Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 04:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Danvers, Nashville, And Early Complementarianism
Author: John Piper

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 28

Danvers, Nashville, And Early Complementarianism

John Piper

John Piper (Ph.D.) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

I wrote the first draft of the Danvers Statement (1987). Thirty years later, I gave input on the final draft of the Nashville Statement (2017). The former was foundational for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; the latter expresses the Council’s abiding relevance and maturity.

Here I will try to describe the similarities and differences between the Danvers and Nashville Statements. Then, as one of the early shapers and promoters of a “complementarian” understanding of manhood and womanhood perspective, I will respond to some recent criticism.

Unity And Difference

First, as a shaper of both documents, I see a profound unity and prophetic difference between Danvers and Nashville. The unity can be seen, for example, in the following similarities.

• The Danvers Statement affirms that “both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood.” The Nashville Statement affirms that “God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings, in his own image, equal before God as persons, and distinct as male and female.”

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 29

• Danvers laments “the widespread uncertainty and confusion in our culture regarding the complementary differences between masculinity and femininity,” and the tragic effects of this confusion in unraveling “the beautiful and diverse strands of manhood and womanhood.” Nashville similarly laments that the fact “it is common to think that human identity as male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, [so that] God’s good design for his creatures is thus replaced by the path of shortsighted alternatives.”
• Danvers cites the “growing claims of legitimacy for sexual relationships which have Biblically and historically been considered illicit or perverse.” Nashville names them: “It is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism . . . we deny that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship.”
• Both statements challenge the “spirit of the age,” especially its encroachments into Christ’s church. Danvers warns of “the apparent accommodation of some within the church to the spirit of the age at the expense of winsome, radical Biblical authenticity which in the power of the Holy Spiri...
  
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