Marriage as partnership
Who – or what – is Eve, in relation to Adam?
My own study of Genesis 2 in How God Sees Women causes me to agree with Victor Hamilton’s summation in The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17 (p. 181): “Eve is neither a superior nor an inferior but Adam’s equal. She is one-half of a polarity, a South Pole to a North Pole. She is his strongest ally in pursuing God’s purposes.”
(And though I don’t have space to get into Ephesians 5 here, nothing in my study of that text causes me to undo this basic conclusion.)
John Piper reads ezer kenegdo in Genesis 2:18 to mean Eve is Adam’s “loyal and suitable assistant” (Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 2021, p. 91).
And yet, of the 19 occurrences of ezer in the Old Testament outside of Genesis 2, it is used 16 times of God in his relation to Israel as “helper” and three times to denote military support, such as reinforcements, without which a battle would be lost.
In 18 of the 19 instances, the one being helped is not the leader of the helper. The one exception may be Ezekiel 12:14 where it speaks of the king of Chaldea not having anyone around him to help him in battle. Still, what is stressed in that passage is not the king’s authority over these helpers, but his utter lostness without them.
In eight of these uses, the “helper” is a “saviour,” “protector,” or “rescuer.” In the remaining occurrences, the nature of the help is an offering of strength, often of a military nature.
The LXX translates the word with boēthos, which comes from a word family built on the idea of running to someone’s cry for help – a rescuer, protector, or one who comes to another’s aid. Jesus is able to help (boētheō) those who are being tempted (Heb 2:18), and believers are invited to God’s throne of grace to find help (boētheia) in their time of need (Heb 4:16).
To be an ezer to someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in them by offering one’s strength or intervention.
Additionally, she is not merely his ezer, she is his ezer kenegdo. The second word translates a compound phrase meaning “like opposite him.”
“Male and female are like two pieces of a puzzle that fit together,” observes Kathy Keller rightly in The Meaning of Marriage, “because they are not exactly alike nor randomly different, but they are differentiated such that together they can create a complete whole” (ch. 6). She is his indispensable partner and ally. What the man lacks, the woman possesses and supplies. She is his companion, complement, counterpart and collaborator.
Marriage as union
Consider also the theological postscript near the end of Genesis 2 (in 2:24). If the complementarian reading of the chapter is correct, it would more likely say, “That is why a man … is in charge of his wife.”
Instead the punchline is the one quoted at every Christian wedding: “That is why a man … is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” – a passage quoted as the key text on marriage by both Jesus (Matthew 19:4–6; Mark 10:6–9,) and Paul (1 Cor 6:16; Ephesians 5:31).
The words “united” and “one flesh” confirm that Genesis 2 teaches reciprocity and completeness, not rule or captaincy. Richard Davidson correctly concludes, “The movement in Genesis 2 is not from superior to inferior, or from leadership to submission, but from incompleteness to completeness. Woman is created as the climax, the culmination of the story, and as Adam’s full equal.” (Flame of Yahweh, ch. 2.)
If anything “one flesh” demands mutual authority.
So thinks Paul who, having referred to Genesis 2:24 in 1 Corinthians 6:16, just a few verses later in 1 Corinthians 7:4, specifies, “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. … The husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” Since the two spouses are one flesh, both have the same access to and authority over that one flesh.
What Genesis 2 affirms (and 1 Corinthians 7 echoes) is the unity, mutuality, partnership and equality between husband and wife – not hierarchy.
Seeing one’s spouse with new eyes
Theology is an attempt to see as God sees. Getting our doctrine of marriage right leads ultimately to seeing each other rightly.
I can vividly recall the night I finally saw the actual teaching of Genesis 2. For years, I had been so sure that male leadership existed in the unfallen garden, but (for the first time) was open to at least hearing why that might not be the case.
Having begun to write part of our church’s research paper on the subject, I set out to create a table with arguments for and against from Genesis 2 – completely unprepared for what happened next. As I reflected on each argument, a dawning realization began to take shape, and I exclaimed out loud: “My goodness – it’s not here. Eve is Adam’s equal and partner in every way!”
At which point, my wife walked past me, a little bewildered by my sudden outburst. I wanted to explain to her what I was experiencing, and what I had just (un)seen in the Scriptures, but before words could come out of my mouth, tears rolled down my cheeks. For, standing in front of me was someone I had seen countless times, and yet, was seeing as if for the first time. “You are my ezer kenegdo – my strong helper and perfect match. You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” I said to her. “You are strong where I am weak.”
A log of misunderstanding about God’s ideal now removed from my mind’s eye, I glimpsed my wife as God wanted me to see her… Not as my chief assistant tucked in just behind me, but as my glorious partner.
As this new vision of my wife settled, my marriage – and life! – has been radically enriched in two main ways.
First, we make weightier decisions together.
And second, I do not treat her strength of personality as a character flaw, but as a gift.
I will explore these two benefits for the rest of the article.
Marital decision-making in 1 Corinthians 7
The Song of Songs is the longest portion of Scripture to explore the inner dynamics of an affectionate, romantic, and sexual union of a couple. In it, there is absolutely no sign of male–female authority¬–submission. In romance and sex, both initiate and both yield; both give and both receive. This poetic book not only hearkens back to unfallen Adam and Eve’s naked delight in each other as equals; it also has a New Testament parallel.
1 Corinthians 7 is by far Paul’s longest passage on marriage. Yet, in his guidance about sex, service and separation in marriage, Paul does not offer the slightest hint that a Christian marriage is anything but a mutual and loving partnership between equals.
What do we learn about God’s plan for marriage in 1 Corinthians 7? “Paul’s answers … must have struck first century hearers as extraordinary,” says Richard Hays, “The marriage partners are neither set in a hierarchical relationship with one over the other, nor set apart as autonomous units each doing what he or she pleases. Instead, the relationship of marriage is one of mutual submission, each partner [belonging to] the other.” (First Corinthians, p. 116).
When I first taught people how one might select a spouse, I suggested that we let God choose for us. Then, reading 1 Corinthians 7 one day, it dawned on me that I had just read the only clear teaching on the subject in the New Testament: “she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord” (v39). The lesson? We are to choose, and to choose wisely.
When I later reread 1 Corinthians 7, I had a similar a-ha moment: the only verse in the entire New Testament that speaks to how couples are to make important decisions (like when to have sex, and when to seek God together) is, “Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent.” (v5)
The lesson? The only verse in the New Testament about a couple making decisions says mutual consent is the way. Therefore, when a couple takes care to decide together as equal partners, the husband is not to command or be a tie-breaker.
The benefits of making decisions together (and the consequences of not)
“The buck most stop with someone,” is a popular complementarian argument.
But, in a two-person union, does the buck really need to stop with only one person or else the marriage goes awry? We can see the need for a captain in a sports team, or a general over an army, or a CEO in a company. But two people in a “one flesh” union, who are ideally, as Genesis 2:24 says, “naked” or purposely vulnerable with one another, do not seem to need a leader as much as they need both to fully commit to loving and serving each other as equal partners.
Love and Respect, the most influential popular Christian book on marriage, states the argument like this: “To set up a marriage with two equals at the head is to set it up for failure. That is one of the big reasons that people are divorcing right and left today” (p. 221).
The author offers no evidence for this outlandish claim. In fact, a recent study by Sheila Gregoire, published in The Great Sex Rescue, of 21,000 married and divorced church-going Christian women has come to the opposite conclusion: “Couples where one spouse makes the decisions, even if they talk their decisions over with their spouse first and seek their input, are 7.4 times more likely to be divorced than couples who share decision-making power.”
A secular study by The Gottman Institute concurs. John Gottman writes in “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” that “statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power with his partner there is an 81% chance that his marriage will self-destruct.”
Many Christians intuitively know this (whether or not they claim to theologically agree to it). For of the thousands Gregoire surveyed, about 40% believed that the husband has tiebreaking authority, while about 60% believed that the wife should love her husband by submitting to him – and yet, “only 17.3% of couples actually act out men having the final say. In contrast, 78.9% of marriages function without a tiebreaker – so that couples either make decisions together or forgo making a decision if they don’t agree.”
Gregoire’s study reveals that “When women don’t feel heard, and instead feel as if their opinions are not as important as their husbands, their marriages are 26 times more likely to end in divorce. … Even if he consults his wife, in marriages where a husband has decision-making power, his opinions, by definition, matter more than hers. And when women feel their opinions are not given the same weight as their husbands, marriages crumble.”
Conversely, there are conspicuous benefits to mutuality in marriage. “When couples make decisions together, wives are over four times more likely to rate themselves among the happiest 20% of marriages than among the least happy 20%, and are 67% more likely to frequently orgasm during sex.”
These statistics verify that the marriages (and sex lives) that fare best, regardless of what they doctrinally signed off on about a husband’s alleged authority to decide, are those that decide to work things out together, and when they disagree, to give the matter the time and care it needs to come to an agreement.
The benefits of shared decision-making are hard to deny – as is the fact that decisions made by one person will not be as good as decisions made by two (Proverbs 27:17; compare Proverbs 15:22).
I also came to wonder how often do couples ever find themselves in a situation where a crucial decision must be made without the time for them to find consensus? Usually there is time to decide, or for the couple to defer to the one with the most conviction or expertise in the area that this decision impacts.
But if a couple still disagrees, it shows that both feel strongly about their view. For the husband to then pull rank, precisely at the moment of greatest difference, seems to me the poorest outcome! Is there not a way for the couple to talk this one through until there is consensus? Until that clarity comes, it’s better to extend the conversation, while both husband and wife seek the best outcome in prayer, seek counsel from others, and attempt to really, really hear each other.
My experience leads me to this conclusion: employing my authority at the very point where my wife feels strongly enough about something to disagree with me, seems like relational sabotage.
To be honest, when I was complementarian, I have only a single memory of making a big decision in a way that overruled Julie’s uncertainty about it. But even that particular time she trusted my conviction more than merely accepting my authority. Now that I think about it, I have many more memories of trying to make a final decision in opposition to her view, only to have her bravely (and rightly) push back on me. Thankfully, each time I listened and we delayed making a final decision. In hindsight, I think I would have damaged her trust if, despite her legitimate concerns, I had tried to pull rank.
Unfairness to strong wives and gentle husbands
I am married to a wife with a strong personality.
Far from seeing this as a problem, a better theology of marriage has allowed me to draw on her strength.
Some personality types, the way we are wired from birth, are more compliant and agreeable, and others are stronger and more assertive. And by some law of attraction, spouses so often tend to be opposite types.
Yet, when we embrace husband-authority as an ideal, we end up glorifying one trait and demonizing another, depending on gender. Let me explain.
In complementarian circles, I was often privy to conversations about the problem of “weak men” who can’t lead “strong women.” Is this really the primary problem, though?
In complementarian thinking, when a man fails to “take charge” of his wife, it is proof of a failure to step into that God-given role, or even a capitulation to sin.
But the deeper question is whether what some call “God’s good design” of a husband’s leading his deferential wife is actually obedience to God – or simply the expression of personality and temperament.
I also noticed that women who are privileged to stay at home (usually only in prosperous circumstances) while their husbands work, or women who are naturally compliant, often have no problem at all with the complementarian status quo – and are lauded as examples of godly womanhood.
But what about stronger women who possess gifts of leadership, like my wife, or women who are granted authority in their workplace? They would understandably bristle at the unfairness and foolishness of the situation.
And yet if they do speak out in protest, both their strength of opinion and their readiness to speak out would be perceived as signs of an unsubmissive spirit.
But think how unfair this gender discrimination is: with the complementarian mindset in place, a man who is ready to vocalize his view of things is seen as a godly leader; while a confident woman who speaks out is seen as an ungodly threat.
All that to say, complementarianism can be particularly harsh towards gentler men and strong women, and overly commending of naturally assertive (or aggressive) men and compliant women.
Let me mention one more damaging effect of complementarianism on a marriage: it can cause a wife to forfeit some of her agency. After all, her flourishing appears to rest primarily on how well her husband leads her. My wife reflects, “In complementarianism it was all too easy for me to defer to my husband and take less initiative. Often enough I “checked out” of feeling truly responsible for my life, ministry and the trajectory of both – never overtly of course, but in all manner of small yet highly consequential decisions simply because, in a very subtle yet powerful sense, I could!”
I for one, am so glad she is now fully checked in as my ezer kenegdo – for our marriage, parenting, and partnership in life and ministry are all stronger for it.