationship “in our image and likeness” defines God’s creative purpose for Eve, this relegates the order of creation to having no significance affecting the status of Eve’s person. Eve, along with Adam, in their primary significance were first and foremost persons, while having distinctions of only secondary significance.

God’s creation revolved around the primacy of whole persons in whole relationship together reflecting God’s definitive relational terms only for relationship together—relational terms as expressed in the words from God communicating various commands to them directly (Gen 2:16-17). Given the being, nature, and presence of the whole of God, God’s image and likeness can never be fragmented and reduced to mere functional roles of ‘what one does or has’. To do so reduces the person-al inter-person-al Trinity to a reduced identity constructed with a referential lens which in the theological task generates a theology (speaking for God) that essentially depicts God in our image, and thus determines how we will engage in relationship with God on our own terms, as complementarians do overtly, and egalitarians do unknowingly (or perhaps intentionally). Whether engaged subtly or not, persons functioning ‘on our terms’ reflects, reinforces, and sustains the secondary significance of gender distinctions for their primary identity or related distinctions for their primary function. Either position exposes the dissatisfaction, disappointment, deception, or shame (bôsh) of persons and their relationships lacking wholeness, just as emerged from the primordial garden.

By enacting God’s relational response of grace to our human relational condition, Jesus illuminated for us God’s uncommon relational context and relational process for us to understand the image and likeness of God. This is the original relational order for human persons that became distorted through sin (Gen 3:16), and that Jesus redeemed and transformed anew to God’s original design. This understanding must chasten the usual debates between complementarians and egalitarians about Eve’s created purpose and function, including the place of males in God’s original relational order.

The Hebrew term used to describe Eve’s purpose, ‘ezer kenegdo, is translated in English as “a helper as his partner” (NRSV) and “a suitable helper” (NIV) for Adam. In referential terms, ‘ezer kenegdo reduces Eve’s function to relatively pragmatic purposes, including: God’s provision for Adam’s loneliness, helping Adam procreate, and help with all the other work that God gave them. Together they were to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth….” (Gen 1:28). Whether or not Eve’s function makes her subordinate, equal to, or even superior to Adam is much debated, and is variously interpreted according to one’s biased lens.

But to referentialize God’s creation of Eve has sad consequences. For one, her capability to bear children becomes defining for her usefulness, an ill-informed burden placed on many women. Referentializing Eve’s purpose also makes her complementary contribution to Adam in marriage one of convenience. Furthermore, this view of Eve, and of all women by extension, implicitly depicts God primarily as a pragmatic creator, maximizing Adam’s life situations and circumstances, which are images that limit or ignore the depth of God’s being, nature, and involvement with his creation. This all unfolds at the expense of what is primary.

In relational terms, however, when God declared it “not good” for Adam “to be apart,” God identified for us the inherent human relational need for belonging relationally to the whole of God, not merely membership in God’s kingdom or church. Thus, God’s enactment of bringing forth Eve was an action that communicated God’s nature as love, which is distinguished beyond comparison by the depth of God’s relational involvement. Just as God was intimately involved with his people in all their lives throughout the OT—in keeping his promises in the “covenant of love” (Dt 7:7-9,13, NIV)—God was thereby Israel’s ‘ezer, notably not leaving them as relational orphans (e.g. Dt 33:29; Ps 10:14). God’s presence came to dwell among the uncommon people of God so that they could relationally know and understand the whole of God (Ex 25:8; Lev 26:11-12; Jer 9:24; cf. Jn 14:9). This would indicate that Eve’s purpose as ‘ezer kenegdo was much deeper than merely being Adam’s equal work partner (as egalitarians suggest), a complementary marriage partner, or a womb to procreate. Indeed, “multiply and fill the earth” within the relational context of God’s created whole is first and foremost the relational work that all humans without distinctions are created for, as this except illuminates:

In God’s purpose to “fill the earth” the term for “fill” (Heb. malē) denotes
completion of something that was unfinished. With this in mind we need to understand what God started in creation that Eve and Adam were to work for its completion. Did God just create a man and a woman, male and female, with work to do? Did God merely create the human species to be the dominant conclusion to all of creation? Or did God create whole persons in the very image of God’s being (constituted as the qualitative significance of heart) for the purpose of these persons having and building intimate relationships together in the likeness of the relational nature of God as constituted in the communion of the Trinity? The former emphasizes any secondary work engaged by persons in referential terms that fragment persons and relationships. The latter is focused only on persons engaged in the primacy of relational work that embodies the whole of these persons and their relationships together.[28]

Therefore, to understand Eve’s created function and original purpose for sex differentiation, we have to understand what matters most to the heart of God, above and beyond our limited preconceptions and assumptions. In other words, we are challenged, if not confronted, to transcend gender in relational response to God, and to go both beyond and beside gender in relational response to each other.

Eve’s primary purpose was to enact with Adam whole relationship together, and together in whole function their persons without distinctions would continue to grow God’s relational whole on earth. In the primacy of this relational context and relational process of intimate relationship together—in the image and relational likeness of the Trinity—the original persons’ biological sex did not define their person, thus their persons “were not ashamed.” Their sex was a secondary (not unimportant) aspect of their created being for the function of “building family” in the image and likeness of God. That is, while their created gender was necessary for procreation, it was the qualitative inner-out function of their whole persons (signified by their hearts) that integrated the more quantitative aspect of their sex difference, in the primacy of relationship together, whereby their persons constituted being in the image and relational likeness of the Trinity:

What God started in creation was an extension of the triune God’s being and nature—not to be confused with pantheism. The person was created with the qualitative significance of God to have intimate reciprocal relationships with other persons, both of whom are undifferentiated (not reduced) by quantitative distinctions (such as gender or sexuality). Gender or sexuality does not distinguish the qualitative significance of human persons and relationships, though the whole person is certainly embodied in them irreducibly. This aspect of creation serves to illuminate in general the intimate relationships for which all persons are created, not to determine the ultimate context in which these intimate relationships can be experienced, that is, male-female relationships and marriage.[29]

Intimacy in relationship as illuminated by the person-al inter-person-al Trinity, and which Jesus embodied, is heart-to-heart, face-to-face connection with nothing less than and no substitutes for the whole who, what, and how persons are—both trinitarian and human. This quality and depth of intimate relationship together challenges the misleading cultural definition of intimacy that has become norm-alized, including among Christians. Western culture in particular has commercialized human sexuality and sexual attraction—the secondary aspects which God created humans with—and has fragmented these aspects from their integration with the primary qualitative inner function of persons (notably the heart), thus constructing a dualism reinforced by Christians. The consequence is that sexuality is reduced to attractiveness and its sensuality, where the primary focus is on quantitative physical bodies (genderized sex objects). Western culture also has been the leading proponent of luring persons with the false yet norm-alized notion that “intimacy” means sexual intercourse and related activity between two persons. Believing this has had disastrous consequences for male-female relationships, especially for females, who are susceptible (e.g. Gen 3:16) to being misled by males pretending to want deeper involvement, but who really only want the reduced engagement of sex, and thereby use females as objects for sexual (and ego) gratification. What males need to realize is that functioning in this way reduces their persons also to fragmented sexual objects as well—with both parties not experiencing intimacy of their whole persons.

Intimacy between whole married persons who live inner out may involve sexual intercourse, yet married persons can experience relational intimacy without sex; and their failure to be this relationally involved limits and eventually reduces their love. Also, sexual intercourse in marriage doesn’t guarantee intimacy and is a reductionist substitute if it doesn’t involve the wife and husband functioning whole from inner out.

Although Genesis doesn’t reveal much more about Eve and Adam’s shameless relationship as paragenders, there are deeper implications we can infer based on what we do know from the narrative. Because they were paragenders, whose primary significance was their person in God’s image, not their gender, this composed their gender equation with ‘arom (naked) and without bôsh (shame). Certainly ‘arom would mean that they were without clothes, and they undoubtedly noticed physiological differences. Yet they didn’t feel self-conscious or shame about their bodies; could it be that making gender a distinction didn’t really occur to them? ‘Arom also signifies that at this point they were unconstrained with each other, vulnerably presenting their whole person to each other with nothing less and no substitutes for who and what they were—much like the vulnerableness and freedom from self-consciousness that little children are blessed with. And as whole persons, they had no reason to feel “shame” (bôsh, to feel disappointed, humiliated before another, dissatisfied or embarrassed when things don’t turn out as one expects, perhaps even deceived). Therefore, what was essential for Eve and Adam in order to experience intimate relationship together was for both of them to function from inner out, vulnerably presenting to each other nothing less and no substitutes for their whole persons—in the image and relational likeness of the person-al inter-person-al Trinity—and thereby illuminating the significance that they “were both naked and felt no shame” (2:25, NIV).

We are remiss, therefore, if we assume that the significance of Adam and Eve’s relationship is that God gives primacy to marriage and raising a family—which most complementarians and egalitarians alike assume. Rather, to again emphasize, God’s design and purpose integral for this relationship distinguishes God’s original intent that the human persons “not be apart” from the whole of God, which includes also to extend the trinitarian relational context and process of God’s family love. Thus, as is concluded here:

The ultimate quality of their [Eve and Adam’s] persons and their relationship was not defined by nor experienced in marriage. If this were the ultimate of God’s creation, there would be marriage in the new creation in heaven (Mt 22:29-30). In one sense, marriage can become a reductionist substitute that keeps us apart from the whole of God.[30]

For persons whose identity and function are reduced to outer in, marriage indeed does become a reductionist substitute because those persons will unavoidably be biased to give primacy to what one has and/or does, in reduced function which extends into marriage. Marriage thus perceived with a referentializing bias creates illusions (e.g. “marital bliss”), and has led to idealizing marriage’s benefits, with frustrating and distorted consequences—the same shame from the primordial garden: (1) creating false hope in marriage and in one’s spouse in order to become “complete”—as in the notion “you complete me”; (2) sends the false messages to single persons (including homosexual persons, who are to remain single and celibate) of being less, and unable to fulfill God’s purpose for them. Single women still carry the unfair stigma for being single.

These messages counter God’s design and purpose for all persons—that is, God’s response to the inherent human need “not to be apart” from the trinitarian relational context and process experienced in the human context. In God’s relational design and purpose, single persons are needed, that is, all persons without distinctions must be able to be full participants. When God’s daughters and sons—single and married—are transformed from the limits and constraints of the old gender equation to the wholeness and well-being as paragenders, then God’s new creation family’s identity and function will fulfill the image and likeness of the person-al inter-person-al Trinity.

Two further irreplaceable relational dynamics integrally also inform paragenderism in the Trinity’s whole-ly image and relational likeness: submission in love (defining love not as ‘what to do’ but agapē love of ‘depth of relational involvement’), and reconciliation necessary for equalization of persons. These will be discussed later in this chapter and in the next chapter.

At this point, if you haven’t already done so, ask yourself: Are you ashamed of your gender, or any other human distinction you bear? Are you disappointed by your gender, or confounded by the matter of gender? The human persons created in the primordial garden were not ashamed as long as they lived in their full identity from inner out—‘arom and without bôsh, as discussed above. Yet, they would soon know the same feeling of shame that has become the norm, and even accepted as natural.

Since persons were created male and female, gender seems natural. Paul identified the natural (psychē, psychikos) with Adam (1 Cor 15:45-46), and Jude defined natural function with those who reduce and fragment persons and relationships (Jude 19). In other words, what seems natural to us is a reduction of the whole person and the wholeness of persons in relationship together. Natural is what Eve and Adam became in the primordial garden, and ever since, gender has been the natural distinction defining human identity and determining human function. In other words, what’s natural has become what’s common in the human context; yet, the converse is also true, because the common of human life is composed by the sin of reductionism. Accordingly, in this pervasive process of the common, our feelings of shame and embarrassment about our gender (e.g. not measuring up to cultural standards of femininity and masculinity, or bodily functions such as menstruation, or size of genitals) are part of what’s accepted as natural as well.

The natural gender equation of reductionism evolved from “Did God say that?” (Gen 3:1, discussed shortly). The natural condition has in effect become the gender meme transmitted from generation to generation just as human genes are, and that is embedded in our brains, ongoingly reinforced by messages and images in our cultures and societies. This gender meme finds expression in our theology and practice (individually and corporately in church), and will simply continue until what is natural is transformed by the new creation.

It is theologically essential, therefore, that we be able to distinguish God’s original gender equation of paragenderism from these human adaptations of our created identity and function (that seem natural), thereby to counter the axiom embedded in our belief system that “you can’t fight nature.” We surely can, and must. The gender meme, axioms, and other “realities” compete as alternate voices of authority to God’s Word. This was the initial issue leading to the original fragmenting and reducing of the original persons, and that has reduced our theological anthropology. That is, once we take liberties with God’s uncommon relational terms for relationship together by shifting to our natural reduced referential terms (e.g. for biblical inerrancy and doctrinal purity, or to know ‘what to do’), or to read Scripture selectively and partially, it will feel natural to speak of God and for God; yet, in this theological task we are unable to hear the words from or respond to God on God’s nonnegotiable terms for relationship together. This common process is what unfolded in the primordial garden and prevails in our theology and practice.

It took one choice by Eve and Adam to shift their whole identity and function from inner out to reduced identity and function from outer in. Human history has not recorded a comparable shift, yet its full significance has eluded many Christians and, thus, has eclipsed their understanding of the breadth and depth of the human condition. The usual narration of the Fall focuses on Satan tempting Eve into disobeying God and eating the forbidden fruit. But Satan’s subtle agenda was initiated in the scene a moment earlier by raising the question to Eve, “Did God really say…?” (Gen 3:1). Satan’s seemingly harmless question was in fact Satan’s hermeneutic challenge to God’s presence and involvement with Eve and Adam. Once Eve engaged Satan in this exchange, Satan got Eve to shift her focus away from the primacy of God’s relational context and relational process, which distinguishes those words from God communicating nonnegotiable terms for relationship together. This nuanced exchange is summarized as follows:

Even though Eve was created as a person in God’s image to complete the relational context and process, she was not immune from reductionism because she was free to redefine her person—the human agency of her will. While making this choice does not change the created qualitative ontology of personness, it shifts the ontology to outer in, and thereby reduces how the person functions and constrains what the person experiences, thus effectively redefining personhood in human perception.
Satan tempted (tested) Eve with just such a reduction of her person. In their Garden encounter Satan redefined her person by appealing to her mind with knowledge (Gen 3:5)—the defining characteristic of the modern information age.

Such an appeal subtly altered how Eve functionally defined her person, thus shifting her to a quantitative focus on secondary matter (for example, attributes about the fruit, 3:6a). From this quantitative perceptual framework, what she paid attention to and ignored became reordered from what God created and commanded, and inverted her priorities. This led to her pursuit to be a quantitatively better person (by gaining
wisdom, intelligence, expertise, 3:6b). The further significance of this reduction and redefinition is how she functioned in her relationship with God and attempted to have this relationship on her terms (based on her response to Satan’s reductionist appeal, 3:5). Adam fell to and labored under this same reductionism.[31]

It was the fateful choice by both Eve and Adam in self-determination (the exercise of their free will) that lured them to the reduction of their persons. At this critical juncture, they experienced the “not good to be apart” from God’s relational context and relational process of intimate relationships, and were now on their own to determine what was primary for their identity and function. Not unlike the common focus today, they turned to focus on secondary outer aspects of their persons (e.g. knowledge, the difference of biological sex), thereby fragmenting their whole ontology, and reducing their identity and function in relationships. This quantitative focus engaged them in the inevitable comparative process—measuring who is better and who is less—that brought feelings of shame accompanied by fear (Gen 3:7,10). This is the sin of reductionism that was set into motion ever since, the dynamic by which their sex differences devolved into genderized distinction-making, the comparative process, and the human relational condition “to be apart.”

Whereas earlier in distinct contrast, they enjoyed being together as paragenders “naked and not ashamed,” they were now no longer secure about who and what they were, but insecure and self-conscious—in distinct conflict with their previous whole condition. And whereas they earlier functioned vulnerably in their wholeness in relationship with God and each other, now they hid behind a “mask” as a deception tactic for their fear and shame (v.7). In today’s technology idiom, masks are like avatars, those personas that are used for online interaction in place of your real self. Thus they also hid from God (vv.8-10), not only physically, but relationally, as when Adam was not openly honest by vulnerably admitting his guilt and taking his own responsibility but instead blamed Eve (v.11). Establishing human precedent, these actions by Eve and Adam initiated the shift in how to be involved in relationships, from ‘nothing less and no substitutes’ to ‘something less or some substitutes’—the former illuminating relational righteousness, and the latter lacking righteousness. Now God could no longer count on Eve and Adam to be vulnerable and honest with the whole of who, what, and how they are in relationship together. And the shift to anything less and any substitutes has become norm-alized in our gender equations.

These are ways in which we too function without righteousness on our own terms in self-autonomy, exercised in self-determining how to be involved in relationships; that is, we avoid being vulnerable in our innermost, and function relationally distant from God and others. This in turn embeds us in self-justification (e.g. rationalizing, making excuses, and blaming others). Eve and Adam’s choices set all of us on the same path of self-determination in the comparative-competitive process to justify our self. These are all functions that fragmented human wholeness, reshaped relationships, and created relational distance with God and others—relegated to “not good to be apart.”

Such functions, just like the gender meme that now gets transmitted from generation to generation, seem natural to us (as in second nature). This generational transmission was immediately evident with Eve and Adam’s sons, in that it was Cain’s self-determination in reduced identity and function that led him to kill Abel (4:1-8), followed by Cain’s effort to justify himself in his reply to God’s query about Abel with “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Shame and fear are natural in Paul’s sense of psychē and psychikos, which fragmented the human person in the absence of wholeness. Self-justification is also made evident whenever we get defensive in the face of feedback or challenge to how we live (I know this from my own experience), making it difficult to be open to change, even for the sake of the Jesus’ gospel. All these dynamics go into the composition of gender equations.

Since the original paragenders chose to reduce their identity and function (their theological anthropology) from inner out to outer in, they were relegated by God to those secondary distinctions, the most visible and therefore most obvious being their sex difference. This genderized their identity and function to be the norm for their gender equation (Gen 3:16-19). Identity and function based on human differences results in relational distance, first and foremost with God, extending to other personal relationships, and into church life and practice. The most encompassing of these relational consequences continues to prevail throughout human history: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16).

So, is God really responsible for this common practice, since he’s the one who gave the punishment in the first place? No! Humans choose to be defined by gender distinction, whether consciously or simply by being complicit with this norm, that is, allowing our brains to operate with a gender bias wiring patterns for everyday life assumed to be the acceptable norm. At the same time, any dissonance in our minds is always a clear indicator that something isn’t right, that our conscience is telling us something (as in Rom 2:15), and it must be paid attention to, or be responsible for the consequences (cf. Titus 1:15). Therefore, unequal relations between males and females is the consequence of sin, not its ordination by God. This is never what God wanted or intended for creating the human female, but is the result of humans determining who and what defines them, and how they choose to live. And even though our brains control many of our human functions, it doesn’t control our will and the choices we make—that is, unless we submit to our brain.

The human condition emerging from the primordial garden includes this norm of genderized identity and function, with its limits and constraints on persons—especially felt by females. And this gender equation will continue to be the norm determining gender identity and function until the gender equation is changed and restored to its paragender origin—which requires the transformation from inner out for human identity and function to be whole in the new algorithm for all persons and their relationships together.

Of further necessity in our theological task, in order to understand God’s design and purpose for gender and be transformed back to wholeness, we have to take into account Satan’s hermeneutic challenge to God’s words, which always creates theological fog. Satan’s question distorted what God really said or meant (Gen 3:3) with “Did God really say that?” where that was not what God said (Gen 3:1). Satan’s distortion unfolded further with the lie “you will not be reduced” (3:4), thereby directly challenging God’s warning to Eve and Adam that they would be reduced (the theological significance of “die”). Subtly shifting Eve’s thought process from God’s relational terms (i.e. the relational function of God’s commands throughout Scripture), to reduced referential terms by conjecturing about what God really meant, in this way Satan imposed theological fog. That is, the theological fog that predominates today (in church and academy)—including in the gender debates—emerged in the primordial garden when Satan influenced Eve and Adam as follows:

(1) Transposed God’s relational language and terms for communication in relationship together to referential language for the sake of information about God, thus speaking for God instead of God speaking.

(2) Shifted the focus of persons created from inner out to outer in, thereby defining their identity and function by secondary matter, such as information, abilities, and resources they have as substitutes for the primary.

(3) Reduced their perception, thinking, and action, which fragmented their wholeness and rendered them incomplete, unable to understand the whole picture of God now eluding them in this fog.

It is critical for us today to address theological fog, or we won’t hear the words from God as the defining terms for relationship necessary for our identity and function to be whole as paragenders, in whole relationship together in the image and likeness of the whole-ly Trinity. The reduction or renegotiation of these relational terms was always the issue that Jesus had to confront. In the interaction between Jesus and some would-be disciples, they were evidently lost in this theological fog, causing them to misinterpret his words (Jn 8:31-47). And in Jesus’ response to them, he appeared to refer back to Satan’s original reduction of God’s relational communication to referential language in the primordial garden:

“Why is my relational language not clear to you? Because…you are unable to hear…. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire….He was a murderer [reducer of human persons] from the beginning….When he lies he speaks his native language for he is a liar and the father of lies” (8:43-45, NIV).

Jesus as the embodied Word here condemned the originator of reductionism, along with those who function to also create, reinforce, and sustain reductionism by imposing theological fog. This subtle yet engulfing process has had critical consequences on theological anthropology in general, and on paragenderism in particular.[32]

This gender equation emerging from the primordial garden has evolved and adapted in human contexts with all its variations, including in Christian contexts. The shame of such a gender equation is the common experiential reality of feeling ‘less’ or insecure about one’s identity in reduced theological anthropology and determined by the norm-alized weak view of sin that ignores reductionism. In other words, shame and the relational distance (“to be apart”) from the whole of God constitute our identity and determine our function with norm-alization of anything less and any substitutes for the wholeness of paragenders. We just exchange “fig leaves” with other “masks” to create outer presentations of ourselves in daily life. Yet no matter how hard we try to measure up to feel better about ourselves, or how successful we are in these efforts, notably using genderized norms (though not limited to these alone), we will never fulfill our inherent relational need, nor can anyone else, including God.

Therefore, our gender equation will always be imbalanced, distorted, or fragmentary, thus less than whole, as long as our view of sin does not understand both the depth of sin as reductionism, and the breadth of sin as the norm-alization of bôsh—the scope of everyday human experience in disappointment, dissatisfaction, deception, and shame.

The ongoing reality of the human distinction of gender as defining for humanity has prevailed both intentionally and unintentionally. The bôsh (the devolution of disappointment, dissatisfaction, deception, and shame) from the primordial garden continues to evolve into the norms of human contexts by human choice, on the one hand, not by accident. This has established brain circuits that sustain these genderized norms even when this choice is not consciously made. On the other hand, the gender distinction also becomes defining unintentionally, even when persons don’t want it to be or intend to use it.

Paul describes this latter function in his humanity (and ours) as follows: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom 7:15). Paul illuminated here the reality of sin as reductionism that pervades human function. Reductionism doesn’t preclude human choice, but shapes it both ostensibly and subtly, and this human condition has norm-alized the bôsh of genderized distinctions—as a defining distinction even within other distinctions, such as race, class, and age. Such gender equations don’t change easily but require transformation (as Paul illuminated further, 7:23-24; 12:2).

Another way to describe our humanity and understand the ambiguity of our actions is by the common condition of human handedness. Almost all individuals function with a dominant characteristic of either right-handedness or left-handedness, except for ambidextrous persons. We subconsciously or unconsciously do things by our dominant hand because our brains have been conditioned to favor this side (though there is some evidence that there may be genetic influence). Think about how you do things routinely every day. This implanted bias in our brains will continue to dominate our behavior unless we consciously choose to use both hands and become ambidextrous. That’s neither a simple nor easy choice, as evident if you’ve tried doing routine tasks with your nondominant hand. It takes ongoing choices and disciplined work to become ambidextrous.

Did God create us with handedness? Perhaps, but if handedness is the natural genome for humans, we need to see its genetic makeup like our sex. That is, whatever physical differences we have were not created by God in order to define who and what we are, and to determine how we are to function as persons. These differences are only secondary, therefore they do not and cannot constitute the whole person God created. In the same way that handedness is partial, incomplete, and fragmentary unless we are ambidextrous, the same applies to genderized distinctions until we become paragender.

The primary identity and function of the person who God created are only whole, nothing less and no substitutes for the image and likeness of the Trinity. This wholeness takes our genome to its qualitative relational depth beyond the limits and constraints imposed by any distinctions we make based on human differences, physical or otherwise. And only this make up in wholeness from inner out transforms our gender equation.

Handedness is a working analogy for gender and the equation we use. Arguably, let’s say egalitarians are left-handed and complementarians are right-handed. Regardless of how they’re aligned, the reality is that they function with a bias that favors their side; and they both practice this partial, incomplete, and fragmentary function that fails to enact their whole person. In contrast and conflict, the whole person is ambidextrous who has consciously chosen not to be defined and determined by gender and related distinctions. This person becomes paragender by conscious choices and relational work with the Spirit to reject (‘die to’) their bias and embrace, affirm, and make specific choices in paragender wholeness.

Again applying Jesus’ paradigm for our identity and function using human distinctions as the measure: “the distinctions you use and favor will be the identity and function you get, which will be partial, incomplete, and fragmentary, thus unable to determine the wholeness of our identity and function.” The most obvious distinction where this applies and prevails in our everyday life is gender, and this predominant distinction maintains our shame even when not consciously chosen.

In the primordial garden, Satan influenced the persons with an appealing algorithm that changed the paragender equation of creation. This algorithm would provide the knowledge and wisdom to solve the problem of human life. It would provide the common denominator in the human genome that would simplify human function and “be like God” (Gen 3:5-6). Those early persons chose to embrace this algorithm, which reduced them from paragenders and set into motion the shame of gender equation, with its primary common denominator. Subtle variations of the old algorithm, having been norm-alized, continue to implement gender equations today.

We need to do “the math” in our gender equation to know its results with the old algorithm:

1 ♂ + 1 ♀ = 2 or more humans in likeness of the common denominator of their human genome as primary.

For redemptive change (transformation) we need the new algorithm that implements the original algorithm of creation:

1 person + 1 person = the wholeness of persons in the primacy of relationship

The paragender equation uses only the original algorithm of creation, the integrity of which is pivotal for us to understand created human life, and then is re-created (redeemed) new as a major expression of the new creation. We all need to grow in paragender wholeness, and work for paragenderism in the fight against reductionism. Paragenderism is the primary gender equation that deconstructs the above old algorithm and confronts the prevailing gender equation that has burdened human persons up until the present. Conjointly, paragenderism transforms the old to the new algorithm, and in doing so illuminates the ambidextrousness of the redemptive transformation of gender constituted by the gospel. Chapter 4 expands on the “math” we need to do to grow in our practice as paragenders, and to help us in our practice as paragenders for redemptive change both in the church and in the world.

This discussion also sheds further light on Jesus, the Son, whose divine person transcends gender (cf. Phil 2:6). Yet because his incarnation form was male (2:7), he was a paragender—that is, neither his person defined by his male gender, nor his gender of greater significance than secondary to his identity. I expect this will be hard for persons using reductionist lenses and referential language to accept of the Son, not to mention the Father. There will be objections and/or incredulity like Nicodemus—asking the question “how can these things be?” (Jn 3:9) Whether this is good news or bad in your perception, the reality is that the gospel of Christ is the gospel of wholeness (Eph 6:15) as paragenders—no longer fragmented and reduced persons whose identity is constituted in gender distinctions, or in any other secondary distinctions.

Whole-ly Mary of Bethany embodied and enacted what the gospel of wholeness looks like in a human person (Mt 26:13), by functioning in her reciprocal relational response that was both (1) compatible with Jesus’ whole person defined from inner out beyond gender distinction, and (2) congruent with Jesus’ qualitative inner-out function vulnerably involved for heart-to-heart relational connection. We witness in her person the gospel embodied and enacted by Jesus. Thus, Mary’s relationship with Jesus conclusively illustrates the original-new gender equation, which Jesus not only embraced but also made definitive for his whole gospel. The fact that Mary is not mentioned “wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world” at the very least corrects those who proclaim an apparently incomplete gospel.

Paul too was clearly a paragender, having his identity securely ‘in Christ’. ‘In Christ’ was not a theological concept for Paul but the relational reality that was distinguished by only the relational outcome of the whole gospel. This is the whole and uncommon theological anthropology that he definitively expressed in his letter to the Galatians, that our primary identity is “one in Christ” (cf. Jn 17:11,21-23), and therefore “there is no longer male and female,” (Gal 3:28). Paul did not propose eliminating genetic sex differences, because that would contradict creation.^{^[33]} But as with the other pairs of human-shaped distinctions, Paul clarified that sex difference was a secondary reality. And since sex differentiation existed from creation—“male and female”—that’s why he used the wording from the Genesis account, whereas all the other pairs of distinctions Paul used the conjunction “nor.” In other words, Paul affirmed God’s creation of persons with sex difference (in the human genome), but clarified that “in Christ” the created distinctions no longer are valid to define Jesus’ followers nor to determine their/our function. The relational reality ‘in Christ’ is that human distinctions have no significance, and the only relational outcome of Jesus’ gospel is the new creation (Gal 6:15).

Whatever identity persons claimed based on old algorithms and gender equations is now gone, passed away (2 Cor 5:16-17). Therefore, now the identity of being “in Christ” is distinguished only by the new creation family—that is, the relational outcome when the old algorithm has died and the new has risen. In functional terms, those “in Christ” (as a relational reality, not just conceptually) are adopted as God’s children who, in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit, make heart-to-heart relational connection with the Father without barriers (Gal 4:6-7; Rom 8:14-16). And we all belong together in his family as whole children without distinctions—“one in Christ Jesus,” just as Jesus prayed in his pivotal prayer (Jn 17:11,21-23). The words from God communicate nothing less than this Word. Nevertheless, until this relational reality is distinguished as the experiential truth in our theology—which referential language can only compose as virtual reality and propositional truth—its defining relational outcome will neither determine our gender equation nor unfold in our practice.

Have you been following the gender debates between complementarians and egalitarians over the years and wondered if there is still something essential that is missing? I hope this last section will stimulate not only your mind, but your innermost person as well, because gender issues touch us at that depth of both who we are and whose we are. Yet, the usual gender debates never get to that qualitative depth of our persons created in God’s image and likeness and the relational depth of integrally belonging in God’s family. It hasn’t been helpful for the church that gender debates have remained largely at the level of academic mining of Scripture, leaving us still needing more than just guidelines to follow. If that’s all persons want, well they’ve got what they want—and I’m sure many complementarians and egalitarians are satisfied with their theological tasks. God, however, has created us for much more for our persons and relationships together, which may be threatening to us in our practice or, at least, confronting to our theology.

This last section of theological essentials for the primary gender equation responds to the divisive genderized interpretations about (1) authority and submission between the Father and Son, and (2) the husband’s authority in the family requiring the wife’s submission. These points are central to the complementarian side of the gender equation, and inadequately addressed by the egalitarian side of the gender equation. The common interpretations by both sides (notably in referential language) regarding God’s authority and the Son’s submission to the Father are incompatible (complementarians) or inadequate (egalitarians) with the whole of the Trinity’s self-revelation available to us. Both sides invariably exhibit an incomplete Christology which distorts and reduces the whole-ly Trinity’s self-disclosures distinguished in uncommon relational terms from their common use of referential information. Additionally, the issues of submission and authority in marriage found in Paul’s letters (1 Cor 11:3-16; Eph 5:22-24; 1 Tim 2:11-14) are variously interpreted by each side. Both interpretive approaches use a referential language lens that have negative consequences for the church’s wholeness, which includes fragmenting our view of the Trinity.

Since both sides interpret Scripture apart from whole understanding of the Trinity’s relational context and relational process due to their incomplete Christologies, their interpretations are at best inconclusive. However, what is conclusive is that only a complete Christology illuminates the person-al inter-person-al Trinity sufficiently for us to relationally know the Father, Son, and Spirit; and this relational truth is sufficient to understand Paul and his further illuminating of what all of Christ’s relational work means for females and males together.

On a specific note, when we fragment the Word by selectively elevating only parts, this partiality neither encompasses the Truth nor puts together the whole embodied by his person. Complementarians (such as Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware[34]) have reinforced female subordination/submission to men and male authority as leaders in church and family based on (1) the notion of the Son’s eternal subordination to the Father’s eternal authority over the Son, and (2) Paul’s writings about males as ‘head’ of females, and the wife’s submission to her husband (1 Cor 11:3-16; Eph 5:22-24; 1 Tim 2:11-14). Grudem and his peers emphasize that Jesus claimed to do nothing on his own, but only said and did what the Father told him to, and that God created through the Son (not vice versa), and many similar examples. It is indisputable that the Son functioned in obedience to the Father, thereby establishing the Father’s authority and the Son’s submission. Yet, to reference this fact on the one hand, and to understand its relational reality and significance on the other hand, are essential to distinguish in the theological task. Thus, their conclusion for fixed role differences in the eternal hierarchy is speculative (again, Ps 2:7) and goes “beyond what is written” as Paul warned against (1 Cor 4:7).^{^[35]}

At the beginning of this major section of the chapter, I discussed the vulnerable self-disclosures of the Trinity as embodied in Christ (please review if needed). Our understanding of the Trinity’s interrelations can only be known from what has been revealed in Christ’s life from his words and actions. Though all of the trinitarian relational actions enacted for our sake are beyond our understanding, it is clear from Scripture that at some point the Son was set apart or designated (Ps 2:7; Heb 1:5; 5:5) to fulfill God’s promise (Acts 13:33) for God’s salvific trajectory and path in the human context. That is, as far as Scripture tells us, this subordination of the Son began at some point in order to enact God’s relational response of grace, negating the complementarian novelty of eternal subordination of the Son.

Given the irreducible nature of the holy-uncommon Trinity, we are faced with the reality that the Trinity is present and functions in two distinct contexts: partially in the human context (the economic Trinity), and totally in the unique context distinguishing only the whole-ly Trinity’s relational whole (the immanent Trinity). Human experience and understanding of the Trinity can be only partial and provisional because we are finite beings in a finite context. Therefore we cannot make assumptions about the immanent Trinity in eternity based on the economic Trinity, except what the Son and Spirit reveal. The Son has revealed his subordination to the Father in God’s relational response of grace that involves loving humanity in a “downwards” direction; but beyond this mission to love us downward, there is no Scriptural evidence that this action demonstrates what exists within the immanent Trinity. Consider the following:

God’s self-disclosure is about how God does relationship. As disclosed in the persons of the Trinity: the Father is how God does relationship—not about authority and influence; the Son is how God does relationship vulnerably—not about being the obedient subordinate; the Spirit is how God does relationship in the whole—not about the helper or mediator. In their functional differences, God is always loving us downward. Yet we cannot utilize how each trinitarian person discloses an aspect of how God does relationship in loving downward in order to make reductionist distinctions between them by which to define their persons. Just as we reduce defining human persons (for example, to what we do) and relationships (for example, to role behavior), this becomes a reductionism of God. Likewise, reducing the whole of each trinitarian person to the particular function each one enacts in loving downward becomes a reduction of how God does relationship, thus reducing the primacy of God’s desires, purpose and actions to reconcile us from our condition as well as ongoing tendency “to be apart.” The emphasis on authority and roles does not give us this primacy for relationships nor is it sufficient to reconcile us from being apart—even if our condition “to be apart” only involves relational distance minimizing intimacy in our relationships.[36]

Here we need to assume the relational posture of epistemic humility and acknowledge that we simply cannot know everything about the Trinity; this relational posture may first require our ontological humility. We can, however, relationally experience and know God, which is God’s stated desire (Jer 9:24) and purpose (Jn 14:9; Lk 10:21). But this relational outcome unfolds only on God’s relational terms of grace that defines persons from inner out and determines our function in the intimacy of face-to-face relationship. Epistemic humility reflects a paradigm shift in our interpretive framework and lens, which comes only with our vulnerableness like little children; Jesus clearly made imperative that we need to “change and become like children” (Mt 18:3), who are persons distinguished only without distinctions.

Integral to how the Trinity is involved in relationship is how the trinitarian persons function with each other without their trinitarian distinctions in order for their ontology to be One and to function as the relational Whole. As the embodied Word vulnerably disclosed: “The Father and I are one” (Jn 10:30), therefore, “whoever sees me sees him who sent me” (Jn 12:45), “whoever has seen me, my person, has seen the Father’s person” (Jn 14:9), because there is no distinction in and between the trinitarian persons. For their persons to function with anything less and any substitutes would no longer distinguish the whole-ly Trinity, thereby reducing the Trinity’s ontology and function. Jesus wouldn’t negotiate such a reduction with his disciples—“How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe…?” (Jn 14:9-10). Without knowing the Trinity, their persons as One and their relationships as Whole, we cannot understand our persons and relationships in the Trinity’s image and likeness. Therefore, only the person-al inter-person-al Trinity is essential for our theological anthropology and thereby to compose our gender equation.

The theological trajectory and relational path of the Son integrally involves for his followers in the relational progression of the following: from disciples, to friends (Jn 15:14-15), to adoption into the Father’s new creation family (Jn 8:35; 14:2-3), for which the Spirit is given for reciprocal relationship (Jn 14:18,23,26). Jesus decisively consummated this relational progression with his death and resurrection to redeem us from the common fragmentation and reduction of our persons (based on human differences of gender, race, etc.) and the common’s hierarchical or stratified relationships; conjointly, he saved us to the new creation family raised up in uncommon identity and function—that is, whole persons for whole relationships together—integrally constituted in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity.

Moreover, as Paul would clarify, Christ’s relational work has equalized persons because he “has broken down the dividing wall” [relational barriers of hierarchical relationships, stratified relationships] between those with distinctions” for the sole relational purpose “that he create in his person one new humanity in place of the hierarchy between them, thus making wholeness, and might reconcile those stratified to God in one family…no longer with distinctions but persons as full members of the household of God” (Eph 2:14-19).

This, in relational summary, composes complete Christology for our whole understanding as well as for our experiential truth of the Son’s vulnerable presence and involvement necessary to respond to the human condition of “to be apart” from the Trinity’s family context. The heart of the Trinity is palpable in the person of Jesus (and continues in the Spirit), and we need to understand the depth of the Trinity’s desire and design for us. Unfortunately, the common Christology prevailing in much theological thinking focuses on Jesus’ birth, then sacrifice on the cross to “save us from our sins,” then his resurrection—the sum of which parts add up to incomplete Christology that sustains a theological fog eclipsing the Trinity’s wholeness.

Without complete Christology, we cannot understand the depth of the Father-Son relationship, and the gospel’s heart. This is where our focus needs to be regarding the Trinity: as the ontological One and relational Whole, in order to put into complete perspective the Son’s subordination to the Father during his mission on earth.

Complete Christology is also essential to understand Paul’s concerns. Paul in no way, as some have said, diverged from Jesus’ theological trajectory and relational path, nor did he invent Christianity or domesticate Jesus’ radical new life for believers. Incomplete Christology, referential language, reduced theological anthropology, and a weak view of sin (without reductionism) form the basis for such claims. Thus, just as we need to listen to Jesus’ relational language without our genderized hermeneutic, so too do we need to view Paul in this way. That is, our view of Paul needs to be redeemed from preconceptions and corrected before we can see and hear Paul’s desires and concerns for the church.

The depth of Paul’s whole person is usually overlooked in typical Pauline and NT studies, which focus on secondary historical and literary issues. How can we understand what Paul meant when we don’t adequately examine where Paul is coming from, that is, beyond merely his human contexts to his primary context? There is no question that Paul’s perspectives were the outcome of his face-to-face intimate personal relationship with God, having dramatically experienced being equalized from his very reduced theological anthropology (Acts 22; Phil 3:4-6).^{^[37]} His new life was fully defined and determined by his reciprocal relational response of love to the relational grace that touched his person to his core. This was Paul’s experiential truth of the gospel of Christ, and that which he expressed in his conjoint fight for the wholeness of God’s new creation family (Gal 6:15b; 2 Cor 5:16-17) and against reductionism of that wholeness in all its expressions in persons’ identity and function (e.g. Gal 3:1-3,6:15a; 2 Cor 5:12).

Additionally, Paul functioned in two contexts just as Christ did: the Trinity’s relational context and its trinitarian relational process of family love, and the human context. It was always the former that defined Paul’s person and determined his function in the latter, in the dynamic of reciprocating contextualization, just as it was for Jesus. Although Paul was addressing persons in the human contexts, Paul spoke from beyond those contexts— that is, from the primary trinitarian relational context and process of family love—into the human contexts. Accordingly, Paul did not let the human context determine his involvement in the various churches—a common perspective that egalitarians incorrectly promote, and which is the defining perspective common to Pauline studies.

Furthermore, in matters of interpretation of Scripture, complementarians and egalitarians alike have taken liberties with Paul’s letters, doing just what he warned against:

Paul, himself, had clarified for God’s people the definitive basis necessary for
operation in epistemology, hermeneutics, and thus theology: “Nothing beyond what is written” (1 Cor 4:1-7). This was a key statement about the source defining Paul’s purpose and determining his practice and theology, as well as his reciprocal relational responsibility determining his fight against human shaping and construction (“who makes you different,” 4:7), which reduced (“went beyond”) the truth of the whole gospel (cf. Paul’s functional clarity and distinction of the gospel, Gal 1:6-12).[38]

The following are brief summaries of highly debated portions of three of Paul’s letters addressed to women, for which we need to understand Paul’s primary concerns. We need to keep in mind the context of Paul’s dual fight for the gospel (for wholeness and against reductionism). Failure to take Paul’s overarching concerns into account will always result in reduced understanding of both Paul and the gospel of wholeness (Eph 6:15). Additionally, Paul was clear about God’s theological trajectory that includes creation, and he contextualized his responses about gender into the original creation of “male and female” (as paragenders) in the image and likeness of whole of God (Trinity). Notably, he makes the critical distinction between issues that are quantitative-functional and thus secondary, from those that are qualitative-relational and thus primary.

This discussion won’t reiterate all the points of debate, but responds more broadly to some key points, and addresses the more critical issues of epistemology (how we know what we know) and hermeneutic lenses that are used by egalitarians and complementarians.[39]

1 Cor 11:3-16 Just as Paul was concerned about slaves,[40] Paul cared about the whole inner-out identity and function of women, who ‘in the Lord’ (v.11) enjoyed the release from genderized limits and constraints on their persons. While there are statements made by Paul that appear to reinforce stratified social conditions (for slaves and women), this is how Paul has been misperceived (just as Jesus was) due to using a referentialized lens, especially by complementarians. Rather, Paul was urging both slaves and women to define their persons first and foremost from inner-out, to be whole and function whole in the primacy of the new creation—the outcome of redemptive reconciliation (2 Cor 5:17-18).

In the church at Corinth, there was disagreement about women covering their heads while praying or prophesying in their worship gatherings, which, in Christ, they were no longer bound to follow (v.16). Complementarians use this passage to justify husbands to have authority over wives. However, in his response to the Corinthians, Paul contextualized his response with creation, in which his use of “head” needs clarification, as follows:

     In chronological and functional order, Christ participated in the creation of all things and its whole, as Paul later made definitive in the cosmology of his theological systemic framework (Col 1:16-17). Thus, “Christ is the head (kephale, principal or first) of every created man” (1 Cor 11:3). The embodied Christ also became the kephale “over all things for the church” (Eph 1:22) and the first to complete the dynamic of redemptive reconciliation as its functional key (Col 1:18). Whether Paul combines the embodied Christ with creator Christ as the kephale of man is not clear in 1 Cor 11:3. The creator Christ certainly has the qualitative significance of the embodied Christ, conversely, yet highlighting the chronological-functional order has a different emphasis in this context.
     This quantitative difference is confirmed by “the head of Christ” is God. Since the Creator (the Father and the Son with the Spirit) precedes the creation, creator Christ is…first in order before Adam. It follows that Adam came first in the creation narrative before Eve, thus this husband (or man, aner) was created before his wife (or woman, gyne). This is only a quantitative significance Paul is highlighting. If Christ later became God, then there would be a qualitative significance to “God is the head of Christ.” Christ as the embodied God was neither less than God nor subordinate to God, yet in functional order the Son followed and fulfilled what the Father initiated (e.g., Jn 6:38-39; Acts 13:32-33).
     The quantitative significance of this chronological-functional order has been
misinterpreted by a different lens than Paul’s and misused apart from his intended purpose by concerns for the sake of self-autonomy and self-determination, even self-justification efforts—which have reduced human ontology and function and fragment relationships together. Paul expands on the quantitative significance with application to prayer and whether the head should have a covering or not (11:4-7).

The quantitative significance of head coverings during prayer is connected by Paul to the chronological-functional order in creation. While such practice is actually secondary (11:16), Paul uses it to illustrate an underlying issue. Apparently, for a man to cover his head was to void or deny that Christ is the head, who created man in the image and glory of God (11:7). For a woman to be uncovered implies her independence from the creative order, implying her self-determination, which in Paul’s view she needed to be purified of (11:6; cf. Lev 14:8) because she was created from the qualitative substance of the first human person in the same image and glory of God (11:7). Her glory cannot be reduced to being “the glory of man” but nothing less and no substitutes of the man’s glory, that is, in the same image and glory of God. This distinction of glory is critical for understanding the basis used for defining gender ontology and, more likely, for determining gender function in reductionism or wholeness. Yet, it would also be helpful for women to have for themselves a clear basis (exousia) for distinguishing their whole ontology and function to grasp their position and purpose in the created order (as angels needed, 11:10).[41]

Therefore, the matter of “head” needs to be understood in secondary quantitative terms of the chronological and functional order of creation (vv.8-9). Paul’s qualitative-relational statement that “in the Lord” woman and man are not independent of each other, also ties back to the original paragender equation in primordial garden where God claimed it “not good to be apart” (Gen 2:18) and “naked without shame (2:25)—which is the qualitative and therefore primary significance in Paul’s writing. Paul reminds his listeners that “all things come from God” (vv.11-12), who is the relational head of all in both authority and source/origin (Col 1:18-20).

Egalitarians generally understand “the husband is the head (kephalē) of the wife” in the non-authoritarian sense of “source” and “origin” (Eve was formed from Adam’s rib). Complementarians understand this phrase to mean the husband’s role is as the leader, having authority over his wife who submits to him, just as Christ has authority over the church. None of these understandings is conclusive from the text itself.[42] Complementarians, who use a suspect interpretive method, elicit the authority-submission sense from ‘head’, and this interpretation needs to be accountable for promoting a hierarchical structure in marriage and how that teaching diminishes whole persons—males and females—and whole relationships together. Egalitarians also fragment persons and relationships by using other distinctions to define what they have and thus can do, whereby stratified persons and relationships are unavoidable. The reality from the primordial garden is that stratified and hierarchical relationships both preclude intimate relational connection, because they are structured by the relational distance (“to be apart”) inherent to the shame of distinctions, and thereby, counter the reconciled and equalized relationships essential to the new creation family (2 Cor 5:17-18; Eph 2:13-22).

Eph 5:21-24 Paul’s instructions to the Ephesian church on submission are regularly used by complementarians to justify male authority over females who submit, notably in marriage. Even though Paul opens this passage with “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” complementarians are quick to ignore this and point out that wives, not husbands, are told to submit to their spouses. And despite claims that this in no way demeans the wife (and many women are willing participants), this perspective reflects a reduced theological anthropology defining males and females by role functions, thereby employing the sin of reductionism.

Egalitarians stress mutual submission as equals (‘mutuality’ being their operative term), and in one sense, this reflects an equality between persons. Yet, egalitarians also use a default outer-in hermeneutic focusing on ‘what to do’, as shown by this statement on the CBE website: “The wife's submission is merely an example of mutual submission; so is the husband sacrificing his life for his wife.”^{^[43]} This latter statement reflects in its writer the common incomplete Christology that defines Christ’s love primarily in terms of his sacrifice, based on Jesus’ statement “greater love has no one...but to lay down his life…” (Jn 15:13). Yet sacrifice is not God’s definition of love (cf. Mt 9:13), nor does sacrifice define the love of the Son for the Father. Without having addressed theological anthropology and the sin of reductionism, egalitarians also reinforce reduction of all persons, inadvertently or simply by ignoring what’s primary.

Submission for God is the expression of love that takes precedence over personal freedom that we each have in Christ, as described here (and to be expanded on in the next chapter):

Since family love is involvement of the whole person in reciprocal relationship together conjointly with each other and with the Spirit, another important necessity in this relational process is to submit one’s person to one another (hypotasso, Eph 5:21). Paul does not make this an imperative because as a participle (hypotassomenoi) it directly defines the relational means by which his prior relational imperatives for the church are engaged (Eph 5:1-2,8,15,18b). Hypotasso makes definitive both the relational nature of the new creation and the relational primacy of God’s new creation family before the individual, thus its priority over individual self-autonomy, self-determination or self-justification. Hypotasso becomes a reductionist act when taken out of the relational context of Paul’s imperatives and engaged apart from the relational process of family love.[44]

Hypotasso was an important operative dynamic for Paul, and husbands are just as accountable for this relational involvement as wives. However, in speaking to husbands about loving their wives as Christ loves the church, Paul appears to be addressing husbands specifically to their needed depth of relational involvement in the family. All persons need to understand that love (agapē) is not the common notion about what one does (even sacrifice), but the depth of relational involvement in relational likeness of the trinitarian persons. This certainly requires husbands to be deeply sensitive to and aware of their wives’ whole person, without gender stereotypes and without paternalism. Paul is edifying the men beyond their old gender equations to see their wives with the original paragender equation in the primordial garden (v.31). The men needing more help in their theological anthropology also seems to be the reason that Paul tells fathers, not mothers, how to be more deeply involved with their children (6:4). Certainly, there is shame for both genders in the old equation, but shifting to the paragender equation is likely more difficult for males—they have more to “lose.”

Whenever complementarians use their default gender hermeneutic that automatically places men as ‘better’ than women, they inevitably misinterpret Paul’s deeper meaning of hypotasso (Eph 5:1):

“Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in agapē, as Christ loved us” are relational imperatives for the new creation church family, which by their very nature necessitate being submitted to one another based on experiencing the love from Christ’s submission.[45]

What is being illuminated by Paul about submission “just as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34) is the need to be vulnerable with our whole person in order to be relationally involved in the depth of love. This then raises the urgent question: Who has more difficulty being vulnerable from inner out?

1 Tim 2:11-14 Paul’s concern in this portion of the letter to Timothy and the church at Ephesus is how persons—both men and women—were involved in prayer gatherings. It is helpful to be aware of three issues involved in our practice as Jesus’ followers: (1) the integrity (i.e. relational righteousness) of the person we present to others, (2) the quality of our communication expressed by the presentation of our person, and (3) the relational depth of our involvement while engaged with others, God and other persons.

Paul addressed both men and women about the persons they presented. Apparently the men were staying relationally distant by being argumentative instead of praying from their uncommon identity (“holy hands,” v.8). Women were focused on the secondary outer-in concern about clothes and hair, but Paul wanted them to focus on their qualitative inner-out function (“good works,” v.9-10). The following excerpts illuminate deeper understanding of a passage that corrects the biased reading by complementarians, and counters the egalitarian version of merely cultural accommodation by Paul to calm a chaotic situation:

The issue for Paul was not about dressing modestly and decently, with appropriateness. Again, Paul was not seeking the conformity of women to a behavioral code. While modesty is not the issue, highlighting one’s self to draw attention to what one has and does is only part of the issue. When Paul added “suitable” (NRSV) or “propriety” (NIV) to this matter and later added “modesty” (NRSV), “propriety” (NIV) to another matter (2:15), the same term, sophrosyne, is more clearly rendered “sound mindset.” That is, Paul was qualifying these matters by

pointing to the necessary interpretive lens (phroneo) to distinguish reductionist practice from wholeness—the new interpretive framework (phronema) and lens (phroneo) from the dynamic of redemption and baptism into Christ (Rom 8:5-6). The underlying issue for Paul, therefore, is whole human ontology and function, or the only alternative of reduced human ontology and function. Paul’s initial focus on men clearly indicates that this issue equally applies to men.[46]

….This is also the lens and focus of the process of learning for women. Yet, Paul appears to constrain and conform women to keeping quiet (hesychia) as objects in the learning process. Rather, hesychia signifies ceasing from one’s human effort—specifically engaged in defining one’s self and notably to fill oneself with more knowledge to further define one’s self with what one has (cf. 1 Cor 8:1)—and, with Paul’s lens, to submit one’s person from inner out for vulnerable involvement in the relational epistemic process with God (further qualifying 1 Cor 14:35). Certainly, this learning process equally applies to men (cf. 1 Cor 2:13; Gal 1:11-12).

….[H]is further communication to Timothy about women appears incongruent with God’s relational whole created in relational likeness to the whole of God: “no women to teach or to have authority” (1 Tim 2:12). The lens and focus of the relational epistemic process continued to apply in Paul’s directive for women. Information and knowledge about God gained from a conventional epistemic process from outer in do not have the depth of significance to teach in the church, that is, teach to God’s relational whole on the basis of God’s relational terms. Such information and knowledge may have functional significance to define those human persons by what they have but have no relational significance to God and qualitative significance for God’s family. The term for authority (authenteō) denotes one acting by her own authority or power, which in this context is based on the human effort to define one’s self further by the possession of more information and knowledge, even if about God. Therefore, Paul will not allow such women of reduced ontology and function to assume leadership in God’s family. Moreover, he would not advocate for Christian freedom for women to be the means for their self-autonomy and self-determination, because the consequence, at best, would be some form of ontological simulation and epistemological illusion, that is, only reduced ontology and function. He turns to the creation narrative to support this position (2:13-14).[47]

Paul then closes this section with the seemingly reduced stereotype for women, “she will be saved through childbearing,” which is only a secondary function that relates back to creation. However, Paul frames this with the qualifier:

That is, women are sozo [saved] while they engage in secondary functions—as identified initially in the creative narrative by childbearing, but not limited solely to this secondary function—based not on the extent of their secondary functions but entirely on ongoing involvement in the relational contingency (“if they continue in,” Gk active voice, subjunctive mood) of what is primary: the vulnerable relational response of trust (“faith”) and the vulnerable relational involvement with others in family love (“agape”) only on God’s relational terms from inner out (“holiness”) with a sound mindset (“sophrosyne”), the new phronema-framework and phroneo-lens from the dynamic of baptism into Christ and redemptive reconciliation. Women’s ontology and function pivot on this contingency.[48]

Paul emphasizes the primacy of God’s uncommon relational context and process characterized by “they continue in faith and love and holiness, with sophrosyne” (v.15), in which the old measures of personhood for females (e.g. appearance, childbearing) no longer define them. Rather, it is their relational condition of having been saved that needs to be nurtured in the primacy of qualitative-relational identity and function. These were issues of the new gender equation in everyday life that the believers at Ephesus were dealing with, and that Paul was nurturing them in. For us today, similar matters related to transformation from genderized and fragmented persons to paragenders are addressed in the next chapter. And Paul provides us with whole theological understanding of all that we are conjointly saved from and saved to, for our theology and practice to be whole-ly.

Galatians 3:28 This is a key verse for egalitarians, where Paul declares that in Christ there is “no longer male and female.” This statement is clearly about equality between males and female, stemming from Jesus’ salvific work to break down the dividing walls between persons (Eph 2:13-17). Therefore, egalitarians correctly conclude that (1) women have equal access to the same roles and functions as men, specifically the position of senior/lead pastor; (2) wives and husbands are to function in mutual submission to each other in marriage and family, for the husband is no longer the authoritative ‘head’. Egalitarians also gather other evidence from Scripture, notably those depicting female leaders in the OT, and female disciples and early church leaders to back their claims for equality. Egalitarians write prodigiously showing that in the Bible, women fulfilled the same functions as their male counterparts, with the only difference being that there were fewer women in those functions. Based on these texts, egalitarians conclude for equality of status and authority for women. Yet this equality has to be extricated from its fragmented roots—and their tap root of sin as reductionism—which egalitarians haven’t recognized, in order to be transformed into true biblical equality signified by a whole theological anthropology.

The area of concern that egalitarians miss (or ignore) is the reduced identity and function inherent in their emphasis on what women do or have, notably “gifting” of leadership or teaching (e.g. Eph 4:8, 11-12). Paul certainly did write about gifts, but how gifts and gifting are understood is critical. When “gifting” is the defining matter for women’s identity and function, and church leadership is determined on the basis of this secondary criteria of what women have and thus can do, this is the dynamic of reductionism that ushers in stratified relations—not necessarily hierarchical, but at the very least, creating horizontal relational barriers. This lack demonstrates the lack of coherence for piecing together (syniēmi) the words from God in their version of biblical equality.

A further example of egalitarians inadequately interpreting Paul is due to their referential lens, resulting in the absence of deeply understanding Paul’s use of ‘in Christ’. Whereas ‘in Christ’ was Paul’s shorthand term to delineate a person’s ongoing dynamic reciprocal relationship (with the Trinity), egalitarians merely assume the common understanding of a static spiritual status of having a relationship with Christ. For Paul “in Christ there is no longer male and female” is the relational reality that persons experience on the basis of (1) having undergone the turn-around change from the old to new gender algorithm as paragenders, and (2) functioning in everyday life in their new whole identity and function, no longer defined and determined by reduced parameters of all human differences (gender, race, ethnicity, social status), and no longer relating to others on the basis of those same criteria. Again, the only thing that mattered to Paul was for persons to live together as the new creation (Gal 6:15; 2 Cor 5:16-17) as persons without the veil of distinctions, transformed into the image and likeness of the whole-ly Trinity (2 Cor 3:18)—thereby connecting back to Paul’s view of paragenders in creation. This is why and how we as individuals and corporately as church cannot choose only one human distinction (e.g. sexism) without also addressing the others (e.g. race).

In various ways, Paul also “critiques” what are the present egalitarian implications of equality, along with justice, for women, which will be expanded on in Chapter 5.

Whether we are conscious of it or not in the theological task, any gender equation makes a statement about both its defining theological anthropology and its view of the image and likeness of God composing persons. When gender distinctions, or related human differences, are at the core of a gender equation, that gender equation uses a reduced theological anthropology fragmenting persons from their wholeness. Furthermore, this fragmentation of persons from their wholeness also unavoidably compromises the integrity of persons in the image and likeness of God. That is, that image and likeness are no longer whole, which then implies not only the reduction of human persons but also the trinitarian persons and thus the whole-ly Trinity. While this fragmentary theology may be inadvertent, nevertheless this is the inevitable consequence in a theological task using a reduced theological anthropology; and the variable distinctions emerging from such gender equations continue to reinforce and sustain the fragmentation of wholeness in human identity and function, as well as the constituting image and likeness of the Trinity.

Complementarians use gender distinctions (intentionally creating hierarchy of persons) and egalitarians use other human distinctions (unintentionally creating stratification between persons) in their respective gender equations. The consequence in their theological tasks is that neither has faced, transformed, or perhaps understood their reduced theological anthropology and view of the Trinity that has compromised their image and likeness in ‘anything less and any substitutes’ for the whole-ly Trinity. Therefore, neither follow Jesus’ whole person in his paragender equation, nor have they fully understood his gospel of wholeness to the new creation.

It doesn’t serve God or any person to continue in what amounts to the status quo for theology all these years. Despite the positive spin the complementarians use to promote their perspective, their teachings promote ontological equality but reinforce and sustain inferiority of females and superiority of males in hierarchical relationships—which can be either overt, as in sexual harassment/abuse and denial, or covert, as in implicit bias and paternalism—all of which sustains the condition of women and girls (and some males) as ‘lost lambs’ relationally “to be apart.”

On the other side of the same coin, egalitarians put their own spin on their perspectives, promoting their equality of identity and function that is not based on God’s relational terms of grace, but shaped by the human terms of what women have/do. Thus, egalitarians also reinforce and sustain comparative distinctions of ‘better’ and ‘less’, which fragment persons and reduce their relationships. Even though they oppose gendered hierarchy in human relations, egalitarians still indirectly promote (intentionally or unintentionally) the relational distance unavoidable in stratified relationships. They may succeed in the illusion of “flattening” church leadership structures, but they maintain dividing walls of secondary criteria in a comparative process, and this relational condition “to be apart” leads some lambs to wander far off, while female shepherds fall short of their whole function and relational purpose.

The diversity of views on gender, and other related human issues, indicate the theological fog enveloping our theology and the practice we exercise from it. Theological fog blurs the distinct line between theology and ideology. Ideology (or the more religious-sounding “tradition,” as in “tradition of the elders,” Mt 7:3-5) is conflated with theology, which then confuses the latter by the former (cf. 7:6-9). Ideology composes human ideas and thinking, namely as speculations and assumptions of “knowing good and evil—like God” (Gen 3:5), which simply extends the illusion from the primordial garden.

Ideology as theology is composed by ‘the words of God’ as referential information to express ideas about God. When the words of God displace ‘the words from God’, human referential terms transpose God’s relational terms into theological ideas and thinking speaking in place of God. That is to say, ‘theology as God speaking’ is replaced by human shaping, biases and assumptions, the sum of which composes the ideology as theology that sustains the theological fog enveloping our theology and practice today. In theological studies, the historical theology of tradition should lend support for biblical theology but not determine it. However, any theological interpretation by both based on the words of God has not distinguished their theology from ideology in the surrounding fog. There is a fine line between the composition of the words of God in referential terms and the words from God in relational terms; their critical difference is subtly obscured by reductionism—a defining condition in the theological task that remains with a weak view of sin. Until we return to the words from God and let God speak without qualifications, the fog will not be lifted—and we will continue to support our ideology as if to “know good and evil, like God,” and thereby maintain our current gender equations as norms in our practice, individually and corporately as church, including those in the academy preoccupied with the words of God. This is not only a challenge by the Word from God but his relational confrontation in love for the whole purpose of our primary identity and function.

Here we are in the 21^st century, and the church has yet to fully comprehend and live the gospel of Christ—as Mary demonstrated for us and Paul clarified—to be redeemed and transformed new as paragenders composing the Father’s new creation family (2 Cor 5:17). We haven’t yet been redeemed to intimate and equalized relationships together that are integrally the image and likeness of the Trinity. Theological fog and ideology about gender are symptomatic of our failure to “Listen to my Son” as the Father instructed Jesus’ disciples (Mt 17:5), and to respond to Jesus’ imperative to “pay attention to how you listen” (Lk 8:18), heeding his paradigm “the measure of your person you give in relationship together and thus use in your theological task will be the measure of persons and relationships you get in your gender equation—nothing more” (Mk 4:24).

By not paying close attention to all of the embodied Word’s relational language, by not “changing and becoming vulnerable in our innermost like little children” (Mt 18:3; 19:14; cf. 1 Pet 2:1-2)—which Jesus makes imperative for a transformed relational epistemology (cf. Lk 10:21)—our theological anthropology remains embedded in the old gender algorithm, no matter where we stand on gender issues.

Oh, whole-ly Mary, where are you today? We deeply need your vulnerable new identity and function as a paragender proclaimed among us to clearly illuminate the whole gospel and its new creation relational outcome ‘already’. And my sisters and brothers, as God’s church family, we need to clear out the theological fog, and vulnerably turn from defining our self and others based on outer-in secondary criteria from reductionism, in order for us to emerge as our Father’s new creation family as one together in our created wholeness—persons and relationships together, nothing less and no substitutes for the image and likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

Has your gender equation resolved the bôsh of anything less and any substitutes?

[1] For an in-depth examination of Christ as these keys, see T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology A Theological & Functional Study of the Whole of Jesus (Christology Study, 2008). Online at http://4X12.org, 11-12, and entire study.

[2] For further insightful and helpful examinations of Jesus’ life and practice, see various studies by T. Dave Matsuo, references in bibliography and also available online at www.4X12.org.

[3] T, Dave Matsuo, Jesus into Paul: Embodying the Theology and Hermeneutic of the Whole Gospel (Integration Study, 2012). Online at http://4X12.org, 9.

[4] Http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-pschological-research-that-helps-explain-the-election. For a list of psychology articles on coalition thinking (or coalition psychology), see https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/topics/coalition.htm.

[5] Ann Friedman, “Lessons in repeat listening,” Los Angeles Times, Thursday, May 24, 2018. The New York Times has a tool that allows you to change the audio frequencies so you can hear the word you couldn’t before, at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html.

[6] The difference in auditory perception may be attributed to the sound wave frequencies involved.

[7] Michael S. Kimmel, The Gendered Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 199.

[8] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person in Complete Context: The Whole of Theological Anthropology Distinguished (Theological Anthropology Study, 2014); online at http://4X12.org, 29.

[9] For an informative TED Talk on this topic, listen to cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky, at https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think. Nov. 2017.

[10] T. Dave Matsuo, Jesus into Paul: Embodying the Theology and Hermeneutic of the Whole Gospel (Integration Study, 2012). Online at http://4X12.org, 93.

[11] In two other studies, I examine more fully God’s relational language as the key to worship that has relational significance to God, and to us as worshipers. See Embodying New the Worship Relationship: Whole Theology and Practice Required (Worship Study, 2015); and Hermeneutic of Worship Language: Understanding Communion with the Whole of God (Worship Language Study, 2013). Both studies are online at http://4X12.org.

[12] For a full and helpful discussion of the integration of God’s righteousness, peace, justice, and faithfulness, see T. Dave Matsuo, Jesus’ Gospel of Essential Justice: The Human Order from Creation through Complete Salvation (Justice Study, 2018); online at http://4X12.org, 45-51, 68, 93.

[13] For a deep study on wholeness, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Person, the Trinity, the Church: The Call to Be Whole and the Lure of Reductionism (Wholeness Study, 2006); online at http://4X12.org.

[14] For a full discussion of God’s theological trajectory involving his strategic shift, tactical shift, and functional shift, see T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology, 78-97.

[15] In 1974, the Evangelical Women’s Caucus (EWC) was formed (part of Evangelicals for Social Action) to engage in equality and justice issues for women. In 1986, EWC affirmed same-sex couples (along with race and justice causes), causing some members to split off and form as CBE. EWC renamed itself Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus (EEWC, now called Christian Feminists Today, or CFT). Of these two biblical feminist organizations, CBE is the more conservative in upholding marriage between women and men, and CFT is the more liberal branch and include in their members practicing same-sex couples.

[16] Https://www.cbeinternational.org/content/cbes-mission.

[17] For an exhaustive presentation of egalitarian views, see Ronald W. Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, and Gordon D. Fee, eds., Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

[18] Https://cbmw.org/.

[19] Each of these items is expanded upon on their website https://cbmw.org/about/mission-vision/.

[20] Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Faith: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions (Sister, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2004), 423.

[21] For an insightful, compelling alternative theological discussion about the subordination of the Son in the economy of the Trinity’s salvific action, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Person, the Trinity, the Church, 29-43.

[22] For an alternative perspective on the controversial 1 Timothy 2 passage, see discussion in T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 288-91. See also soft complementarian articles in Mark Husbands and Timothy Larsen, eds., Women, Ministry and the Gospel: Exploring New Paradigms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).

[23] For example, Sarah Sumner, “Forging a Middle Way Between Complementarians and Egalitarians,” in Mark Husbands and Timothy Larsen, eds., Women, Ministry and the Gospel, 257. Also, Michelle Lee-Barnewall, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate (Ada, MI: Baker Publishing Group: 2016).

[24] For a full discussion of this understanding of the Trinity, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity: The Trinitarian Essential for the Whole of God & Life (Trinity Study, 2016). Online at http://4X12.org., 127-165.

[25] T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity, 118.

[26] T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology, 26-27.

[27] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person in Complete Context, 90.

[28] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person in Complete Context, 94-95.

[29] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person in Complete Context, 95.

[30] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person, the Trinity, the Church, 17.

[31] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person, the Trinity, the Church, 14.

[32] For a full discussion about this issue of epistemology in this interaction, see T. Dave Matsuo’s studies,

The Gospel of Transformation: Distinguishing the Discipleship and Ecclesiology Integral to Salvation (Transformation Study, 2015), and “Did God Really Say That?” Theology in the Age of Reductionism (Theology Study, 2013), both available online at http://4X12.org.

[33] Peter mentioned to his readers that Paul’s letters “contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures,” (2 Pet 3:16). Gal 3:28 certainly could qualify as difficult to understand and easy to distort when using referential language and when reductionism defines persons. I speculate that Paul’s fierce critics intentionally distorted Paul’s meaning in Gal 3:28 in order to discredit him, and cause disruption of the gospel, which might explain why in his subsequent letters “male and female” are not included with other pairs of distinctions (e.g. 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11).

[34] Bruce Ware is a professor of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and former president of the Evangelical Theological Society.

[35] Since June 2016, some complementarian pastors and scholars (including the current president of CBMW, Denny Burk) have rejected as incorrect theology of the Trinity Grudem and Ware’s position about the eternal subordination of the Son. However, it doesn’t appear that this “change” has any teeth, for example, as an official position of CBMW. Instead, CBMW is now focusing its attention to oppose alternative gender identities as unbiblical. I was unable to find any current information about the status of this matter and what, if any, application it has to the complementarian gender equation. Thus, this discussion proceeds under the impression that the view of functional hierarchy in the Trinity is still taught, thereby reinforcing husband-wife hierarchy in marriage.

[36] T. Dave Matsuo, The Person, the Trinity, the Church, 37; I strongly suggest studying the full context from which this excerpt it taken. There isn’t adequate space to include it here.

[37] The perspectives on Paul summarized here are illuminated in greater depth in T. Dave Matsuo’s, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 283-292. This involves our own relational epistemic process for the theological task. For further study of the critical issues involved in the theological task, see T. Dave Matsuo, “Did God Really Say That?” Theology in the Age of Reductionism.

[38] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 40.

[39] For those of you who aren’t familiar with the complementarian case for eternal authority of the Father and eternal submission of the Son, it’s quite easy to find sources online starting with the websites for CBMW and CBE International, the main evangelical complementarian and egalitarian organizations.

[40] Please see discussion about Paul on slaves in T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 283-84.

[41] For the entire discussion of this passage, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 287.

[42] For an expanded discussion on what ‘head’ isn’t clearly indicated to mean in the passage, see NT professor emeritus Gordon D. Fee, “Praying and Prophesying in the Assemblies: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, 144-160.

[43] NT professor Craig Keener, “The Case for Mutual Submission in Ephesians 5,” posted June 1, 2016, online at https://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/case-mutual-submission-ephesians-5. Accessed July 6, 2018.

[44] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 244.

[45] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 244.

[46] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 289.

[47] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 290.

[48] T. Dave Matsuo, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology, 291.