This book review appears in the Annotated Bibliography for Gender-Related Books in 2005, JBMW Volume 11 No. 2.
Category: Egalitarian - classifies evangelicals who see undifferentiated equality (i.e., they see no scriptural warrant for affirming male headship in the home or the church).
In this book, Stackhouse suggests a paradigm that explains why both sides of the gender debate are right and wrong at the same time. In doing so, Stackhouse does not propose a via media as some have attempted. Instead, he argues that some NT texts present a double message-one that accommodates cultural patriarchy but also affirms its ultimate abolition. Although Stackhouse asserts that both complementarians and egalitarians are right and wrong on these gender-related texts, he proposes that when properly understood, the Bible presents an egalitarian model of gender roles with no distinction of role or function in the home, church, or society. Stackhouse rightly points out that understanding the Bible's teaching on gender is a matter of hermeneutics. He argues that egalitarians have often mistakenly attempted to deny gender differentiation in the NT. Maintaining that Paul did not have in mind a hierarchal ordering of gender roles in Ephesians 5, for example, is a wrong approach to biblical interpretation. Stackhouse concedes that complementarians have correctly recognized a pattern of male headship in the NT. According to Stackhouse's hermeneutic, however, the purpose is pragmatic given the apostles' eschatological expectations and the priority of the gospel in their ministries (42). And in a society that vigorously rejects patriarchy, Stackhouse suggests that Christians should dismiss gender distinctions, as they are no longer needed as a social concession for the sake of the gospel and that the complementarian position has become incoherent in the modern-day context. After conceding hierarchal meanings in many biblical texts, Stackhouse wonders why God would call equal sexes to completely different roles and functions. He concludes that this made sense in the biblical times but no longer in a mostly-egalitarian society. Stackhouse's irenic tone can be appreciated in this debate even though complementarians, of course, will find his method of biblical interpretation unacceptable, since it dismisses the gender distinctions that Scripture recognizes as good and Christ-honoring as culturally insensitive and unnecessary.
