8: CHOOSING OUR FAVORITE VERSES? 85ten (namely, conduct in the assembled church and the office of elder with
governing authority over the church). And then egalitarians wrongly
expand the application of equality texts far beyond the kinds of situa-
tions they were originally written to address (as mentioned above, the
“egalitarian texts” were not written to address situations of governing
or teaching over the church).
By contrast, the complementarian position rightly applies the texts
on male leadership to exactly the same kind of situations they applied
to when originally written (governing and teaching God’s people in the
church). And the complementarian position rightly applies the “equal-
ity texts” to exactly the same kinds of situations they applied to when
originally written (affirming all sorts of ministries for women except
governing or teaching over the assembled church, and affirming the full
dignity and value of women in God’s sight and in the ministry of the
church).
The complementarian position does not “limit the application” of
the so-called “equality texts” in Scripture (such as Gal. 3:28) but under-
stands them to be limited by their own contexts and subject matter and
wording.^5 This is not wrongly understanding these texts; it is under-
standing them according to the principles by which we should under-
stand all texts. And we understand these texts in a way that does not
require them to nullify or contradict other texts about male leadership
in the church.
Thus, the two positions clearly differ in the way they interpret and
apply biblical texts, not just in which texts they “choose as basic.”
In fact, this egalitarian claim that first derives a principle of “equal-
ity” from Galatians 3:28 and then uses that general principle to over-
ride the specific teaching of texts that talk about church leadership, looks
dangerously similar to a procedure that has been used numerous times
in the past to deny the authority of Scripture and allow all sorts of false
doctrine into the church. For example, in the early part of the twentieth
century, liberals routinely appealed to a vague general principle of the
“love of God” (which surely can be found in many passages) in order
to deny that God had any wrath against sin. And once they denied God’s
(^5) See, for example, Richard Hove, Equality in Christ? Galatians 3:28 and the Gender Dispute
(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1999).