A Solid Primer on the Gender Debate: A Review of Jack Cottrell, Headship, Submission, and the Bible: Gender Roles in the Home. Joplin, MO: College Press, 2008.

On the back cover of Jack Cottrell's newest book, Dorothy Patterson's endorsement has this to say: "The reading of his volumes is necessary for any serious student in women's studies." This is high praise indeed, but an acclamation that Cottrell has worked hard to earn with previous books. His newest work is Headship, Submission and the Bible: Gender Roles in the Home, and it too is a must-read for any student of the evangelical gender debate.

The current volume is actually the third in a trilogy of Cottrell's works on complementarian theology, which includes Feminism and the Bible (College Press, 1992) and Gender Roles and the Bible (College Press, 1994). Cottrell's purpose in Headship, Submission and the Bible is to examine the two concepts mentioned in the title and to subject the exegesis of egalitarian theologians to rigorous biblical review. Not surprisingly, his conclusion is that the way egalitarians handle headship and submission is not faithful to Scripture or sound scholarship. Readers should note that Cottrell limits his study to the concepts of submission and headship in the home. While many of his conclusions would apply to church life as well, that is not the focus of this study.

Much of the book takes the form of extended word studies on the biblical terms for submission (part one of the book) and headship (part two). He begins each part by explaining the egalitarian position, and then follows with a complementarian critique, answering the egalitarian arguments point by point. Along the way he surveys the critical New Testament passages—Ephesians 5, Titus 2, 1 Peter 3, 1 Corinthians 11, and so forth—and examines both the larger and immediate context for all of them. The two main pillars of Cottrell's exegesis are word backgrounds and context, and in each part more time is spent on these discussions than any other. Of course, this is exactly as it should be since the debate between egalitarians and complementarians on these key passages often centers on exactly these issues.

In part one Cottrell takes egalitarians to task for their emphasis on the concept of mutual submission. He charges that the egalitarian view of Ephesians 5 is wrecked by their presuppositions. Their decision to base their exegesis of the entire passage on a skewed reading of verse 21, he argues, is grounded not in the text itself but by an assumption of the meaning of mutual submission. In part two Cottrell spends most of his time on the debate over the meaning of kephale, what he calls the "kephale wars." He steers the last two chapters of the book toward matters of practice, demonstrating that egalitarians are guilty of the "perversion fallacy" with regard to headship and submission; just because a concept has been abused, he argues, does not mean that concept is false or wrong. It simply means it must be understood properly in order to be practiced properly. It is to that end that Cottrell has written.

Two things must be noted before evaluating Cottrell's work. First, there is little new ground broken here. As the author himself admits, the bulk of the material was written more than a decade ago. This does not mean the study itself is dated, but it does mean that much of the discussion will be familiar to scholars of the field. Second, by design, this is a polemical work. Cottrell's purpose is to examine egalitarian arguments against male headship and female submission, and then critique them from a complementarian perspective. Thus each part begins with the egalitarian position and moves to the complementarian response.

In this reviewer's opinion, Cottrell has accomplished the purpose for which he wrote the book. He has marshaled substantial arguments for the veracity of the complementarian position on the issues of submission and headship, and he has critiqued the egalitarian positions with an evenhanded sensibility and a responsible hermeneutic. As stated before, no new ground is broken here, so there is little chance that those committed to an egalitarian position will change their stance once they read Cottrell's book. But they will have to reckon with his arguments.

Headship, Submission and the Bible would be a solid introductory text for many evangelical women's studies classes, as it contains the core elements of the gender role debate. Cottrell's accessible prose makes it an excellent choice for the educated layman who is interested in deeper study on these critical biblical issues.