How does the Bible define submission and headship? Does the Bible teach that husbands and wives are to submit to each other in the home? Are both husband and wife to serve as head of the home?

In his new book Headship, Submission and the Bible: Gender Roles in the Home (College Press), Jack Cottrell gives definitive biblical answers to those questions. Cottrell focuses on three biblical texts that exist at the center of the contemporary debate over gender roles in the home: 1 Corinthians 11:3-16, Ephesians 5:21-33 and 1 Peter 3:1-7. 

A veteran scholar, Cottrell provides an expert defense of the church's historic teaching on complementary gender roles in the home and shines clear light on the exegetical fallacies of the feminist/egalitarian interpretation of biblical texts on submission and headship.

"Since these terms (headship and submission) give every appearance of establishing a hierarchical or complementarian approach to gender roles, and since they have traditionally been interpreted this way, it has been very important for feminists to provide an alternative way of interpreting these biblical concepts," Cottrell writes.

"Thus over the last few decades they have labored to develop a new, revisionist paradigm for headship and submission, one that is consistent with their basic philosophy of egalitarianism."

Cottrell serves as professor of Theology at Cincinnati Christian University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a member of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).

This work is the third volume in Cottrell's ongoing series evaluating egalitarian hermeneutics. The first, Feminism and the Bible, serves as a general introduction to feminism and its overall hermeneutic. The second work, Gender Roles and the Bible, examines the theological framework of biblical feminism, and unpacks the effects of creation, the Fall and redemption on gender roles.

The argument of Cottrell's latest work is divided into two main sections, one dealing biblically with submission, the other looking at headship. Within each sections, Cottrell writes on key topics such as the egalitarian concept of "mutual submission" (an exegetical novelty peculiar to post-feminist Christianity, he argues), the meaning of hupotasso (Greek for ‘submit') in light of egalitarian claims of mutual submission and kephale (‘head') in light of the egalitarian attempts to redefine the biblical term "head."

In the latter chapters Cottrell unpacks the purpose of Christ's headship (salvation) as well as the manner of the Lord's headship (love). Cottrell interacts with egalitarian scholars throughout the work and concludes with a chapter on practicing headship in the home. Husbands are to love their wives in a way that is faithful to the Gospel and the infinite love of Christ for His church, he writes, because, Christ Himself serves as the model for authentic headship in the home.

"Nothing is more important in the husband-wife relationship than the husband's learning to use his headship in a loving, serving, Christlike manner," he writes. "Wives are commanded to submit (Eph 5:22, 33), but it is very difficult for them to do this when the husbands set themselves up as selfish, oppressive, domineering, all-controlling dictators. Some husbands mistakenly think that such ‘macho' masculinity is a sign of strength, but in fact it is more a sign of weakness, insecurity, fear, and lack of self-confidence.

"Christ is the one who established the pattern for true headship, and Christ through His Holy Spirit can equip every husband with the strength to conform to this pattern. Let us not forget that ‘Christ is the head of every man' (1 Cor 11:3). As such, He wants to encourage and empower every husband to develop his own innate potential for true headship. When a husband accepts this responsibility and follows in the footsteps of his own Head, he will then be the kind of husband to whom a wife can submit with relief, confidence, and pleasure."

Headship, Submission and the Bible is available at the CBMW web store.

As a Christian reader of Gender Blog, our prayer is that you are committed to a solid local church and that your charitable giving primarily supports the congregation.  Perhaps you are one of the many readers who have been blessed by God with additional resources to devote to further kingdom ministry.  What should you consider in supporting a ministry outside of your local church?  Or in other words, why should you prayerfully consider becoming a financial supporter of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood before July 1^st?  Consider the following seven reasons:

1. CBMW is committed to the centrality of the gospel. The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ is the centerpiece of salvation history, and the cross is central all that we do in ministry. Only through the blood of Jesus can men and women turn from sin and accurately display the glorious image of God. In Christian marriage, a man and a woman have the privilege of portraying the relationship of Jesus Christ to the church.

2. CBMW is positioned to serve local churches. We draw upon thousands of hours of research from some of the best scholars in the world to help local pastors teach sound doctrine about biblical manhood and womanhood. Throughout history, local churches have been served in specialized ways by Bible translators, mission agencies, seminaries, and organizations like CBMW.

3. CBMW takes seriously its stewardship of a treasury of biblical teaching on gender. We have made available for free untold thousands of books and articles over the past 20 years. Our goal in the coming year is to better organize the amazing resources on our website so that more scholars, pastors, husbands, wives and single men and women can benefit.

4. CBMW has a worldwide reach in the gender debate. Whether it is an orphanage in India teaching about biblical womanhood, a journal for scholars in Slovakia, or Anglican churches wrestling over doctrine in Australia, we are continually hearing about how CBMW resources on gender are being used around the world. People from more than 100 countries continue to access the CBMW website every month.

5. CBMW serves as a voice for timeless truth in a culture of change. Every day, readers of Gender Blog receive updates on ways to think biblically about men who receive alimony payments, women who rent their wombs, denominational developments in the gender debate, and even the goofiest of distortions of manhood and womanhood.

6. CBMW is currently limited in its ministry by financial constraints. We have more opportunities to serve Christian men and women through scholarship, conferences and literature distribution than we have resources for this coming fall. We could be more effective over the next six months if more people would partner financially with this ministry.

7. The impact of your gift on the gender debate will be doubled for a limited time. A generous and anonymous donor has pledged to match every donation up to $30,000 made to CBMW before July 1, 2008.

We would like to ask you to take advantage of this strategic opportunity and join the team of financial donors who help CBMW serve the church.  If you would like any additional information about this ministry please use the "feedback" link below or call our offices at 502-897-4065.  Thank you for reading Gender Blog and for your commitment to biblical manhood and womanhood.

"Same-sex couples could create children" reads a recent headline in the London Telegraph online, and it could not be more serious. The article reports that last month international leaders in embryology research asked the British government for permission to allow babies to be conceived using "artificial" sperm and eggs.  They are developing a technique which uses embryonic cells from an adult man or woman to grow artificial sperm in a laboratory.  These manufactured gametes could then be used to create a human pregnancy through in vitro fertilization.  This scientific procedure has been used to create pregnancies in mice, and is expected to take only 10 years of refinement to prepare for human use.  Whether it takes more or less than a decade, the scientists are confident that this will be a reality.

In short, this would allow two women to produce a child without any intervention whatsoever from a man.  One of the women would donate a cell which would be transformed into an artificial sperm and used to fertilize an egg from the other woman.  Either could carry the baby to term.  The child would be their biological descendent with no male contribution required at any level. For the first time in history, fathers would be completely optional in procreation.  For some, the realization of utopian dreams seems to be in sight, and the experts "called on ministers not to restrict such ‘important' research."

The process would be only slightly less convenient for two men to create a biological child of their own.  In that case, they would need to hire a "gestational carrier" and rent her womb to carry their baby to term.  Women in the United States, India and other countries around the world are increasingly willing to provide this feminine service.

Where does this research stop?  The answer is it will never stop.  Human beings, with a sinful nature and driven by pride, will continue to take on the prerogatives in procreation reserved for God himself.  Just because a scientific technique is possible, does not in itself require that it be performed.  Even if society makes it legal, Christians must never take part. 

"Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward" (Psalm 127:3).  It is not an accident of creation that a father and mother are both required for procreation and raising children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).  Unless we hold to biblical authority as a solid rock, there is no end in sight for scientific research.

USA Today recently reported that formally breaking up is as hard to do for gay couples as is finding a state that will marry them.

Same-sex marriage is currently legal in only one state, Massachusetts. Same-sex couples can form legal civil unions in four states: Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire. And they can enter into domestic partnerships in California, Oregon, Maine, Washington, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

Many of these couples only travel to these states to ratify legally binding unions and live in other states. Now, it seems many are seeking a divorce from their partner, but are finding it virtually impossible to secure. Getting a divorce is proving especially tough for gays in the 43 states that have explicitly banned or limited same-sex unions.

In Rhode Island, for example, the state's top court in December ruled that gays married in neighboring Massachusetts cannot get a divorce in the state because they are not legally married; lawmakers have never defined marriage as anything but a union between a man and a woman.

USA Today reports that a judge in Missouri is deciding whether a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts can get an annulment. Missouri banned gay marriage in 2001 and one conservative lawmaker in that state has urged a judge not to grant an annulment to the couple. Cases like this will only proliferate in the future as our country seeks to come to grips legally with same-sex relationships.

Given the clear teaching of Scripture regarding homosexuality, it is no surprise that such confusion has resulted from some governments putting their imprimatur on that which God has forbidden. When the great exchange of Romans 1 is made and even celebrated, moral chaos is bound to ensue.

Hopefully, by God's grace, these "divorces" will lead some gays out of darkness and into the marvelous light of God's redeeming love in Christ Jesus. Every follower of Christ is an illustration that sin will not have the final word in this world and it is the Gospel that restores order to the chaos and gives hope for every moral rebel.  

Spring and early summer serve as the season for the official meetings of church denominational bodies across the evangelical world and in recent years, issues of sexuality and gender have boiled on the front burner.

This year will most certainly be no exception as bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church in America and various mainline meetings and synods convene to do their yearly business.

Some denominations such as the SBC and PCA presently have confessional statements that reflect a complementarian position.  Many other denominations, particularly the mainline churches, are debating issues such as the propriety of ordaining women, homosexuals and transgendered individuals.

Issues of human sexuality and gender are already under consideration by the United Methodist Church, leaders of which are meeting this week in Forth Worth for the UMC's quadrennial meeting. The UMC General Conference this year has before it two landmark petitions aimed at changing the church's current policy on homosexuality.

One petition seeks to define marriage as "the union of two loving adults," while another states that homosexuality "is a subject about which Christians disagree." The upshot of these petitions is an attempt by homosexual activist groups to gain the affirmation of "transgendered" persons serving in UMC pulpits and other roles within the church.

In the UMC at least, the momentum is already rolling toward full affirmation of the substance of these petitions.  As the meeting convened last week, young Methodists from the Mosaic Youth Network greeted delegates outside the Forth Worth Conference Center with a 24-hour "drumming and rally" in support of gay and "transgender" church members.

In 2006, the UMC's highest council affirmed the appointment of "transgender" minister Drew Phoenix as pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore, Md. The church court agreed that while the denomination bars self-avowed practicing gay clergy from ordination and does not support gay unions, the UMC Book of Discipline is silent on gender change.          

The team at CBMW wants to encourage complementarian delegates who hold to the Bible's teaching on God's good plan for men and women to stand firm at these denominational meetings. Standing by while such proposals pass allows Scriptural errors to be introduced and solidified into the church.  Let those who affirm God's clear teaching on these issues not shrink back in silence.

If you are not a delegate this year, please pray that God will give wisdom to the leaders and laypeople who are participating in these meetings. The church ultimately changes through the Holy Spirit opening blind eyes and unstopping deaf ears to the truth of His inspired Word.