Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 07:2 (Fall 2025)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

Eikon 7.2 (Fall 2025) p. 117

Book Reviews

Eikon 7.2 (Fall 2025) p. 118

Complementarity: Dignity, Difference, And Interdependence:
A Review Essay

Steven Wedgeworth

Steven Wedgeworth is the rector of Christ Church Anglican in South Bend, Indiana. He has written for Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, World Opinions, and is a founder of the Davenant Institute and contributor to several of their publications. Steven is married with four children and has been in the pastoral ministry since 2008.

Gregg R. Allison. Complementarity: Dignity, Difference, and Interdependence. Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2025.

Gregg Allison’s latest book, Complementarity: Dignity, Difference, and Interdependence, is a substantial examination of the Bible’s teaching on how men and women exist in the world as men and women. Despite the title, it is not intended to promote complementarianism. Rather, Complementarity’s goal is to demonstrate a basic biblical anthropology from which any and all applications should be derived, whether complementarian or egalitarian.

Allison’s thesis is that God has indeed created humanity after a sexually dimorphic order. This design underlies every human’s way of being, and it is necessary for collective flourishing. Every human is a fundamentally “gendered being,” even in their “consciousness” and “relationship

Eikon 7.2 (Fall 2025) p. 119

with God” (7). Allison is clear that this gendered life is complementary. Men and women “fill out and mutually support one another.” This does not mean that individuals as such are in need of such completing (8). Instead, Allison is speaking corporately and societally. And this goes beyond the marital union. Human life in its entirety, as it is lived “familially, vocationally, and ecclesially” (6), should also be expressed in a sexually complementary fashion.

So far so complementarian. But Allison goes on to make clear that this framework for understanding does not entail complementarianism. It does not, by itself, answer questions about ministerial ordination or leadership in the family. Complementarity will even attempt to correct some aspects of the conventional form of complementarianism that has been expressed by the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). In fact, Allison’s most strident criticisms will be leveled at what he calls the traditional position — “traditional sex polarity” — where sexual differentiation is largely defined by the conviction that men are superior to women (122). Allison is firmly convinced that the majority of the Christian tradi...