Atheists & Complementarians: Flat Readings Make Strange Bedfellows

TheoBro Bill meets Anti-God Greg

We’ve walked through various “clobber passages” in this Substack page — those passages that churches often use to justify a hierarchy of men over women. We’ve seen evidence that these interpretations do not adequately convey the story of 1 Peter 3:1-7, Ephesians 5, Genesis 1-3 (here and here), and 1 Timothy 2:11-15 (quite a few articles, including here, here, here, here, and here).

One common objection to the kind of interpretative work I’m doing in these articles is that “It’s too complicated.” Said another way, the allure of hierarchical interpretations like complementarianism (at least of the SBC/CBMW variety) is that it appeals to the “plain words” in English of the various proof texts. The Danvers Statement (the defining statement for the complementarianism of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) bemoans “the increasing prevalence and acceptance of hermeneutical oddities devised to reinterpret apparently plain meanings of Biblical texts.”

This sort of statement is attractive to a fundamentalist mindset, which is the same kind of mindset demonstrated by many atheists (remember that, while agnostics doubt the existence of God or that we can “know” anything for sure about a spirit world, atheists dogmatically assert “There is no God”).

The next time someone throws 1 Timothy 2:12 in your face and claims, “You are twisting the “plain meaning” — remind them that Christianity has a whole branch of thought, called “apologetics,” that provides a myriad of arguments for the veracity of the Bible, using logic, science, philosophy, as well as attempts to put Bible verses in historical, cultural, and literary context and to provide a “harmonization” of passages. There are so many verses that depend on something other than a “plain reading” or that seem to mock the fundamentalist rallying cry, “Scripture is clear!”

The screenshot at the top of this article is from a Reddit post called the “top ten Bible verses to use against Christians.” I’ll quote it, as well:

So I want to make a little card to carry in my wallet with 10 Bible verses I can whip out at any point to destroy a Christian at their own game. We all know most Christians haven't even read the bible, so I want to argue against them using their own Holy Book.

I'm looking for stuff like:

Matthew 6:5 [for use against people praying in public] Matthew 19:24 [for use against any Christian with disposable income] Timothy 2:12 [for use against Christian women proselytizing] Peter 2:18 [condoning slavery] Psalm 137:9 [about throwing babies on rocks for vengeance]

Stuff along these lines. Verses that I can wield/use against Christian's [sic] in arguments over their own faith. Shorter is better, so I can fit it on the card.

Post a verse and upvote ones you think I should use.

This is what many complementarians do, too. You’ve probably met them on social media. Let a woman say something about preaching or listening to another woman preach, and she gets bombarded with quotes of 1 Timothy 2:12. Yet I’ve never met a complementarian who wouldn’t cry foul at the use of Matthew 6:5 to say that Christians shouldn’t pray in public, 1 Peter 2:18 to condone slavery, or Psalm 137:9 to say that Christians want to throw babies on rocks.

Atheists added many other verses to this guy’s list. Complementarians would, correctly, appeal to context. Depending on which “clobber passage” was thrown their way, they’d talk about the world behind the text (the history and culture of the ancient Near East and Roman Empire), the world of the text (grammatical issues, genre, etc) and the world in front of the text (the history of interpretation and theological development).

As John Walton says, “The Bible was written for us, but it wasn’t written to us.” The various writings collected into our scriptures span many centuries, diverse cultures, languages, and genres of literature, and many socio-historical situations. The epistles were first “someone else’s mail,” and we don’t have access to their response or, in most cases, any conversations between the letter writer and recipient(s) before or after the letter.

All of this means we must prayerfully solicit the Spirit’s help as we, in community, seek to understand.

• It means we consult scholarly work, from translators to archaeologists.

• It means we trust that God gave us the book that God wanted to give us, not the book we may have wished for (a simple rule book straight from heaven, not mediated by human authors speaking into their own situations).

• It means we accept that God never corrected the science of ancient Near East writers who had no idea the Earth was a globe that revolved around the sun.

• It means we wrestle with the knowledge that the author who praised Bible teachers and leaders like Priscilla and Phoebe, who worshiped a God who called Deborah to be a prophet and leader of the covenant people, Anna to preach about Jesus in the temple, and Mary to shape the culture of the church also said, “I am not permitting a woman (or ‘wife’) to teach or domineer a man (or ‘husband’).

When you do this, don’t let anyone who claims to be a Christian attempt to make you follow an interpretive method that they wouldn’t follow if debating an atheist, nor a method that you know is, well, silly. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Where We’re Headed in This Substack:

Next Monday is Memorial Day here in the U.S., and I will take a rare break. When I resume weekly posts on June 2, here’s the plan for summer: for the Mondays from June 2-16, I will post a three-part series on the apostle Junia from Romans 16:7. I’ve been researching this for months, and am excited about sharing it with you. Part one looks at attempts to claim Junia was a man (an old attempt and a new one) and looks into her status as a fellow Jew and prisoner with Paul. Part two examines the debate on whether Junia was an excellent apostle or just “well known to the apostles.” Part three asks, “What did Paul mean by ‘apostle’ in this verse,” and what can we tell from the language he uses for other women in Romans 16 and elsewhere?

After that, every other Monday, I will continue with posts on the theme of non-hierarchical gender mutuality within God’s family. This will include posts about the prophet Huldah, the preacher Sojourner Truth, women prophets and the link between New Testament prophecy and preaching, the “apostle to the apostles” Mary Magdalene (this will be a very unusual, fun post), as well as more on 1 Timothy 2 (including, yes, a post about the influence of the Artemis cult on Ephesus).

On alternate weeks, we will explore the theme of social justice in scripture, from Genesis through the New Testament. There is a lot of meat on that bone, all of which is pertinent to our contemporary situation in the U.S. and the whole world.

Thank you so much for reading and (some of you) subscribing. I consider it an honor. I love hearing from you and reading as many of your own articles as I can.