God's Design for Man and Woman: A Biblical-Theological Survey

by Andreas J. Köstenberger, Margaret Elizabeth Köstenberger

Equipping a New Generation to Live Out God's Design

This thorough study of the Bible's teaching on men and women aims to help a new generation of Christians live for Christ in today's world. Moving beyond other treatments that primarily focus on select passages, this winsome volume traces Scripture's overarching pattern related to male-female relationships in both the Old and New Testaments. Those interested in careful discussion rather than caustic debate will discover that God's design is not confining or discriminatory but beautiful, wise, liberating, and good.

Genres: Theology, Family, Marriage, Christian, Gender Roles, Christian Living, Anthropology

384 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2014

Reviews

[Kacie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for a biblical theological survey on the role of women in the church, family, and society. I was seeking a measured complementarian perspective that takes the text seriously without being unnecessarily culturally patriarchal. I knew Piper and Grudem were quite conservative and had heard that Kostenberger was perhaps a bit less extreme.

On the first point, the book was great. It did survey scripture on the topic and was a comprehensive, scholarly read that was still accessible. On the second point I was disappointed. I felt Kostenberger isegeted and read male authority into passages where it was not clear, and saw it as the central point to passages primarily teaching something else. I felt he was quite extreme, and not in a biblical way.

For instance, Kostenberger reads the reversal of gender roles as causing the fall, rather than disobedience, and proper gender roles being the primary point of Genesis 2. He teaches the eternal subordination of the Son as part of the basis of the submission of women. In Ephesians 5 he reads the submission of women (not just wives) and says there is no mutual submission, never explaining how he interprets verse 21. He accuses other complementarians who talk of husbands submitting in love of stripping authority of any true meaning. He discourages wives from working or taking political office. Men having authority felt like the central point of everything in Kostenberger’s perspective, with little nuance to what submission or authority actually mean and emphasizing power rather than servanthood.

All in all, I was disappointed. I hope there are other complementarian voices who don’t sound like this. I’ll be looking for them as I continue to read on complementarian and egalitarian theology.

[Amy Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because I wanted something from a complementarian perspective that was less frantic than Grudem. I had high hopes when I saw that the recommendations, but Kostenberger’s book only gets two stars from me because of many points that seem unnecessarily contrived and isogeted.

I appreciate their thoughts on male headship, but the arguments for gender norms of men as leaders and women as submitters were weak and demonstrate isogesis. The Ks strongly believe that women have a primary responsibility to the domestic sphere but never really spell out what men’s sphere is except “leading.” He also used eternal subordination to support his position, which I find unnecessary.

Overall, I am still looking for a complementarian book that treats the text well and takes seriously the examples of women church leaders in the New Testament.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know that those job scope and responsibilities you see in job advertisements? This book very faithfully draws out what the Bible says about the roles that men and women played and did in accordance with the scripture.

Personally I prefer the authors to identify the roles in categories rather than perform a biblical survey starting from Genesis and ending in Revelation, solely from a functional perspective. I find choosing the Gen-to-Rev structure means that the authors have to dance from foundations (Genesis) to instructions (various OT books to the Epistles) to symbolism (Revelation - which offered little content for this topic), which was fine but this forgoes the topical organisation which in my view will be more helpful for a reader to learn about biblical manhood and womanhood.

I wonder the relevance of some content, such as delving into some lengths on the five different interpretations of a “single-woman man” in 1 Timothy, instead of arguing why this means the role of an elder is for a man not a woman - or if this is too self-explanatory, then say it as it is.

I like that after the biblical survey, the last chapter focuses on pastoral and instructional content - stuff meant for married and singles to apply. I also like that there are three appendices at the end of the book, the first of which informed me about the three waves of feminism - a segment of the book I find a must-read or a very helpful read.

This is the second book in my church’s summer reading list, and I recommend reading this book if you wish to be informed about what the Bible says about manhood and womanhood.

[Maddy J · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this book for school, and it's just a whole book about complementarianism. This book is not about 'man and woman.' It is only about women. Within a total of 8 chapters, there were a handful of paragraphs about men, most of which were in context to men being in church leadership and the language that proved men should be in charge, not women. I would call myself a complementarist, but this book made me want to riot. The man practically entirely wrote it, and it shows. This was supposed to be and promoted to be a book written by a husband and wife. She wrote the intro and conclusion chapters, which were the only ones I liked. Andreas' chapters sucked. They were so obviously written by a man that, as a woman, I wanted to scream. In any of these discussions, there was only one passive small paragraph about the abuse and oppression that women have faced but didn't relate it to maybe that's why a woman would want to be single. But focused on the reason why women want to be single is from sin and the curse women got during the fall. Also, they made it sound like it was the woman's job only to be barefoot and pregnant, WHICH ISN'T TRUE!
As Christians, our primary job and role on this earth is to go and make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Both men and women that is our job; it doesn't matter if you are single, dating, engaged, married, widowed, or divorced; that is our goal as Christians, and that wasn't even mentioned once. And don't even get me started on how Andreas boiled down everything the women of the bible did and the excellent work that God did through those women to just them being wives and mothers. While that is a blessing and amazing and should be applauded from the high Heavens, IT WASN'T THE ONLY THING THEY DID!! They worked and labored for God's Kingdom and did so with grace and dignity. Sure, some of it had to do with them being married or mothers, but that wasn't the only thing we should take away from their story.
This book is a very conservative Boomer/Gen X take on complementarianism. It is poorly worded and leaves a tremendous amount to be desired.

[Ashton Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I think the the Kostenberger's did a good job creating a comprehensive survey of the Biblical roles of Manhood and Womanhood through the entire Bible. I appreciated that they shared the competing viewpoints on several passages and backed up their own interpretations using the original text language. Although, I do not fully agree with each conviction of the authors', the book gave me several new insights, topics I am excited to do more research in, and renewed my passion for sharing Biblical truth to those who have less access.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book felt more like a textbook than anything else, complete with graphics and pull-out quotes. It is indeed a "survey," hitting all the relevant Biblical passages without going too in-depth on any of them. Their strength lies in their honesty with the Biblical text. They are not trying to be "complementarian," "egalitarian," "feminist," etc. Of course, we all have our presuppositions, but they do a good job of letting the text speak for itself. The book would probably work well as the basis for a Sunday School class or small group study.

[Zachary Garris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the better books available on biblical gender roles. The authors hold to a broader complementarianism, as they are not afraid to say that a woman's primary sphere is the home and that gender roles extend beyond the home and church. Two reasons I did not give it five stars. First, I think the book could have been shorter, such as by cutting out things like the detailed information about the apostles. Second, I disagree with some of their conclusions, though they happen to be mainstream complementarian positions today. The authors think 1 Timothy 3 probably refers to women deacons, and they think 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 probably only prohibits women from evaluating prophecy (a novel view when measured by church history). Regardless, this passage is way too important for such a brief treatment.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent survey of the biblical teaching throughout Scripture on God’s design for men and women. A major strength of this book is its biblical-theological perspective. Rather than dealing with select texts, the authors trace their theme throughout Scripture.

[Filip Sekkelsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

First: I haven't read the whole book.

However, I think I read enough to catch their conclusions and views. I thought it'd be more balanced, but it turned out to be very conservative, even to the point of overlooking certain important elements.

For example, they say Deborah possibly as a judge, an interesting interpretation of the first five verses of Judges 4. The hints that her serving as a judge was not ideal was that, when Baruk didn't have the guts to follow the Lord's calling given by Deborah, she said that the glory would be given to a woman. I don't see how that makes it short of ideal except if you are doing eisegesis.

Further, it fails to deal with the fact that Priscilla and Aquila taught together, but only emphasises that they worked together. Their discussion of Junia's role was likewise disappointing.

Dealing with "exercising authority" in 1. Timothy 2, they claim that viewing this verb as negative, e.g. "domineer" as in Louw-Nida, is inappropriate based on the evidence. However, the evidence does not seem to be more in favour of a positive view; rather it is simply a word we cannot define with absolute certainty. Hence basing so much theology and practice on a hapax legomenon seems somewhat risky.

Another point deals with the culture of that time. They do not address the "New Roman Women", which several respected scholars describe in detail with sources, and which adds essential background information. The worship of Artemis is not the only relevant information, even if the other information is implicit or found in other sources. Köstenberger aver that Paul was not addressing the general culture, though a few paragraphs down contradict themselves writing that Paul's comment on women being "saved" through childbirth "might also represent an attempt at correcting some who disparaged women's childbearing…".

One thing that seems to me to be missing from this discussion is taking into consideration 1 Corinthians 9 and 10, where Paul talks about becoming all things for all people, and not trumping your rights to the detriment of our brothers. We should always have loving God and our neighbour as our primary goal and lens through which we see other things.

[Preston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book looking for a complimentarian hermeneutic of Scripture, but also looking for something different than Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In reading this book, I got pretty much the same thing. The difference in this book was it's comprehensive look at the entire redemptive story of the Bible and how men and women interact with it in their God given roles. The exegesis was fair, and the interpretations I agreed with for the most part but it wasn't much more than what I have already heard in other books. Perhaps this was the intention of the book, and maybe my expectations should have been different as I went into it. The final chapter that went through applications from the preceeding chapters was fair and biblical. But it was a very idealistic look at the necessity of intergenerational discipleship of men and women. While this is very clearly the design laid out in Scripture it is idealism at its finest! The book tells us we need to do something that we already know we need to do and doesn't provide how exactly that could happen other than life-on-life ministry between men and women, older and younger. Overall, I was underwhelmed by the book, but I did think the hermeneutic was, for the most part, spot on!

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Men are to lead and women are to not lead but they are still great in other areas. Sure. Yeah. Totally on board with that. But you explained that in the first four chapters?!?!?! The rest of the book was them just restating the same arguments with new verses to back it up. But I guess they were refuting misconceptions about certain verses that were taken out of context.... It was a good book, I just felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again. The book has quality, but personally it seemed to be restating itself often. While a worthy read the arguments were rephrased frequently. The authors had great arguments but those arguments did not vary yet were repeated many times. Wonderful topic and take on hard issues but the authors struggled with over capitulating. Ya get my drift???

[Grace Kaetterhenry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely helpful book that provides a thorough survey of what scripture says about man- and womanhood. One of the most important and encouraging aspects of this book is the way the Köstenbergers highlight how all of scripture speaks in a consistent and unified voice on the subject of gender roles. The appendices, "The Three Waves: Woman's History Survey", "Rules of the Game: Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology", and "Proceed with Caution: Special Issues in Interpreting Gender Passages", as also invaluable. The authors also treated egalitarian / evangelical feminist interpretations of scripture fairly and with academic rigor.

[Jess Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très bon survol des données bibliques sur le sujet des rôles de l'homme et de la femme selon les Écritures. L'auteur à l'intelligence de ne pas s'enfermer dans les textes habituellement discutés mais de considérer l'ensemble de la Bible.

Évidemment le format ne permet pas d'entrer dans toutes les subtilités de la discussion, pour cela des ressources complémentaires sont proposées à chaque fin de chapitre (néanmoins étonné du peu de place qu'occupent les commentaires dans ces recommandations).

Aussi la partie application est un peu faible mais là encore des ressources sont proposées tout le long du livre

[Travis Bow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-organized study of male and female roles throughout the Bible, taking a chronological approach and showing how roles and teaching evolved (but did not fundamentally change) through the Old and New Testaments. Lots of good footnotes with explanations of the main arguments and books/articles from both the egalitarian and complementarian side of the fence, finishing up with a good discussion of some of the principles and things to consider in the gray areas. I didn't agree with everything 100%, but thought it made a compelling case overall.

[Seth Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a fantastic book. The density was at times challenging but very rewarding. This book helped me to clearly see both perspectives of egalitarianism and complementarianism, and I walked away leaning complementarian. A quolm I do have with book is that their logistical implications for complementarianism were too extreme in my opinion.


Would recommend

[A. Jacob W. Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great and single volume look at how the Bible presents God's roles for men and women in an understandable way. It is suitable for a Sunday school class or other mentoring situation. A solid and unique defense of the complementarian view of man and woman.

[Patience · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good. Approaching this topic by way of a Biblical-Theological survey draws out the coherence of male-female relationships throughout Scripture.

[Allen Mandap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extensive Biblical treatment of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid introduction and general overview to God’s design for man and woman in Christ. A helpful resource for lay and vocational leaders in the local church.

[Breanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an AMAZING book!!!! It has taught so much on what it means to be a woman of God and what to look for in a godly husband!!!

[Tim Wester · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor exegesis, complementation view point and not understanding culture and context

[Jen Burley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough Biblical theological survey

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In-depth study of Gods design for man and woman, detailed abjections explained with scripture. Not for the faint hearted.

[Kelton Zacharias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would recommend other books before this, even if some parts were quite helpful.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, thoughtful overview of the pattern of male leadership through biblical literature.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid biblical investigation on manhood and womanhood in the Bible written by a married couple who are both Biblical scholars and Complementarians. Kinda boring at points, but a worthy study. This is a biblical theology of manhood and womanhood. Which means it traces this topic all the way through Scripture in order to see what the Bible actually says. As a result, there are huge chunks of information which do not seem directly related to the major debate about gender roles, but nevertheless provide essential groundwork from which exegetical and theological conclusions are based.

[Anastasia Tuckness · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up at last year's Women's Conference. The authors actually used to live in the same duplex my family did, so that's cool.

I appreciate their dedication to showing the theological basis for complementarianism--they are super thorough and the book is very well laid out, with footnotes, references, indices, etc.

In the end, I fall a little to the left of where they fall, and I didn't feel compelled to read the whole book, but it is pretty good on the whole.

[Jeremy]

Read ten related points here.