Egalitarians Need Better Arguments (Pt. 1): Preston Sprinkle's Anti-Canon

Canon, Original Sin, Christology

Introduction

I finally read Preston Sprinkle’s From Genesis to Junia. I have seen it touted on social media quite a bit, especially by egalitarians. It tells Preston Sprinkle’s interpretive journey from being a complementarian to an egalitarian. I was excited to read it to see what the curiosity was all about. I even wondered, “Will this change my mind?”. And it was… not good. Seriously. It does not live up to its hype. The problems in the book are deep and pervasive; page after page and chapter after chapter are filled with bad word studies, fallacious reasoning, and faulty foundations. There are more flaws than I am prepared to write about. It is hard to express just how bad this book is, but I will try to tackle some of the bigger problems over the next few posts.

The first and biggest problem is what I call, “Sprinkle’s Anti-canon.”

In Sprinkle’s Defense

Now, do not get me wrong. I like plenty of things about the book. Sprinkle had a humble, gentle tone throughout. He read an amazingly large amount of material and, by and large, dealt with interlocutors fairly. He worked in the original languages. He even granted arguments that militated against his final conclusion. How all that is true and his conclusions are still so flawed is beyond me.

The Anti-Canon

Sprinkle begins with Genesis 1–3 (chapter 1). He grants that these passages slightly push him in a complementarian direction. But, he makes two significant provisos. First, he refuses to use this to help him interpret 1 Tim 2–3, 1 Cor 11, 14, and Eph 5. He wants to understand each passage on its own merits before he puts them together. I understand this impulse, but the effect is to atomize and disintegrate the canonical unity. Second, he reserves the right to let his later reading of these supposedly unclear New Testament texts change how he reads Genesis 1–3. See the problem? In one instance he takes canon apart. On the other he reconstructs it arbitrarily.

Scripture Interprets Scripture

This is an illustration of the difficulty of using Scripture to interpret Scripture. Sprinkle tries to do this by using what, in his mind, is a less clear Scripture to interpret a clearer Scripture. The problem is that his direction is completely backwards. He is the most sure-footed about his conclusions regarding Genesis 1–3 in the whole book. But he allows these conclusions to be put to the wayside because of possible interpretations of less clear passages.

Now, how you judge what is “less” or “more” clear is not always clear. There is a huge subjective element to all this. Sprinkle would probably respond that neither Scripture is particularly clear and that he is doing the best he can, so I should just back off.

So why don’t I have more sympathy? Because there is a set of Scriptures which gives clarity to the whole relationship between the other two. In fact, while I think all the passages with which Sprinkle works make most sense as a complementarian, there is a biblical-theological theme which bears on Genesis 1–3 which is abundantly clear and about which I don’t know many who would disagree, namely Adam’s federal headship. The theme of Adam’s federal headship triangulates and grounds any kind of connection between Genesis 1–3 and the NT texts on female submission.

Adam’s Federal Headship

When later canonical texts look at the question of humanity’s creation and fall, they interpret them corporately through Adam’s federal headship.

So, for example, Isaiah 43:27 says, “Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me” (cf. Is 24:5). Likewise, Hosea 6:7, “Like Adam, they transgressed the covenant…”.

Paul himself is even more clear:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:12–21)

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:45–49)

These references are particularly important both exegetically and authoritatively. Paul, as an apostle, gives the authoritative understanding of the relationship of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1–3: Adam was the federal head of Eve. Exegetically, we know precisely what Paul meant in his supposedly “unclear” passages when he drew on the relationship between Adam and Eve to describe the paradigmatic relationship between man and woman in marriage and ministry: Adam was the head of Eve.

This is not an incidental detail. This is fundamental to Christian anthropology. Adam is the federal head of all mankind, and each family is a microcosm of this relationship. God has created man and woman as equal image-bearers (Gen 1:26–28), and, yet, has given them a complementary relationship where the husband is the head of the family. It is this relationship that Paul treats as paradigmatic.

How to Read Paul

If you intend to take a high view of Scripture, as both Sprinkle and I do, and if you believe Paul does not contradict himself, the exegetical implications are very clear. The understanding of how Adam and Eve are related when Paul says, for example, “the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband…” (1 Cor 11:3) or “the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Eph 5:23) or “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived” (1 Tim 2:13–14) has to take the theme of Adam’s federal headship into account. Even though Paul thinks Eve was deceived first, Adam receives her blame; he is the head. He is responsible and accountable.

We do not know everything that was going on in Paul’s brain when he wrote this, but we do know that Paul had a view of the relationship between Adam and Eve. We also know that he drew on that relationship to describe men and women’s relationships in both marriage and the church. We know he saw men as the head of their family, and he sees a similar relationship at play in the church.

Why We Cannot Lose This Interpretation

The stakes are also very clear. If we “egalitarianize” this relationship, then the parallel Paul draws between the first Adam and the second, are imperiled. If Adam is not the authoritative head of the human family, then what is the relationship Christ has with the church? This is the problem with Egalitarian readings of Ephesians 5:21–31; there is no doubt that Christ is in the authoritative relationship with the church. It is a very clear hierarchy of sacrifice and submission.

Egalitarian readings which tout mutual submission in Ephesians 5:20 upend the relationship between the church and Christ. By implication, church can be as much Lord as Christ is. The passages on original sin in Romans 5:21–31 and 1 Corinthians 15:45–49 use the relationship between Adam and humanity to explain the relationship between Christ and the church—and vice-versa. To flatten one is to imperil the other. In other words, the Egalitarian readings inevitably, if unintentionally, damage the gospel. It logically degrades the lordship of Christ; this, I suspect, is why many egalitarians downplay any notion of authority at all in the church.

Canon

And, here we come back to the issue of canon. For the heart of the canon is Christ himself; Canon and Christology are inseparable. Everything in the Old Covenant was written in anticipation of him. Everything in the New Covenant was written in remembrance of him. The first Adam gives way to the second. The first head is superseded by the second. The relationship between man and woman in the first is the scaffolding for what Christ’s ministry to the church looks like. To lose that is to lose everything.

Conclusion
Preston Sprinkle’s book is insufficiently canonical; I would go so far as to say that it is anti-canonical. It haphazardly uses “less clear” Scriptures to interpret “more clear” Scriptures. Neither does it sufficiently take into account the deep threads connecting Adam and Christ and its bearing on the relationship between man and woman in ministry and the church. Original sin and Adam’s headship triangulate and ground the debate about creation and gender roles. Sprinkle’s weakness on this score is glaring and undermines everything else in the book.

I have a few egalitarian friends, a few of whom will even read this post. So, all this leads me to wonder, “Why are so many egalitarians so pleased with From Genesis to Junia?”. Because if this is the best Egalitarians have to offer, I think they are in trouble.