Editor’s Note: The following book review appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Eikon.
Terran Williams. How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy. Cape Town, South Africa: The Spiritual Bakery, 2022.
Introduction
A recent, lengthy entry into the never-ending egalitarian vs. complementarian debate among evangelicals, How God Sees Women is penned by Terran Williams, a former megachurch pastor in Cape Town, South Africa. Williams now writes and ministers through his personal ministry website where his stated objective is, “Building bridges from God’s Word to your world.” A self-professed former “soft complementarian,” Williams frames his “theology of women” as a repentant memoir of sorts. His biblically informed thesis is that God sees men and women in a mutualist framework, that is, distinct yet equal ministry partners in all spheres of life with shared authority, gifting, and expertise.
Summary
Williams attempts to demonstrate his thesis in four parts with several appendices. In part one, he interprets both church history and Genesis 1–3, arguing that “for most of its history, the church believed in the inherent inferiority of females,” and that “Genesis 2…does not teach that inherent to maleness is leadership, and inherent to femaleness is submission. What it affirms instead is the unity, mutuality, and equality between men and women — not hierarchy.”
In part two, he offers egalitarian interpretations of New Testament texts that typically serve as the exegetical foundation for the complementarian position, namely 1 Corinthians 11:3–16 and 14:33–35, 1 Timothy 2:11–15, and Ephesians 5:22–33. The hermeneutical basis for his conclusions is “accommodation.” God inspired the biblical authors to give “hat-tips” to the patriarchy to guard the credibility and evangelistic attractiveness of the gospel and the “fledgling” local churches in the eyes of the watching ancient world.
In part three, Williams surveys “powerful” women in the Bible, concluding that self-actualized spiritual gifting should be primary in the church’s assessment of leadership potential rather than gender. Once again, the predominance of the male judges and kings in the Old Testament and instances in the New Testament where it is rather clear that men are to hold positions of leadership are examples of “accommodation.”
In part four, he attacks traditional gender stereotypes, including the emphasis on domestic life in Titus 2, and concludes with practical applications for Christians convinced by his argumentation. The appendices include arguments for accommodation as the basis for the predominant use of male language in the Bible when describing or referring to God, further arguments for male and female mutuality in Genesis 2, an extended excursus on the meaning of “head” (kephalē) in the New Testament, additional arguments regarding the teaching function and elder office in churches, an explanation of confirmation bias as the reason why so many Christians, throughout history and now, are complementarian, and a reference to several installments of his and Andrew Bartlett’s extended YouTube complementarianism-egalitarianism debate with Mike Winger.
Critical Evaluation
At one point early in his overly long, repetitive, and unnecessary entry into this debate, Williams asks, “But is that really what God is saying?” The irony here is glaring. In his attempt to undermine the clear meaning of “rule over” (Hebrew mashal) in Genesis 3:16, whether intentionally or not, he has placed the words of the deceiving serpent from Genesis 3:1 in his own mouth. This is precisely how faithful, Bible-believing Christians should approach this book. While it is tempting to dismantle Williams’ consistently fallacious interpretations one by one, I will focus my critique on three main issues, two of which are presuppositional, and all of which are pervasive.
First, to put it bluntly, Williams is an eisegete, which means he reads into the text of Scripture what he wants it to say instead of engaging in disciplined exegesis with a view to authorial intent and a shared worldview with the inspired authors. To Williams, these men and their audiences were often misogynists for whom God necessarily accommodated his Word for two thousand years until modern feminism unlocked the true meaning of Scripture. For example, he writes, “It is possible for discoveries and advances in society to challenge a long-held interpretation of Scripture…As the industrial revolution and the first waves of what would become the Woman’s Liberation Movement swept through the West, for the first time ever women were given a chance to show their comparable intelligence and capacity to men. Instead of seeing this as a threat, this is in fact an opportunity for us to revisit Scripture itself with the question: what have we been missing all along?”
He engages in eisegesis in two complementary ways. Implicitly, his hermeneutic is driven by clear commitments to both the categories of critical theory and to expressive individualism. A quick survey of predominant vocabulary throughout the book includes “power,” “liberation,” “inferiority,” “superiority,” “gender discrimination,” “misogyny,” “sexism,” “hierarchy,” “oppression,” “toxic masculinity,” and “glass ceiling.” This language, in conjunction with several clear statements that hierarchy necessitates inferiority, reveals what frames Williams’ worldview and theology: power dynamics, which is the basis for the swath of critical theories. It is not possible for there to be a hierarchical authority between the first two humans who are equal in essence as the only divine image-bearers in creation, so he reads it out of the text of Genesis 2 with shocking exegetical fallacy and dishonesty. That authority affects ontology, however, is not a biblical teaching. Furthermore, Williams would be well-served by reading Carl Truman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which convincingly undermines his entire argument for female eldership based on “being seen” and manifesting self-oriented and self-actualized “calling” or “gifting.” The biblical teaching and controls regarding eldership are clear in 1 Timothy 3 — the desire for, not calling to, eldership must be tempered by qualifications and communal affirmation. Williams would be a much more credible author if he had the courage to state his presuppositions explicitly.
The second way that Williams eisegetes throughout this book is explicit. He clearly states another presupposition — what he calls the “Women’s Liberation Movement” — as the cultural lens through which he reads and interprets the Bible. The irony here is that he routinely accuses complementarians of cultural appropriation. It is difficult to believe that such hypocrisy is not intentional, as he writes, “It is possible for discoveries and advances in society to challenge a long-held interpretation of Scripture,” and “Now that our culture has discovered otherwise, and the Scripture’s original meaning and intent has been recovered, we can and should run with both of our legs.” Cultural discovery here shapes biblical interpretation, and that of “cloudy texts,” which happen to be every text that clearly teaches male headship and female submission. How convenient! Throughout the book, Williams engages in precisely what he accuses complementarians of doing, and readers should trust him because these texts are too difficult to understand without his guidance.
Finally, Williams’ intended audience is unclear. On the one hand, his style is conversational at best and condescending at worst, but altogether tonally inconsistent with the many scholarly exegetical arguments he attempts to make. If his intended audience is popular, why the italicized references to the original languages? And if he is speaking to scholars, why frame your argument as a repentant memoir? Furthermore, when he does foray into the Hebrew text (of Genesis 2–3, especially), his incompetence shines. One example will suffice. He argues that the first man’s “calling” his wife “woman” (Gen 2:23) is a different Hebrew word than his “calling” her “Eve” after their sin (Gen 3:20). They are not different words; they are the same verbal root in two different stems. The first is direct speech while the second is a narration, which explains the variation in stem. The intent of the text is clear — just as the Lord God “brought” the animals to the man so he would “call” them (Gen 2:19–20), he brought the woman to him so that he would “call” her (Gen 2:22–23). Such fallacies will be undetected by popular readers, which is perhaps Williams’ greatest blunder as he seeks to serve the church but, intentionally or not, abuses her instead.
Conclusion
In conclusion, as a quick perusal of the endnotes makes clear, this book was unnecessary. Every argument Williams makes he lifted from an egalitarian work already in circulation. One thing remains abundantly clear and unchanged — Genesis must frame our worldview commitments, including our anthropology. Because Williams builds his worldview on the sand of critical theory and expressive individualism, his thesis and supporting argumentation crumble under the weight of the cohesive worldview of the inspired biblical authors and faithful, attentive exegesis.
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