Headship, Submission, and Equality in Scripture

Recently the question of whether women should be ordained to serve in the church in the headship role of elders and pastors has been hotly debated in many Christian churches. Some churches, like the Lutheran church, have actually been split over this issue. At the root of the controversy is one’s understanding of the biblical teaching regarding headship, submission, and equality in male-female relationships. This fact is clearly recognized by the special pro-ordination committee set up by the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary to supervise the production of the symposium, a collection of chapters by different authors, called Women in Ministry: Biblical and Historical Perspectives. In the introduction to the part of the book dealing with "Perceived Impediments to Women in Ministry," the committee lists as the first of four "serious obstacles" to the ordination of women "the concept of the headship of all males over all females."¹

The symposium, made up mostly of teachers at the Seminary, attempts to overcome this "serious obstacle" by arguing that the Role distinctions role distinctions of male headship and female submission derive from the Fall (Gen 3:16) and that they apply exclusively to the home. In the church, women can serve in the headship positions of elders and pastors. The methodology used to construct this position consists primarily of two strategies. First, the Genesis passages (Gen 1:26-31; 2:18-25; 3:1-24) are interpreted in isolation from the rest of Scripture as teaching "perfect egalitarianism," that is, full equality with no role distinctions between Adam and Eve. Second, the crucial Pauline passages, which interpret the Genesis passages as prohibiting women from serving in a headship role in the church (1 Tim 2:11-15; 1 Cor 11:3-12; 14:34-36), are interpreted as temporary restrictions which apply exclusively to the home, or perhaps to problematic women who caused disorder in the church.