What distinguishes complementarianism from egalitarianism?

Question 9107.

The complementarian and egalitarian positions are the two main answers evangelicals give to the question of how men and women relate in the home and in the church, and the labels get thrown about with far more confidence than accuracy. Before anyone can decide between them, they need to know what each actually claims, and what both hold in common.

I hold a complementarian position, and I will say why. But I want to describe the alternative as its best advocates would describe it, because a caricature is easy to defeat and worth nothing when you have defeated it.

What both positions agree on

It is worth beginning here, because the shared ground is larger than the disputed ground. Complementarian and egalitarian evangelicals both affirm that men and women are equally made in the image of God, equally fallen, equally redeemed by the blood of Jesus, equally indwelt by the Spirit, and equally gifted for service in the body. Both affirm that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28).

Both also affirm that Scripture is the final authority and that the question must be settled from the text rather than from cultural pressure in either direction. Anyone who tells you that egalitarians simply follow the culture, or that complementarians simply defend their privileges, has stopped arguing about the Bible and started arguing about motives.

What complementarianism teaches

The complementarian position holds that God has given men and women equal worth and distinct roles, and that this distinction is grounded in creation rather than in the fall or in culture. In the church, it reserves the office of elder and the primary regular teaching ministry of the gathered congregation for qualified men. In marriage, it understands the husband to carry a responsibility of loving, sacrificial headship.

The main texts are 1 Timothy 2:11 to 14, where Paul grounds his instruction in the order of creation, 1 Corinthians 11, where he grounds the ordering of man and woman in creation again, 1 Corinthians 14:34 to 35, and the qualification lists for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, which assume a man in view.

What complementarianism does not teach, whatever some of its adherents have practised, is that women are less capable, less intelligent, less spiritual, or subordinate in nature. The position concerns function within an ordered arrangement, not the value of persons, and where it has been used to justify domination it has been abused.

What egalitarianism teaches

The egalitarian position holds that God has given men and women equal worth and equal access to every role, and that any hierarchy of function between them is a consequence of the fall rather than a feature of creation. On this view the redemptive direction of Scripture moves towards the removal of such distinctions, and Galatians 3:28 states the principle that the church should be working out.

Egalitarian readers point to Deborah judging Israel, to Huldah the prophetess, to Priscilla instructing Apollos (Acts 18:26), to Phoebe commended as a servant of her church, and to Junia as noteworthy among the apostles. They read the restrictive passages as addressing specific disorders in specific congregations rather than establishing a permanent order.

The best egalitarian scholarship is not careless with the text. It argues, seriously, that the complementarian reading imports later assumptions into passages that will not bear them, and it deserves an answer rather than a dismissal.

Where complementarian and egalitarian views part

Strip away the heat and the complementarian and egalitarian disagreement comes down to one question: does Paul ground his instructions in creation or in circumstance? Everything else follows from that. If the ground is creation, the instruction stands wherever the creation account stands, which is everywhere and always. If the ground is circumstance, the instruction applies where the circumstance applies.

This is why I find the complementarian reading more persuasive. In 1 Timothy 2 Paul says for Adam was formed first, then Eve. In 1 Corinthians 11 he reaches back to the same account. He could have appealed to reputation, to the weakness of new converts, or to local scandal, and in other places he does exactly that. Here he does not.

Where the debate goes wrong

It goes wrong when either side argues from consequences. Complementarians sometimes point to declining churches that appointed women and treat that as proof; egalitarians sometimes point to abusive churches that did not and treat that as proof. Both are arguments from outcomes rather than from Scripture, and both prove less than they appear to.

It goes wrong when the complementarian and egalitarian labels become identity markers. Once a position becomes a tribe, people defend it because of who else holds it, and the text drops out of the conversation entirely. I have watched that happen in more than one congregation, and nobody was persuaded of anything.

Where I stand

I hold a thoughtfully complementarian position. The eldership and primary regular teaching ministry of the gathered church are for qualified men, reflecting the consistent pattern of the pastoral epistles. I affirm women without reservation in evangelism, pastoral care, counselling, children’s and youth work, prayer, prophecy, and preaching in appropriate contexts, and I affirm women serving as deacons.

That is not a restriction of women’s gifts; it is a recognition of a specific functional order in the life of the gathered church. And I would say to anyone weighing the complementarian and egalitarian positions that if your experience of complementarianism has been a general suppression of women rather than one specific ordering, you have met something the New Testament does not teach. Related reading: 1 Timothy 2:12 in context, handling disagreement in the church, and can women teach and preach.

How the two readings handle the same texts

It is instructive to watch complementarian and egalitarian interpreters work through the same passage. On 1 Timothy 2, the complementarian emphasises the appeal to Adam and Eve as a ground that precedes culture; the egalitarian emphasises the present tense of I do not permit and the situation in Ephesus.

On Galatians 3:28, the complementarian says Paul is describing equal standing before God in justification, since the surrounding verses are about being sons and heirs through faith (Galatians 3:26-29); the egalitarian says the verse states a principle whose implications the church has been slow to work out.

On Romans 16, both sides agree that Paul commends women warmly. They differ over whether those commendations describe activity that a complementarian reading can accommodate, and much of the complementarian and egalitarian dispute lives in exactly that question.

Two cautions about the labels

The first caution is that both labels cover a wide range. Some complementarians restrict only the eldership; others restrict women from any public speaking, which is a position the New Testament itself contradicts. Some egalitarians differ only over the eldership; others move on to revise how Scripture speaks about God. Knowing which version of complementarian and egalitarian thinking you are dealing with is half the conversation.

The second caution is that neither label appears in the Bible. They are useful modern shorthand for clusters of conclusions, and they can quietly become the thing being defended. When someone says they are complementarian, the follow-up question should always be what they think the text says, because that is the only thing that settles anything.

I would rather talk about passages than positions. The complementarian and egalitarian labels are a starting point for a conversation, and they make a very poor substitute for one.

What each position risks

Every position carries a characteristic danger, and naming them honestly helps. The complementarian risk is that a restriction on one office hardens into a culture where women are quietly discouraged from everything, and where gifted believers spend decades unused. I have seen that, and it is a real loss to the church.

The egalitarian risk runs the other way. Once the appeal to creation in the pastoral epistles is treated as culturally bound, the same method is available for other apostolic instructions, and history suggests it tends to be used. That is not a prediction about any individual; it is an observation about hermeneutics.

Anyone weighing the complementarian and egalitarian options should ask which risk their own church is nearer to, because that is usually the more urgent question. Doctrine is worked out in real congregations rather than in the abstract, and the complementarian and egalitarian debate is no exception.

So, now what?

Do the work yourself. Read the passages in full, read a careful advocate of each position, and notice which one has to explain away more of the text. That test is not infallible but it is a good deal better than adopting whichever view your circle already holds.

And whichever way you come down, treat those who differ as believers rather than as opponents. The complementarian and egalitarian debate is a serious one about how the church orders itself, and it is not a test of whether someone belongs to Jesus. If we cannot hold those two things together, we have a bigger problem than this question.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28, ESV