It is good to see the essay by Stanley Porter on “Gender Equality and the Analogy of Slavery” in the new edition of Discovering Biblical Equality (DBE). As its editors say, the new edition attempts to articulate its egalitarian stance “based on the tenets of biblical teaching” (7), and this essay provides a treatment of...

My official assignment is to respond to two chapters in the third edition of Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives: Mimi Haddad’s “Helping the Church Understand Biblical Equality” and Kylie Maddox Pidgeon’s “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse: A Social-Scientific Perspective on Whether ‘Equal but Different’ Is Really Equal at All.” Haddad’s chapter possesses...

“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future” (11). Thus, quoting George Orwell’s 1984, Mimi Haddad opens the inaugural chapter of the third edition of Discovering Biblical Equality. Women’s voices, she claims, have been silenced throughout Christian history by those “committed to male authority” (11). Their essential...

Summary The thirtieth chapter of Discovering Biblical Equality opens with the statement, “The face of poverty, illiteracy, disease, starvation, and abuse is predominantly female” (620). Mimi Haddad then comments on gender-based violence and asserts that “patriarchy is increasingly viewed as one of the most malicious and debilitating forces in history” (621). She offers a selection...

Summary Lynn Cohick’s chapter replaces I. Howard Marshall’s in the previous edition of Discovering Biblical Equality, and the editors have chosen well. Cohick has not only done careful work on cultural backgrounds throughout her career, but she has recently written commentaries on both Colossians and Ephesians. For those reasons and more, it is a pleasure...