Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 36:3 (Summer 2022)
Article: Subordinating Jesus And Women (And How Influential Evangelical Teachers Led Us Astray)
Author: Terran Williams

PP 36:3 (Summer 2022) p. 9

Subordinating Jesus And Women (And How Influential Evangelical Teachers Led Us Astray)

Terran Williams

After a decade of leading the theological training, preaching team, and sermon content of a vibrant church in Cape Town, South Africa, as it grew into the thousands, Terran Williams has now taken full time to writing books that serve the wider church and its mission. He has authored the Reach4Life Youth Bible (with a print of three million in thirty languages), What’s So Amazing About Scripture? How to Read it Right and Tap into its Power, and How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy (http://amzn.to/3xcWdF3), which Dr. Kevin Giles opines to be “the best book on the complementarian / evangelical egalitarian debate.” Terran is an avid surfer, father of five, and coffee-lover. See http://terranwilliams.com.

Years ago, my wife was commissioned to write something for fellow pastors’ wives in our group of complementarian churches that might be struggling to come to terms with male leadership in the home and church. The basic idea of complementarianism is, after all, a difficult one to grasp: how can one be qualitatively equal and yet at the same time permanently subordinate? My wife struggled with comprehending the reason behind our so-called different roles, until she read Kathy Keller’s analogy in Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles, which she then included as the high point in her own paper. According to Keller, the pastor’s wife who chooses submission to her husband in both home and church, is cast in the light of Jesus’s subordination to his Father:

Jesus in his submissive servanthood, taking on the role of a servant in order to secure our salvation (Philippians 2:5–11), shows that his submission to the Father was a gift, not something compelled from him. At no time is his equality with the Father ever called into question. . . . The Son’s [essential] equality with the Father, and yet his [functional] submission for the purpose of salvation in taking on the role of a servant, lead us into the heart of the mystery of the Trinity. How else can this even begin to be conveyed without human players who enact the same truths, the same roles?1

Having read this, my wife and many fellow pastors’ wives were happy to have settled the matter in their hearts. They resolved that by taking on the God-given role of submission to someone “equal” to them, they were showing the world the beautiful and mysterious life of the Trinity.

Keller, in The Meaning of Marriage, which she co-authors with her husband, Timothy, admits that though her “first encounter with the idea of [authority] and...