Is Womens Subordination Essential?
The first thing to note about Groothuis’s egalitarian argument against the equal value/subordinate role distinction is that her first premise—(4) above—presupposes the falsehood of (2′), the claim that women’s subordination constitutes merely functional subordination. In other words, it is crucial to her own argument that one grant that woman’s subordination is permanent, comprehensive, and ontologically grounded. I will grant (and I think most other complementarians will grant) that woman’s subordination is ontological, being grounded in women’s femaleness. As Ortlund writes, “A woman, just by virtue of her womanhood, is called to help [i.e., be subordinate to men] for God.”11 Yet I will not grant, and I think that no complementarian need grant, that women’s subordination is either permanent or comprehensive. If I’m right about this, then woman’s subordination, by Groothuis’s own criteria, is merely functional and thus unproblematic morally and ontologically. I will first address the
