A Biblical Vision Of The Sexes: Harmonious Asymmetry -- By: Doug Ponder
Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: A Biblical Vision Of The Sexes: Harmonious Asymmetry
Author: Doug Ponder
Eikon 6.1 (Spring 2024) p. 28
A Biblical Vision Of The Sexes: Harmonious Asymmetry
Doug Ponder is the Dean of Faculty and Professor of Biblical Studies at Grimké Seminary. He is also a teaching elder at Remnant Church in Richmond, VA. He has contributed to several works as an author, editor, and researcher.
Complementarians believe that men and women are “equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood.”1 Or, as John Piper and Wayne Grudem put it, complementarians believe the Scriptures assert the reality of “both equality and beneficial differences between men and women.”2 Similarly, Denny Burk has written that the “Danvers [Statement] envisions an equality between male and female that cannot be reduced to undifferentiated sameness.”3 Each of these statements highlights an indispensable element of complementarianism, namely, the affirmation of both the equality and asymmetry of the sexes.
Yet affirmation is not the same as emphasis. And while the Scriptures certainly teach both truths, sexual equality is generally assumed by the biblical authors, while sexual asymmetry is often emphasized. Furthermore, there are significant theological reasons for the scriptural focus on sexual asymmetry, which means there are deleterious consequences for getting the matter wrong — not only by way of denial, as egalitarians do, but also by way of deemphasis, as many complementarians
Eikon 6.1 (Spring 2024) p. 29
increasingly are doing.4 In view of all this, my goal in this article is to connect the fact of mankind’s sexual asymmetry to the meaning that the biblical authors ascribe to the same. More specifically, I aim to demonstrate that the asymmetry of the sexes is not only a biblical teaching but also a biblical emphasis that should be embraced in accordance with its significance.5
In the following essay, I first highlight where the asymmetry of the sexes — which is a fact of nature — is clearly taught in Scripture. Second, I show that the biblical authors employ this asymmetry in the service of their theological agenda(s). Finally, I sketch some of the places where a failure to embrace and uphold mankind’s sexual asymmetry adversely affects Christian life and doctrine (1 Tim. 4:16). In other words, my argument can be summarized in three parts:
- Sexual asymmetry is a fact of nature and a clear teaching in Scripture. <...
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