Answering reader questions about my piece on theology, bodies, and that article
On complementarianism, thinking Christianly about sex & singleness, reading scripture well, and knowing the character of God
Gentle reader,
Thanks for your interactions with me over the last week. Below, I answer reader questions about the substack piece I published on the controversial Josh Butler article on sex and salvation at the Gospel Coalition’s website (TGC):
The questions and answers below are grouped into three categories: on complementarianism, on how Christians should think about sex, and on interpreting scripture well and knowing the character of God.
On complementarianism
Q:
Why are you connecting this to complementarianism, when the article doesn’t mention it?
A:
One doesn’t have to use the word “complementarian” in order to teach complementarianism, but neither TGC nor Josh Butler have any objection to the categorization.
Below, a statement from the website for Josh Butler’s church. Pay attention to the second paragraph.
Screenshot from the church website, March 6th, 2023
Notice how the statement explicitly connects complementarian theology to the Christ/church/marriage metaphor the Butler article centers on and how the “distinctive roles” of husband and wife are described as “initiative” and “following,” which are parallels to the “generosity” and “hospitality” of the Butler article (and not found attached to the Christ/church/marriage metaphor in scripture). Butler’s interpretation of the metaphor is distinctively complementarian.
The Butler article also exists in a context. It comes from a complementarian pastor on the website of a complementarian organization which understands complementarianism to be central to the gospel itself.
The Butler article also appears in the context of a wider theological conversation in which versions of the generous/hospitable or giver/receiver paradigm are explicitly used as scaffolding for complementarian teachings. Butler didn’t make up the generous/hospitable distinction; it’s part of a larger, intentionally complementarian conversation.
Q:
Is your article, at the end of the day, a critique of complementarianism?
A:
No. And yes.
No. This is because I hope many complementarians would grant a lot of my points. I see giver/receiver complementarianism like that of the Butler article as a particularly dangerous brand of complementarianism, and I know convinced complementarians who would agree. So, I hope I can have good faith conversation with complementarians here.
But I do believe complementarians need to face questions about how far the critiques I raise apply to most complementarianism, and not only to Butler’s excess. Which brings us to the next question.
Q:
If the article only makes sense within a patriarchal view of scripture, does it follow that all complementarian theology is patriarchal? And do all patriarchal views ultimately lead here?? Is complementarian theology inherently harmful to both people and the Gospel itself?
A:
Most complementarians don’t object to the label “patriarchal,” and the value asymmetry between men and women that we saw in Butler’s article is inherent to most complementarianism. Some people try to redefine patriarchy as something good for women, but I’m unconvinced. And I am convinced that scripture pushes against the patriarchal contexts in which it was written at every step of the way. So, yes, I believe patriarchy is always harmful and always contrary to the gospel.
Complementarianism generally relies on assumptions present in the Butler article. Butler’s language got noticed because of his rhetorical excess, but his ideas aren’t foreign to many other complementarians, as they set up an essential ontological difference between male and female (giver/receiver; patriarch/subordinate; leader/submissive), which justifies other complementarian claims.
Some complementarians claim to admit no such ontological difference. I think we need a robust conversation about whether that is possible; can one really claim women should always submit to men without understanding women as in some essential way built for submission and men as in some way built for leadership?
In some ways, complementarianism is more honest if it does teach an ontological difference between men and women. It makes more sense to ask women to submit for a reason (being a receiver) than it does to claim that God demands submission for no reason. (Some hyper-Calvinists are, I suppose, comfortable with teaching that God demands things for no reason, but I am not.)
Complementarian and patriarchal ideologies are always damaging to people and to the gospel, because the gospel is for all people, including women, and the gospel breaks down patriarchy, as we learn to follow a King who chose to kneel down and wash our feet.
Q:
If complementarianism is damaging, shouldn't this move us from a place of “agree to disagree” to... something else? How do we allow institutions to continue, in the name of Jesus, to perpetuate such harmful claims?
A:
I recently moved from an “agree to disagree” professional context to a context, at Northern seminary, where the institution has a clear commitment to supporting the gifts of women, training women as pastors and leaders, and critiquing theologies which are bad for women. The move has lifted an enormous burden off my shoulders. I continue to respect and cherish friends who remain in “agree to disagree” contexts.
It’s always difficult to agree on what counts as “agree to disagree,” and there are different ways of living with such a commitment. Some contexts may disagree healthily, with real respect for the “other” side. Other contexts may claim the matter is open but, in truth, be so structured by complementarian partriarchy that dwelling in them will always harm women.
I would love to see key evangelical structures and institutions explicitly condemn leaders and institutions which teach glaringly heretical forms of complementarianism, such as the eternal subordination of the son. We are too often cowed by liars who wield their false authority like weapons. I can’t stop such teachers and organizations from claiming the name of Christ and commanding large followings, but I can try to testify truly to the Jesus I know from scripture and the Spirit, who sets us free from sin and death, including the sin and death that trail in the wake of patriarchy.
On Christians talking about sex
Q:
The article uses the term “mutual” to describe sexuality; how are you being fair?
A:
Using a term is not the same thing as convincing a reader that one is serious about the term. Butler’s references to mutuality are asides, footnotes to his main point which is about giver/receiver difference. If men are defined by giving, pursuing, and leading, a serious account of mutuality is not on offer.
Q:
Isn’t critique of Butler just a return to evangelical squeamishness about sex?
A:
No. I’ve taught Christian sexual ethics for a long time, and that has pressed any squeamishness out of me.
But, prior to that, my commitment to the biblical account of the goodness of creation already means I’m committed to the truth that sex is a good gift from God. I think Christianity actually invented sex-positivity, though it took us some centuries to articulate it that way (and it’s not my favorite way of articulating the thing, but, I digress….) But Christian sex-positivity cannot mean anything goes. If sex is a good gift from God, then harmful teaching about that gift is a violation of the Christian teaching of its created goodness. The problem with the Butler article is not that it dares to talk about genitals. The problem is that the article speaks falsehoods about genitals.
Q:
How can Protestants honor singleness and construct a positive theology of the body that doesn’t place sex at the center of fulfillment?
A:
This is an important and huge question! Not turning scripture’s God/church/marriage analogy into an ode to sex acts is probably a good start.
If marriage and singleness are both good Christian vocations—good ways of living life in the body—then what do they have in common? Both ways of life are embodied examples (even icons!) of faithfulness. Both are signs of God’s faithfulness to us.
Single Christians can embody faithfulness by living out the countercultural claims that sex isn’t necessary to human flourishing and that fidelity to God is possible. Married Christians can embody faithfulness by living out the countercultural claims that one can stay committed in marriage—even when it’s hard—and that fidelity to God is possible. Single and married Christians can offer service to each other, as both have blessings and resources that are more scarce for the other. Christian families should not be restricted to parents and children, but should invite in and welcome siblings, aunts, and uncles who are not married (and I don’t mean to restrict those titles to blood relatives; the church is a family). Both single bodies and married bodies thus become emblems of God’s radical faithfulness and of the way God keeps promises made to us.
I make this argument in my book on theology and sex, Faithful:
For most of Christian history, singleness has been held in the highest esteem, as a kind of dramatic image of what God can make possible and as a space which makes room for devoting both time and body to loving the world. We very much need to reclaim the good of singleness, and I do think that demoting sex acts from the status they’re given in the Butler piece is one step towards that goal.
On interpreting scripture and thinking about God
Q:
Do you think the American Christian church (broadly speaking) elevates scripture to a level God never intended? Is the problem with the Butler article a literal interpretation of scripture? Does this ultimately come down to the idolization of the Bible itself?
A:
I don’t think so. What it comes down to is bad interpretation of the Bible, and, in some ways, a failure to take scripture seriously enough. It is possible to idolize scripture, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on in this conversation. The problem, instead, is elevating human words above God’s Word.
Butler’s argument is unmoored from scripture, and a return to close attention to texts like Ephesians and the Song of Songs could correct a lot of the errors made there. Taking scripture seriously means putting it first in theological arguments and not elevating cultural ideas (like, about sex) or personal experiences (like, about sex) as warrants for one’s claims.
I don’t think the problem here is a “too literal” reading of scripture. To read scripture “literally” is to pay attention to the words, to the letter, of scripture. It should not mean to read woodenly or to ignore the fact that scripture is nuanced and complicated. Paying attention to scripture requires treating a metaphor like the God/church/marriage metaphor with enough respect that one doesn’t read things into it. It means close, communal reading of the text and paying attention to what is and isn’t there. The Butler piece would have benefited from examining the details of how the marriage metaphor is actually used in Ephesians, instead of drawing details from experience. And it would have benefited from noticing the limits of the analogy.
Recently, I posted a three part series on how analogy helps us think and talk about God: how it wards off idolatry and leads us to Jesus. Those who are interested in these questions may want to take a look:
Q:
Does your argument that “figuring God as a sexualized human male is idolatry,” mean, say, that an allegorical reading of Song of Songs is off limits?
A:
Absolutely not. Allegorical reading exists, in part, to deal with the fact that simplistic readings of scripture can sometimes take us into idolatrous territory, explicitly forbidden by scripture.
For most of Christian history, the Song of Songs has been read as an allegory for God’s love for Israel and the church. These days, it’s more popular to read the song as a depiction of human love, and some commentators even make fun of the past church for being too prudish about sex to read the Song more “literally.” But the church wasn’t being prudish. It was recognizing that there is a difference between the Creator and creation and that overly literal use of the metaphor of human desire, for God, would be idolatrous.
For example, Gregory of Nyssa reads “he shall lie betwen my breasts” and notes that “the location of the heart is between the breasts,” leading him to interpret the line this way:
"But they also say that the heart is a source of the heat within us. From it warmth is shared out through the arteries to the whole body, and by its means the body’s limbs become warm and alive, secretly heated by the heart’s fire. When, then, she has accepted the sweet scent of the Lord within her ruling part and has made of her heart a container for such incense, she accustoms all the several pursuits of her life, like the limbs of some body, to simmer with the Spirit that spreads from her heart, and no lawlessness chills the love of God in any member of her body."1
It’s not about breasts, Gregory thinks, but about God’s presence filling us from our “ruling part,” the heart, and then spreading out so that the church can “simmer with the Spirit.”
That is gorgeous, non-idolatrous stuff.
I’m personally convinced that the Song should be read both as about God’s love for us and about love between humans and that we should not dismiss the careful wisdom of the Christian tradition when, precisely in inisting on allegorical reading, it warned us against overly sexual and so idolatrous readings of the Song. This doesn’t mean we can’t talk about breasts, which are good because created by our good Creator. The Song can be about both the goodness of breasts and the way we’re called to “simmer with the Spirit.”
Q:
Two related questions. Why is it wrong to depict God as a sexual being, when scripture uses the metaphor? What is the difference between this and the pagan sexualization of God to which you refer?
A:
Great questions! It’s important, here, to affirm that sex is not evil! It's a good gift from God.
And the problem with the TGC piece is not in using the metaphor, which scripture uses, but using it in unbiblical and harmful ways.
In Hosea and other places in scripture, the marriage metaphor is used to emphasize God's faithfulness to us, not to describe God as a human male with genitals and not to associate males with God in a way that females are not associated with God. In Ezekiel, the metaphor uses the powerful idea of desire, but this is connected to covenant faithfulness and not to imaging God as a human male.
In short, in scripture, marriage is a metaphor for God (a beautiful one that does bless human marriage and sex). Sex does tell us something about God, but not what the Butler piece suggests it does. And scripture always maintains mystery, not a clumsy phallic literalism. In pagan thought, sex is not a metaphor but a literal description of a God who is formed in the shape of a human man.
Q:
As a "reformed" Christian who has escaped from hyper-patriarchal circles, I'm interested in the connection between this TGC article and a violent Calvinistic view of God and salvation itself. Do you see this as a characteristic connection between these teachings?
A:
Good Reformed theology does not give us a violent, patriarchal God, and good Calvinist theology doesn’t do so either. I love Calvin and lots of other great Reformed theologies.
But bad versions of Reformed/Calvinist theology do just that, and I think you’re right to intuit a connection there between understanding God as violent, one who works by force, and the kind of patriarchy that many bad Calvinist theologies also embrace. Unfortunately, a very simplistic version of Calvinism has been embraced in a lot of contemporary American churches, and the problem with it rests in failing to take the difference between God and creation seriously.
The kind of Calvinism which would give us a violent patriarch for a god paganizes God just as surely as does a theology that portrays God as a sexual human male. It’s incredibly dangerous and evil, in part because the violent God becomes the model for how human patriarchal authority should work, and men are encouraged to embrace violence and force as though those demonic things were godly.
Good Calvinist/Reformed theology, like all good theology, doesn’t do this. It insists on the vast difference between God and us and between understanding how God works and how humans work.
God is not violent. God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Prince of Peace, and whose Spirit empowers us to embody the teachings of Jesus, who helped us to see that “the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them,” but
“It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28).
May we learn to live like Jesus.
Grace and peace,
BFJ
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Gregory of Nyssa : Homilies on the Song of Songs, Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, from Homily 3, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dtl/detail.action?docID=4539777.