Mutuality & Praiseworthy Women
- James Collazo
- May 20, 2022
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 19
Introduction
Christian theologians study gender roles through three main perspectives: complementarianism, mutualism, and egalitarianism. Complementarianism holds that men and women are equal in value but have different, complementary roles in the home and the church. Mutualism describes a partnership in which men and women share authority and responsibility, showing mutual submission while recognizing distinct functions. Egalitarianism—from the French word égalitaire, meaning "equal"—holds that men and women are equal in both worth and role, placing no limits on their responsibilities or leadership. For the purposes of this study, mutualism is presented as a modified form of egalitarianism that emphasizes reciprocal partnership while recognizing distinct functions. The table below shows the main differences among these three theological perspectives.
The mutualist view proclaims the inherent equality of men and women as co-heirs in Christ, echoing this biblical truth: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). This perspective upholds the value and dignity of every individual, regardless of gender, and champions collaboration and shared leadership within the church and society. It celebrates the diverse gifts and callings of both men and women, encouraging full participation in every aspect of ministry and service. Embracing mutualism cultivates a vibrant, dignified community where the gifts and contributions of all members are honored, amplified, and empowered for the glory of God.
Made in God's Image
Many readers assume that the consequence God gave to Eve for her sin in the Garden of Eden indicates that he always intended women to be submissive to men (Gen. 3:16). Yet long before sin entered the world, God declared that he "created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27; see "Humankind & Ancestral Sin"). Subjugation of women is therefore a consequence of evil, not part of God's perfect design. Many scholars see the creation of Eve from Adam's side as symbolizing mutuality and shared dignity rather than inferiority. The Hebrew noun tzela (H6763), translated "rib" in Genesis 2:21–22, literally means "side." Even today, "by your side" conveys a sense of solidarity and equality.
Moreover, God never commanded Adam to dominate Eve but to care for her. She was to be his "suitable helper" (Hebrew: ezer kenegdo, H5828 / H5048), a companion at his side (Gen. 2:18). Just as God calls men to find rest and avoid the weariness, pain, and hardship that come from relentless toil (Matt. 11:28–29; Heb. 4:9–10), he calls women to share equality, free from the struggle for power or domination (Gen. 3:16–17; Luke 7:44, 50). God's design for male and female reflects mutuality and dignity in every sphere of life.
Women in the Old Testament
In the Hebrew Bible, women often appear as homemakers, mothers, and caregivers. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, exemplified this role so fully that the apostle Peter writes, "They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear" (1 Pet. 3:5–6). In our contemporary Western culture, fear often dominates, especially in literal battles of the sexes. As women increasingly work outside the home, homemakers must defend their values and dignity. Yet this tension is hardly new.
In ancient Greece, philosophers such as Socrates and Plato proposed that, at least for the guardian class in the ideal city, the state should oversee the upbringing of children while men and women devoted themselves to the common good (Plato, Rep. 5.449a–466d). Such proposals reflected a fundamentally different view of family life than that found in the Hebrew Scriptures, which entrust the nurture and instruction of children primarily to parents (Deut. 6:4–9; Ps. 78:5–7). To Jewish ears, the communal rearing of children and the state's regulation of marriage and procreation would have appeared foreign and contrary to God's design for the family (Gen. 2:24). Some modern educational philosophies reflect assumptions that can be traced, in part, to Platonic political thought rather than the Bible. There is no inherent conflict between remaining at home with one's children and pursuing a corporate career, yet cultural and ecclesial pressures often elevate one path while criticizing the other.
The scriptures offer both "Sarah" and "Deborah" models. Deborah served as a judge of Israel during a national crisis (Judg. 4–5). In antiquity, a judge exercised civil, judicial, and military leadership comparable in some respects to that of a head of state today. The Israelites trusted Deborah to administer justice under the Law of Moses, rather than relying on inheritance or dynastic privilege. Deborah executed the law God had given at Mount Sinai (Exod. 34:32), demonstrating that women could exercise authority faithfully. The Law of Moses also provides the framework for the "Proverbs 31 woman" complementarians often cite in arguments for female submission.
Proverbs 31:10–31 naturally concludes this section of the Old Testament references. It begins with a "wife of noble character" who strengthens and supports her husband. This ode contrasts the manipulative adulteress at the start of Proverbs (e.g., Prov. 2:16), leaving male readers with a robust vision of a capable woman. King Solomon, who sometimes embodied both the faithful husband and the foolish adulterer, presents a nuanced portrait. In verses 13–16, the woman is a skilled breadwinner, adept in domestic and international business. She supervises younger women on her estate and even purchases land herself, demonstrating initiative and autonomy. She exercises to maintain fitness, handles business affairs, and faces hardships head-on. Her leadership enhances her husband's reputation—not as a trophy wife, but as a godly partner. She shows generosity to the poor and provides her family and customers with the best resources. The Proverbs 31 woman defies the stereotype of being "barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen." She is a familial, socioeconomic, political, and, most importantly, spiritual force (Prov. 31:17–31). Anyone who reads Proverbs 31 and reduces it to a message of subservient homemaking misses its whole meaning.
Women in the New Testament
Complementarians often cite Paul's words in Ephesians 5:21–33 to support the idea of female submission to male authority. If readers focus only on verse 22 ("Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord"), they might assume a universal command. Many scholars understand Paul to be addressing specific first-century household circumstances rather than prescribing identical social arrangements for every culture. Paul declares, "This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband" (Eph. 5:32–33). Submission, then, is not domination—it is a sacred, reciprocal covenant of love and respect, mirroring the dynamic of Christ and the church. Many theologians further understand this analogy to reflect the eternal relations of origin within the Trinity between the Father and the Son (see "Trinity: Jewish & Gentile Views"). In God's eyes, members of Christ's church are first-class citizens of his kingdom. Likewise, a husband should regard his wife as a first-class partner in the household, not an indentured servant. Just as Jesus cherishes the church as his inheritance and gave his life to redeem her, God calls men to be selfless, loving, and sacrificial toward the women they marry. From a mutualist perspective, this passage sets the stage for interpreting Scripture through a profound vision of reciprocal love and shared partnership. He also writes:
For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord's people. Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? (1 Cor. 14:33–36).
However, Paul was also friends with the woman Priscilla, who certainly did not remain silent in the churches. She was the wife of Aquila and fled Rome when the Roman emperor Claudius banished the Jews from the city (Acts 18:2). Priscilla participated in teaching Apollos, a man, no less. Luke testifies, "[Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately" (Acts 18:26). The use of the Greek verb proslambanō (G4355) together with the broader context of Acts and Paul's letters suggests that Priscilla and Aquila hosted and exercised leadership within a house church. At first glance, this seems to contradict Paul's instruction to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet" (1 Tim. 2:12). Many egalitarian scholars argue that the apparent tension is resolved by recognizing that Paul addressed a local problem involving specific women, whereas Priscilla, a Jewish woman well versed in the Law of Moses, exemplified the wisdom and initiative celebrated in Proverbs 31. In contrast, many of the women in Corinth were recent Gentile converts emerging from pagan religious backgrounds.
The first-century church included many women in leadership. However, the earliest decades of Christianity did not practice formal ordination in the later ecclesiastical sense. The Greek verb diatassō (G1299), meaning "to thoroughly command" and sometimes translated as "to ordain," does not describe the ordination of people in Scripture; it primarily refers to God the Father and Jesus (e.g., Matt. 11:1, 1 Cor. 9:14). When Paul warned Timothy, "Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others" (1 Tim. 5:22), he referred to a commissioning rite for appointing leaders (dating to AD 64 when Paul wrote to Timothy), not ordination as understood today. Local churches selected elders from within, who held responsibility rather than office. Therefore, women were not "ordained" in the early church—but neither were men.
In addition to elders, there were deacons. Paul greets a female deacon, Phoebe of Cenchreae, in his letter to the Romans, calling her a diakonos (G1249, "servant") for her ministry in the local church (Rom. 16:1). The early church later appointed women to the diaconate once they reached sixty (cf. Acts 6:1–6; 1 Tim. 3:11; 5:9), with Canon 15 of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 lowering the minimum age to forty. Other notable women leaders include Chloe of Corinth (1 Cor. 1:11), Lydia of Thyatira (Acts 16:11, 14, 40), Nympha of Laodicea (Col. 4:15), and Euodia and Syntyche of Philippi (Phil. 4:2), who led house churches and exercised significant influence. Several women actively supported Jesus, providing the funds that sustained his ministry (Luke 8:1–3).
From Eden to the Church
In the Garden of Eden, men and women stood as equals, both created in God's image. The gender roles that complementarians identify in Scripture were not part of God's original design but came as a result of the fall. While the Bible certainly describes differences between men and women, a strictly literal reading that treats every passage as a timeless command misses the larger story. Paul wrote, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). Early Christians used this verse in baptism to affirm that God values people not by gender, race, or status, but by their faith in Christ (see "Equal Standing Before God: A Study of Galatians 3:28").
Jesus' resurrection is the central truth that sets Christianity apart from all other world religions. The first witness was Mary Magdalene (John 20:11–19), honored by the early church as the "apostle to the apostles." Paul likewise named Andronicus and Junia as "outstanding among the apostles" (Rom. 16:7). Early Christian writers consistently recognized Junia as a woman, confirming that women served as trusted witnesses and messengers of the gospel from the very beginning. Many complementarians today say Junia was respected only by the apostles, but not as an apostle herself. But church history shows otherwise. Writers from the early and medieval church clearly recognized Junia as a woman and honored her as an apostle.
Some contemporary translations, such as The Living Bible, render the name as Junias, a masculine form, reflecting discomfort with the theological implications of a female apostle. Yet even the fourth-century bishop John Chrysostom—a native Greek speaker—recognized Junia as a woman, writing, "Oh! how great is the devotion of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!" (Hom. Rom. 31; cf. Rom. 16:7). His testimony carries special weight: if a Greek-speaking father of the church regarded the name as feminine, there is no linguistic basis for claiming otherwise. These examples illustrate how theological commitments have sometimes influenced the interpretation of Junia's identity and ministry. Today, the church must honor women as full participants in ministry, just as the apostles themselves affirmed.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Chrysostom, John. Homilies on Romans. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 11. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1889.
Holmes, Michael W., ed. and trans. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
Percival, Henry R., trans. The Fourth Ecumenical Council: The Council of Chalcedon. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 14. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1899.
Plato. Republic. Translated by Paul Shorey. In Plato in Twelve Volumes, vols. 5–6. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1935–1937.
Monographs
Bauckham, Richard. Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
Cohick, Lynn H. Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009.
Cohick, Lynn H., and Amy Brown Hughes. Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second Through Fifth Centuries. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017.
Epp, Eldon Jay. Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005.
Fee, Gordon D., and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014.
Hylen, Susan E. Finding Phoebe: What New Testament Women Were Really Like. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2023.
Keener, Craig S. Paul, Women, and Wives: Marriage and Women's Ministry in the Letters of Paul. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1992.
Lee-Barnewall, Michelle. Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016.
Marshall, I. Howard, Stephen Travis, and Ian Paul. Exploring the New Testament: A Guide to the Letters and Revelation. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983.
Westfall, Cynthia Long. Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016.
Witherington, Ben, III. Women and the Genesis of Christianity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Witherington, Ben, III. Women in the Earliest Churches. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 59. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Wright, N. T., and Michael F. Bird. The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019.
Edited Volumes
Beck, James R., ed. Two Views on Women in Ministry. Counterpoints. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.
Reference Works
Bellinger, W. H., Jr., and Todd D. Still, eds. NRSV Baylor Annotated Study Bible. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2019.
Brown, Eric. "Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic."↗ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. September 12, 2017.
Journal Articles
Belleville, Linda. "Ιουνιαν . . . επισημοι εν τοις αποστολοις: A Re-examination of Romans 16.7 in Light of Primary Source Materials."↗ New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 231–49.
Lin, Yii-Jan. "Junia: An Apostle Before Paul."↗ Journal of Biblical Literature 139, no. 1 (2020): 191–209.
Wallace, Daniel B., and Michael H. Burer. "Was Junia Really an Apostle? A Reexamination of Rom. 16.7."↗ New Testament Studies 47, no. 1 (2001): 76–91.
Online Resources
Belleville, Linda L. "Paul Praises a Woman Apostle."↗ CBE International, July 31, 2008.
McKinley, John. "The Need for a Third Way Between Egalitarianism and Complementarianism."↗ Fathom. January 27, 2022.
Mowczko, Margaret. "A Suitable Helper (in Hebrew)."↗ Marg Mowczko (blog). March 8, 2010.
Mowczko, Margaret. "Was Junia Well Known 'to' the Apostles?"↗ Marg Mowczko (blog). November 29, 2019.
Wright, N. T. "Women's Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis."↗ Paper presented at the International Symposium on Men, Women, and the Church, St. John's College, Durham, UK, September 4, 2004.
