[Continuing the earlier discussion . . . ]

One of the most powerful, axiom-like single verses in the New Testament, Gal 3:28 certainly commands our attention for the biblical conversation:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

In Galatians, Paul is of course most interested in the “Jew or Greek” pair from the statement, though the “slave or free” theme receives some attention as well. Paul asserts that “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision count for anything” in Christ Jesus, but rather what matters is “faith working through love” (5:6) and “a new creation” (6:15). “You are no longer slaves,” he writes, “but a child” and an “heir, through God” (4:7). Again, “we are children, not of the slave but of the free woman” (4:31). This letter is about being truly free and not weighed down by “the curse of the law” (3:13).

But what of “male and female” (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ)? Neither word occurs at any other point in the epistle. We can certainly see how there could be an issue of “freedom” in the case of men and women, but without any other mention of male-female relations, it seems oddly out of place. Paul is clearly not making a detailed argument here specifically for the equality of men and women, but a powerful statement nonetheless. There are only two other uses of this phrase in the NT (Matt 19:4; Mk 10:6), both direct references to the creation account. In the Greek version of the book of Genesis (from the Septuagint, also known as LXX), most significantly in the creation account, the same pair occurs 10 times (its only use in the LXX). God creates humanity in the image of God, “male and female” (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ) God creates them (1:27; cf. 5:2). That Paul explicitly uses “and” (καὶ) for this pair in Gal 3:28, diverging from his use of “or” (οὐδὲ) in the other two, suggests that he is calling the reader’s memory to the creation account of Genesis.

But why? Clearly Paul does not desire to cancel out the “image of God” from humanity. What else could explain his use here? Some complementarians argue that since Paul is here referring to a creation ordinance, it does not have the same implications as the first two pairs. The first two relate to racial, ethnic, and social divisions that were not a part of God’s good creation and therefore can be challenged in the present social reality. “Male and female,” on the other hand, according to the traditionalists, only refers to a removal of distinction between the two in the realm of salvation. Of course, there is no distinction between men and women in salvation, they say, but this does not have social implications (cf. Scholer, 125). This argument stems from the traditionalist reading of Genesis 1-2 in which social distinctions between men and women are inherent in God’s creation itself (i.e., they are God’s intention).

Another traditionalist emphasis on this verse is highlighting its lack of functional meaning. There is no reference to any specific office of ministry in the context of Galatians. Furthermore, the traditionalists tend to count texts irrelevant to this discussion when they do not explicitly affirm a woman’s role in the office of either ἐπίσκοπος (overseer/bishop) or πρεσβύτερος (presbyter/elder). In this way, when the egalitarians point to principles found within texts such as Gal 3:28, the complementarians dismiss them from the “women in ministry” discussion since they do not have specific mention of predetermined ministerial positions (cf. Scholer, 124-5).

The problem with this last argument, however, is that the leadership offices of the church were far different in New Testament times than they are today. When we narrow our definitions by titles, we risk anachronistically reading our present day understandings of those titles into the biblical text. Instead, we should look to the themes and principles found in these biblical passages, while not neglecting their context, and apply them to our own contemporary situation.

The first argument (the appeal to creation-mandated social distinctions) must be addressed with an assessment of the opening chapters of Genesis themselves. That I will leave to my next post in this series.