Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 65, No. 2 - Spring 2023
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Sue Edwards and Kelley Matthews. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2022, 332pp., $23.99
“Where can women serve in ministry?” is not a new question, but in the last decade the question has been asked more loudly across the evangelical world. While most believers look to the Scriptures for God’s direction and guidance for the role of women in ministry, hermeneutical interpretation, including but not limited to translation of Hebrew and Greek words, modern-day appropriation of cultural settings in the epistles, and God’s plan and intent for men’s and women’s roles pre- and post-fall and following the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ have left many asking what is biblically permissible and what is not. Sue Edwards, professor of educational ministry and leadership at Dallas Theological Seminary, and Kelley Matthews, a former women’s ministry director and Doctor of Ministry student at Northern Seminary, seek to help address forty of the questions about women in ministry in their latest release.
Edwards and Matthews approach the questions from complementarian and egalitarian perspectives, though at the onset of the book the authors rename the terms hierarch and heterarch, respectively, to avoid an alliance with “any factions” and because they do not “believe either group has an absolute corner on biblical truth” related to the role of women in ministry (p. 27). Within the book’s introduction, the authors also note the “challenge” of “capturing the essence” of both perspectives, “especially on the ‘complementarian’ side” (p. 17). As the questions are presented in each chapter, the authors share the hierarch answer to the proposed query as well as the heterarch response. Edwards notes in chapter one that both complementarians and egalitarians can be charged with interpreting the Bible “evangelastically,” which she defines as “stretch[ing] the text to give credence to what they want it to say” (p. 26).
The questions are divided into four parts as they relate to introductory issues, the Old Testament, the New Testament and beyond, including women in church history, and current issues. The introductory issues include the aforementioned renaming of the two perspectives, a discussion of hierarchy and heterarchy views on feminism, principles of biblical interpretation, and a chapter focused on when issues are biblical cultural issues and when they are unchanging. Part two, questions related to the Old Testament, includes a lengthy discussion on God being imaged as male and female, what Genesis 1-2 shows about male and female relationships, an understanding of God’s command for men and women to have dominion over the earth, woman as being a corresponding helpmate for the man, male and female relationships as shown in Genesis 3, and an explanation Gen 3:16. Two chapters that focus on what can be learned from the women prophets of the Old Testament and the Proverbs 31 woman, as well as God’s plan and design for women complete part two.
The longest is part three, which categorizes the questions under the headings of women in the Gospels and Acts, women in the epistles, and women in church history. Part three focuses on questions related to the New Testament and beyond. The first section, women in the Gospels and Acts, includes questions related to Jesus’s interaction with the women who traveled and supported his ministry, his choosing only men as the Twelve Apostles, and the significance that Mary, a woman, first witnessed Jesus’s resurrection. Lengthy discussion surrounding questions related to the women commended by Paul in Romans 16, whether women can teach or prophesy, what is meant by the metaphor “head,” conclusions and views on 1 Tim 2:11-15, and what it means for wives to submit to their husbands are found in part three. This section also includes three chapters focused on women in church history.
Questions related to current issues are discussed in the final section of the book. These chapters include an examination of whether women can be deacons, priests, pastors, or elders; the titles women can be given for ministry roles; and how women can appropriately use leadership and teaching gifts, among other questions.
Edwards and Kelley should be commended for their willingness to tackle such weighty questions facing the church in the 2020s. The questions they address in their work are those both women and men are genuinely asking as women seek to advance the Kingdom of God and serve the Lord with excellence. The co-authors address many questions in a short amount of space as robustly as possible for the average reader who may or may not have a theological academic background.
Having observed the above, it should be noted the book appears to be lacking a complete argument from the hierarch perspective. Though the authors mention in the introduction “complementarians fall within a wide spectrum of perspectives differing from one another in many ways” (p. 17), the full spectrum of perspectives was not presented as the authors penned in the next paragraph they were going to focus more on the views of the heterarchs because “the hierarch’s view is generally more well-known, and often heterarchs are responding to hierarchs” (p. 18). The hierarch response for each question is then predominately presented from the standpoint of two complementarians who do not represent the full spectrum of views from the complementarian perspective. In contrast, the heterarch perspective is well-represented with a wide swath of scholars who range from the most extreme to more centered. The arguments then come across as unbalanced.
Another item of note includes the discussion of Greek words in relationship to Paul’s letters. It is difficult to distill what would normally constitute an entire academic semester into a few paragraphs focused on such an important topic. Though the book was written in “everyday language” (p. 17) these chapters could become cumbersome for those who have not had academic training in Greek. Chapters such as these would be best read with the assistance of one who has had academic study in biblical languages.
Edwards and Kelly’s work will encourage readers to look more deeply into what Scripture has to say about each of the questions that were posed. God’s Word is the final authority.
