Will male-female complementarity exist in the new heavens and new earth? If so, what can we learn about the continued distinctions between men and women in the new creation?

Scriptural data on the contours of the life to come are limited, so we must admit the speculative nature of our question up front. However, we can draw reasonable inferences from what the Bible does say about life in the resurrection, particularly from how the Bible treats masculinity and femininity in creation, after the fall, and in redemption.

Grace Restores Nature

Before considering complementarity in creation, it is necessary to introduce a theological concept on which the logic of this essay depends. According to Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, a key Reformational principle holds that grace does not destroy nature. What God created in the beginning is natural, and what is natural is good and not undone by God’s redemptive purposes. Rather, grace restores nature. Bavinck explains,

Grace serves, not to take up humans into a supernatural order, but to free them from sin. Grace is opposed not to nature, only to sin. . . . Grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle, but it does not add to it any new and heterogeneous constituents. (Reformed Dogmatics, 3:577)

Nature (which in this context is another word for God’s original design) is not inherently bad. Nature is good, but it has been corrupted by sin. In fact, sin is a privation and corruption of a created good. God’s gospel mission in Christ is to rid the world of sin and reform and restore nature in the new creation, taking it “to its highest pinnacle.” Importantly, the restoration of the created order includes God’s complementary design for male and female.

Some theological systems treat natural differences — such as those between men and women — as something bad to overcome. But after God created the world and everything in it, he called all that he had made “good,” and then he said it was “very good” after creating the man and the woman equal yet different in his image (Genesis 1:31). With God, we should confess that complementary difference is “very good,” and woe to those who call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).

Complementarity is creational, good, and part of what God redeems in the gospel.

Complementarity in Creation

Origin stories often provide crucial information for understanding a subject. The early chapters of Genesis are foundational for a properly biblical anthropology, and from these chapters we learn that complementarity — equal value with different callings — is original to and constitutive of humanity.

Genesis 1:26–28 introduces humanity’s form and function, teaching that God made mankind in his image to come in two varieties: male and female. The original Hebrew words for male (zakar) and female (neqebah) in Genesis 1 make subtle etymological references to the natural reproductive differences between men and women. These natural differences (form) ground and point toward their meaning and fulfillment (function) in marriage and procreation.

Jesus taught his disciples this connection between marriage and God’s complementary design in Matthew 19:4–5, where he connects the purpose of marriage in Genesis 2:24 (“Therefore . . .”) with God’s design in Genesis 1:27 (“male and female”):

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”?

Maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, are inherently complementary, meaning not only that we understand one vis-à-vis the other, but also that each bears witness to and complements the other as they both point toward their fulfillment in marriage. How God created “in the beginning” informs God’s purposes for his creation. And in God’s grand design, we learn that God created marriage itself to be a mysterious sign with meaning in the gospel (Ephesians 5:31–32).

So God’s complementary design has both a natural and a supernatural purpose. The natural purpose of male-female complementarity is marriage and procreation — cornerstones of the natural family, which is the bedrock of human society. The supernatural purpose of complementarity is to display the good news that Jesus has given his life for his bride, the church.

Complementarity After the Fall

When sin entered the world, complementarity was affected but not destroyed. We see this clearly in the curses God pronounces over creation in Genesis 3:16. Procreation continues in a fallen world, but it is more difficult. Marriage likewise continues, but it is also more difficult. Strife and conflict afflict the relationship between husband and wife. The wife tends not to willingly submit to her husband, but she has desires contrary to his leadership — or she resigns herself to being a doormat. And the husband tends not to relate to his wife in love as his equal, but with harsh rule — or he resigns himself to being a pushover.

Either way, God’s original complementary design is defaced by sin, but it is not erased. In a fallen world, we continue to bear God’s image as males and females, and marriage and procreation continue as a common grace for the continuance of the human race and as a picture of God’s ongoing activity in the world.

Complementarity in Redemption

God answers sin in the gospel. Not only has Jesus paid the penalty of sin through his substitutionary death on the cross, but he has begun a redemptive work in creation everywhere the gospel takes root.

It is through complementary procreation and childbearing that redemption is both promised and ultimately realized. In the midst of cursing the world on account of mankind’s sin, God promises to raise up an offspring of the woman who will put down the rebellion instigated by the serpent. In Genesis 3:15, God addresses the serpent within earshot of the man and the woman:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,     and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head,     and you shall bruise his heel.

As the biblical genealogies testify, generations of complementary relations between men and women brought this promise to the brink of fulfillment. Then, through the supernatural conception by a betrothed-and-then-married virgin, the promise was finally realized. Jesus is begotten of his heavenly Father and an earthly mother — the God-man come to earth to redeem his bride, the church. Complementarity permeates the gospel.

The New Testament affirms the continued goodness of complementary differences, particularly in marriage and procreation. The apostles exhort all Christians everywhere to faith and good works, affirming male-female equality of value in their redeemed standing before God (Galatians 3:28). But the apostles also give the New Testament churches differing, enduring, sex-specific instructions, including to the unmarried, in places like Titus 2 and in the household codes in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and 1 Peter 3. Grace does not erase nature but restores it — including our complementary natures and callings.

For instance, in 1 Timothy 2:11–15, Paul instructs women to act differently from men in the covenant community. Just as Adam was created as the covenant head of his wife, men are called to covenant leadership in marriage and in the church, and women are called to embrace their God-given design under the leadership of qualified men in the covenant community. In 1 Timothy 2:15, Paul mentions the archetypically feminine act, childbearing, for women to embrace in faith, love, holiness, and self-control. Many commentators see a reference in this verse to the unique role women played in the history of redemption to bring about the birth of the Savior. It was through childbirth, after all, that Jesus came into the world to bring salvation. Men are instructed to embrace their masculinity and women to embrace their femininity in the eternal life they have in Christ.

We can see how the gospel answers sin and restores nature also in the instructions Paul gives husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:22–33. The sex-specific commands for husbands and wives in this passage directly answer the propensities toward sin listed in the curses of Genesis 3:16. As the redeemed, husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves the church rather than to rule harshly over them. Wives are commanded to submit to their own husbands rather than to nurse desires contrary to their leadership.

This sampling of passages makes it clear that even as we are made more into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24), we embrace our masculinity and femininity as the God-given way we image him (Genesis 1:27).

Complementarity in the New Creation

The resurrection of Jesus offers an important clue for life in the new creation. The Bible teaches that Jesus rose from the dead as the “firstfruits” of the new creation (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23). Firstfruits portend not only that more will follow, but also what will follow.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he demonstrated continuity between his bodily existence before and after his death. Jesus was born into the world as a human male, lived a perfect life as a human male, died as a human male, and was resurrected as a human male. Francis Turretin rightly connects Christ’s resurrection to the resurrection believers should anticipate:

When he rose, Christ received the same body he had before and the same flesh which he had assumed and in which he died, for what he once took he never laid aside (Psalm 16:10; John 2:19; Acts 2:31). Hence he significantly says, “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39). Such ought to be our resurrection. Our bodies ought to be no other than those which were deposited in the earth. (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3:572–73)

At the resurrection, all the redeemed will be raised with bodies in the same way that Jesus was raised. Men and women will be reconstituted with imperishable male bodies and female bodies, respectively. In this way, we can affirm that maleness and femaleness, which imply masculinity and femininity, will persist in the new creation.

But what will this masculinity and femininity look like? We find another clue to life in the resurrection from Jesus in Matthew 22. This passage is a hotspot for speculation, and for good reason. In this passage, Jesus answers the Sadducees’ attempt to stump him with a question about a woman who was successively married to seven brothers. To which of the seven brothers would this woman be married in the resurrection? But Jesus is not stumped:

You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:29–32)

Jesus’s reply contains two pieces of information about life in the resurrection: we will not marry or be given in marriage, and we will be like the angels. Mainstream Christian orthodoxy has concluded from Jesus’s teaching that there will no longer be marriage in the new creation. But if marriage and procreation cease, then will maleness and femaleness cease?

This conclusion does not necessarily follow, in part because of the theological logic of resurrection (presented above) and in part because of Jesus’s own words. Indeed, the words Jesus uses in Matthew 22:30 appear to affirm the continuance of differences between the two sexes. The words “marry” and “given in marriage” refer to the uniquely male and female roles in marriage. In other words, the activity will cease, but not the differentiated identities. As Augustine observes,

In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30). They shall be equal to the angels in immortality and happiness, not in flesh, nor in resurrection, which the angels did not need, because they could not die. The Lord then denied that there would be in the resurrection, not women, but marriages; and he uttered this denial in circumstances in which the question mooted would have been more easily and speedily solved by denying that the female sex would exist, if this had in truth been foreknown by him. But, indeed, he even affirmed that the sex should exist by saying, They shall not be given in marriage, which can only apply to females; Neither shall they marry, which applies to males. There shall therefore be those who are in this world accustomed to marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there make no such marriages. (City of God, XXII.17)

In this way, Jesus does not mean to indicate that we will be “like angels” in that we will be non-physical or disembodied. We will have resurrected bodies, which means we will be sexed as Jesus is in his resurrected male body. But we will be “like angels” in that we will be immortal, as Augustine affirms, and we will no longer procreate. The pleasures promised to Christians (Psalm 16:11), both male and female, transcend the mere physical, instead promising spiritual unity with God himself as we enjoy his goodness forever in his presence (Revelation 21).

In sum, masculinity and femininity continue in the new creation because God created us male and female — equal in value yet different in our callings — in the beginning, pronouncing it “very good.” Masculinity and femininity are not erased by the fall but are being redeemed in the gospel. We who are united to Christ by faith will be raised with sexed bodies like his, male or female, which means masculinity and femininity will persist in the new heavens and the new earth. Male-female complementarity originated in the garden, persists in spite of the fall, is redeemed in Christ, and will be fully restored in the new creation.

Male and Female Forever

If we have adequately established that masculinity and femininity will persist in the new heavens and new earth, we may now explore what this might look like. If marriage and procreation are no more, what will masculinity and femininity look like? How will they be distinguished? And for what purpose?

The differences between masculinity and femininity will persist, first and foremost, in our embodied differences. Men and women have similar yet different forms that lend themselves to different but overlapping modes of subsistence. While no longer directed at marriage and procreation, masculinity and femininity will retain their original function in imaging and reflecting the glory of God. And because we are not God, no one of us can image or reflect his glory independently. Male and female together are required to image God sufficiently.

God-created differentiation will continue in the new creation. The new heavens will be distinct from the new earth; angels and cherubim will be distinct from seraphim; trees will be distinct from rivers, and these created realities will be distinct from the men and women who will walk among them, embodied and differentiated as either male or female. Each aspect of God’s new creation will proclaim something about its Creator (Romans 1:20). Because no one created being is equal to God, which includes each of us as male or female, we will continue to experience and benefit from differentiated createdness, which will bear testimony to and give glory to God.

Second, bodily continuity between this age and the age to come points toward spiritual continuity. Masculinity in this age is typified by strength and initiative and leadership. We have reason to think that in the new heavens and new earth, masculinity will continue to typify such. Femininity in this age is typified by beauty and receptivity and nurture, and this also is likely to continue in the age to come. Importantly, one typified attribute is not better than another. Just the opposite: every attribute is good and necessary, as it is created by and participates in God himself. But they are differentiated, and this differentiation will continue in the new creation because maleness and femaleness will continue.

Admittedly, though, we have arrived with C.S. Lewis’s character Ransom at the brink of futility and wonder as we try to fully account for the beauty of complementary difference:

But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try — Ransom has tried a hundred times — to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. . . . What Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. (Perelandra, 171)

Complementarity participates in true reality, because it reflects God’s design. Instead of trying to define the scope of masculinity and femininity in the age to come, we should content ourselves with affirming complementary continuity, which means affirming the goodness of male-female difference, while celebrating and anticipating continued complementarity in God’s (re)created order.

God’s creation is beautifully diverse, like a multifaceted diamond, in order to catch and reflect the eternal divine Light (1 John 1:5). It will be similar in the new creation, which is described in similar terms as the first creation (“new heavens and new earth,” Revelation 21:1; “the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1). We serve a God whose Trinitarian love is reflected in and refracted through all of creation, including redeemed humanity. Male-female complementarity is part of God’s original design, and this complementarity will be beautifully restored with the rest of creation, which eagerly awaits God’s redemption (Romans 8:23).

Male-female complementarity will exist in the new heavens and the new earth, and so will masculinity and femininity. As for their eternal complementary purposes, Lord willing, we will have an eternity to appreciate them, and through them the strength and beauty of our God.

ABSTRACT: When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing and “proclaiming a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), his ministry may seem novel — and in some ways, it is. At the same time, however, almost every aspect of John’s ministry fulfills Old Testament expectations. His mission fulfills Malachi’s promise of a new Elijah. His call to repentance reaches back to the prophecy and new-covenant promise of Deuteronomy 30. And even his meeting place comes freighted with prophetic significance: by calling Israelites into the wilderness across the Jordan, he calls them to follow a new Joshua through the waters of a new exodus into a new covenant. Since John, baptism has marked a spiritual crossing of the Jordan River, as God’s people pass from the wilderness of exile into the promised land, now citizens of a new kingdom and a new King.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Colin Smothers (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, to explain the origins and meaning of John’s baptism.

When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing and “proclaiming a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), what is he doing? From where did John’s baptism come (Matthew 21:25)? And what does its origin mean for Christians today?

The thesis of this essay is that the meaning of John’s baptism relates to its inspired novelty: namely, John’s baptism prepares a new-covenant people of God for a new exodus and conquest — albeit with escalated and spiritualized aims. Through John’s baptism, a new-covenant people are prepared to follow a new Joshua, or Yeshua, across the River Jordan — very much like the people of Israel when they entered the promised land — as citizens of a new kingdom under a new King, a Son of David. Moreover, because Jesus, the Christ, receives John’s baptism at the inauguration of his ministry and continues the practice throughout his earthly ministry and beyond (John 3:22; 4:2; Matthew 28:19), the meaning of John’s baptism has implications for Christian baptism.

We will explore three aspects of John’s baptism under three headings: the message, the meeting place, and the meaning. Once we sound the meaning of John’s baptism, we will be prepared to comment on the meaning of New Testament baptism.

The Message of John’s Baptism

In the three Synoptic Gospels, John’s ministry of baptism is clearly tied to his proclamation of repentance and the nearness of the kingdom of God. Matthew directly quotes John the Baptist’s message in Matthew 3:2, where he says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew ties this message explicitly to Isaiah’s new-covenant prophecy by quoting from Isaiah 40:3: John is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (Matthew 3:3). Matthew, a student of Scripture, knows John’s redemptive role. Isaiah 40 is a hinge that marks a turning from the former things under the old covenant to the new things under the new covenant. By hyperlinking, as it were, John’s ministry and message to Isaiah 40, Matthew announces for his readers that the new things have arrived with the arrival of John.

Instead of quoting John’s message, Mark summarizes it in Mark 1:4: “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Repentance is central to John the Baptist’s message — a message that, as we will see, is central to the prophetic literature surrounding the “return” or “turn” from exile that initiates the new covenant. Significantly, Jesus himself takes up this message of repentance in his own preaching ministry in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (cf. Matthew 4:17).

Repentance and “returning” or “turning” are related concepts in the Old and New Testaments. For example, the word translated “repent” in John’s and Jesus’s message is metanoeō, which is used in LXX Isaiah 46:8 to translate the Hebrew word shuv, or “turn” — a word that we will see is extremely significant.

In Luke’s Gospel, we are given further background details to John the Baptist’s ministry, as Luke begins his Gospel with details surrounding John’s conception and birth. An angel is sent to John’s father, Zechariah, with a message about his unborn son’s ministry in Luke 1:16: “He will turn [epistrephō] many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.” The word translated “turn” here in Luke 1:16 is used 298 times by the LXX to translate the Hebrew word shuv, “turn” or “return.”

John’s baptism is further substantiated as a message of “turning” and “repentance” when Luke summarizes John’s baptism as a “baptism of repentance” in Luke 3:3 and again in Acts 19:4. Luke goes on to connect John’s ministry to Isaiah with a quote from Isaiah 40 (Luke 3:4–6), just as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John do.

Message of Return in Deuteronomy 30

From these passages, it is clear that “repentance” or “turning” is a significant element to John’s message and ministry of baptism. What can we conclude from this? Significantly, this same language of “turning” and “return” is used in a prominent place in the book of Deuteronomy, in arguably the Torah’s most explicit new-covenant passage. In fact, the angel’s words to Zechariah in Luke 1:16 almost certainly echo Deuteronomy 30:2.

Luke 1:16: “He will turn [epistrepho + epi] many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.”Deuteronomy 30:2: “Return [epistrepho + epi] to the Lord your God, you and your children.”

In Deuteronomy 30:1–10, the Hebrew word shuv — which the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon glosses as “turn back, return” — occurs seven times.1 In context, Deuteronomy 30 is a record of Moses’s words to a new generation that has replaced the faithless wilderness generation. The book of Deuteronomy is a covenant renewal. But Moses predicts the dire future of this covenant in Deuteronomy 28–29: the people will enter the land, they will disobey the covenant, and they will be exiled.

Deuteronomy 28–29 becomes programmatic for the history of Israel in the land. All that Moses says will happen in these chapters comes true as Israel’s history unfolds. But Moses does not leave them without hope. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses says that “when all these things come upon you,” and the people call (shuv) these words to mind (verse 1), and the people and their children return (shuv) to the Lord (verse 2), then the Lord will restore (shuv) them and gather them again (shuv) from exile (verse 3). Then the people will again (shuv) obey the Lord and keep his commands (verse 8), and the Lord will again (shuv) delight in them (verse 9), when they turn (shuv) to the Lord with all their heart and soul (verse 10).

“John’s baptism prepares a new-covenant people of God for a new exodus and conquest.”

Significantly, it is in Deuteronomy 30:6, the heart of this passage, where we find the theme of heart renovation, or heart circumcision, which is a significant component of the new covenant: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” The prophet Jeremiah picks up this theme of heart renovation in his new-covenant prophecy in Jeremiah 31:33, which builds on Moses’s prophecy in Deuteronomy 30.

Message of Return in the Prophets

As I argue in my book In Your Mouth and In Your Heart,2 Deuteronomy 30 is a wellspring that later biblical authors return to again and again in their Spirit-inspired expositions and developments of new-covenant promises and messianic hopes. A few examples of this will have to suffice.

In the first chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet announces coming judgment against Israel because of their continual disobedience to the covenant. But as in Deuteronomy, this note of judgment comes with a promise of redemption. Though God will turn his hand against them, “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent [shuv], by righteousness” (Isaiah 1:27). Who will announce this coming righteousness? The one who, according to Isaiah 40:3, cries out “in the wilderness” — or perhaps, according to some interpretations, “prepares a way in the wilderness” — for the Lord. And the Lord comes with a promise: “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return [shuv] to me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22).

The theme of “turning” and “returning” is a major thread through the Minor Prophets, or the Book of the Twelve (see Hosea 6:1–2 as one example), which includes the following expectant words of Malachi the prophet before God’s special revelation goes dark for centuries — until, that is, the world sees a great Light:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn [shuv] the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. (Malachi 4:5–6)

It is no coincidence, then, that the first word of John the Baptist’s message is “Repent!” “Turn!” And his baptism is a baptism of repentance. Why? For the new covenant has arrived; the kingdom of heaven is at hand — the King is here.

The Meeting Place of John’s Baptism

Almost as significant as John the Baptist’s message is his chosen meeting place. Where does John the Baptist choose to proclaim his message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and the announcement of the coming kingdom and King? He could have gone many places to find water. He could have stayed in the land of Israel, perhaps at the Sea of Galilee. But instead, John goes across the Jordan, outside the historical boundaries of the promised land, to the wilderness, much like some of the messianic pretenders of his day were doing.3

Why is John in the wilderness, baptizing in the Jordan River? The prophets are replete with possible reasons. Considered together, I believe these texts form a formidable rationale and theological explanation for John’s wilderness ministry of baptism. As we will see, they also have implications for Christian baptism.

The most obvious prophetic background to John the Baptist’s ministry comes from Isaiah 40, which, as we have already seen, every one of the Gospel writers notes. But the book of Isaiah contains several other textual backdrops to John’s baptismal ministry in the wilderness.

Right before Jesus preaches his message of repentance in Matthew 4:17, Matthew quotes Isaiah 9:1–2, saying, “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light” (Matthew 4:15–16). This phrase in Isaiah 9:1, “the land beyond the Jordan,” is cited in relation to the land of Israel, which means it is the land opposite the promised land, in the wilderness, that “he has made glorious.” Significantly, John 1:28 uses the same language to describe where John was baptizing, “across the Jordan,” in the wilderness.

From the Wilderness to the Jordan

In fact, Isaiah’s entire new-covenant program seems predicated around a wilderness sojourn. We will pick up this thread in Isaiah 43. Many scholars have noted the new-covenant turn that Isaiah 40 and following takes — what Brevard Childs refers to as the “new things,” in contrast to the “old things” of chapters 1 through 39 — and chapter 43 is no exception.4

The whole chapter deserves quotation, but we must be selective. Isaiah 43 begins with a promise of God’s redemption in verse 1, and then a promise of God’s protection in verse 2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” Here we have latent baptismal language (cf. 1 Peter 3:21): God promises to be with his people when they are in the midst of the waters and to see them safely to the other side. Isaiah is clearly invoking exodus imagery, which itself is an echo of the waters of the salvation through judgment in Noah’s flood.5 God promises to be with his people just as he was when they passed through the midst of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). But the mention of rivers in Isaiah 43:2 suggests also Israel’s crossing the Jordan River (Joshua 3), a reference Isaiah amplifies a few verses later.

In Isaiah 43:5–7, God promises to bring his people from the east, the west, the north, and the end of the earth — “everyone who is called by my name.” In these verses, Isaiah describes Israel’s redemption as a return from exile, an ingathering from the nations, using the cardinal directions much as Psalm 107 does, which opens book 5 of the Psalter — the book sometimes called the “Book of Redemption.” The new covenant involves a new (re)turn.

Isaiah 43:16–17 picks up the exodus imagery and develops the theme of passing through the waters on the way of redemption or return. Then comes an explicit mention of the “new thing” God promises to do:

Remember not the former things,     nor consider the things of old.Behold, I am doing a new thing;     now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness     and rivers in the desert.The wild beasts will honor me,     the jackals and the ostriches,for I give water in the wilderness,     rivers in the desert,to give drink to my chosen people,     the people whom I formed for myselfthat they might declare my praise. (verses 18–21)

The wilderness theme in Isaiah 43 is invoked in part due to the exilic imagery and the return journey of the people of God, through the deserts, on the way to the promised land. But the journey intentionally channels the one God’s people took in their exodus out of Egypt — a journey that brought them through the midst of the Red Sea into the wilderness, only to camp on the “other side of the Jordan” and await another crossing, another passing through the midst of waters, on their way to inherit the promised land.

Importantly, the Law and the Prophets are negative in their assessment of this first journey and inheritance: the people became undeserving and the land spit them out (cf. Leviticus 18:28; Deuteronomy 28:15–68; Jeremiah 25:11–12). But the Prophets also tell of a day when the people will once again inherit the land — a new kingdom — after a wilderness exile (Jeremiah 29:10–14; Isaiah 40:1–11; Daniel 9:24–27).

Is it not reasonable, then, to expect this new “return” to come with yet another crossing of the River Jordan from the wilderness?

New Exodus, New Return

This new wilderness sojourn as part of the beginning of a “return” to the promised land is reinforced in polyphonic harmony when we bring in other prophetic witnesses. In Ezekiel 20, the prophet speaks of the “return” or “restoration” of Israel that God has promised, even in spite of their current exilic judgment. In verses 33–35, Ezekiel says that this program will include a going out from their current dwelling places, a wilderness gathering, and a coronation with God as King:

As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.

This wilderness gathering is compared to the wilderness gathering of the exodus generation in verse 36, and it precedes a promise of a new covenant, “I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant” (verse 37), and a new entrance into the land, “You shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country that I swore to give to your fathers” (verse 42).

Historically speaking, the Scriptures do not record a covenant renewal or covenant establishment “in the wilderness” in the generations that returned to the land during the ministries of Ezra and Nehemiah and after. Instead, the New Testament authors appear to assume that the foundation of this covenant promise is inaugurated with the new-covenant ministry of Jesus, whose way is prepared by the baptism of John “in the wilderness.”

A final prophetic witness provides one more reason to pay attention to the meeting place of John’s baptism in order to grasp its theological meaning. Hosea speaks of the Lord’s tenderness toward his unfaithful people in Hosea 2:14: “Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” Later in the book, in Hosea 6:1–2, the prophet issues a clear call to God’s people to “turn” that they might be healed in the midst of their sinfulness.

The meeting place of the Jordan River becomes especially intriguing when we consider the New Testament’s testimony that John the Baptist is the Elijah to come, as promised by the prophet Malachi (Malachi 4:5–6). Where in the Scriptures do we see Elijah at the Jordan River? In 2 Kings 2:6–8, Elijah “prepares the way” for Elisha by parting the waters of the Jordan to cross to the other side — something Elisha himself does on the way back, entering into the land of promise through the waters of the Jordan (2 Kings 2:13–14).

It would seem, then, that John’s baptismal ministry and message of “repentance” or “return” is not just an individual call — although it most certainly is that — but also a programmatic call that initiates a new exodus and new return under a new Joshua who is King of a new kingdom.

The Meaning of John’s Baptism

If the several canonical threads regarding the message and meeting place of John’s baptismal ministry have been sufficiently established, then we are ready to explore a few biblical-theological possibilities for the meaning of John’s baptism, which have implications for Christian baptism.

The apostle Paul clearly connects baptism to the exodus crossing of the Red Sea:

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. (1 Corinthians 10:1–4)

But John comes baptizing not in the Red Sea, but in the River Jordan, proclaiming his preparatory prophetic message of repentance to God’s people, the same message given to Hosea and the other prophets: “Return to the Lord.” How are the people supposed to respond to John’s message? By leaving the promised land and joining him in the wilderness, they acted out a confession of their covenantal disobedience and unworthiness to be in the land — Ezekiel said God would enter into covenant with them in the wilderness — so that God’s people might return again to the land as citizens of the kingdom of God under a new and rightful king.

This is what John is doing, baptizing across the Jordan in the wilderness. He is preparing a people for a new exodus, or return, to the promised land under a new Joshua, crying out in the Spirit of Elijah, “Repent! (Return! Turn!) For the kingdom of God is at hand!” Where is this kingdom? Who is this king? He is the one called Yeshua, Salvation, who bears the name of another who parted the waters of the Jordan ahead of the people entering the promised land.

How does all of the foregoing relate to Christian baptism, especially the explicit teaching in Romans 6 that baptism symbolizes the Christian’s union with Christ? Romans 6:3–11 makes clear that Christian baptism has at its theological center our blessed union with Christ by faith in his death, burial, and resurrection. The very act of water immersion signifies a burial in the waters of God’s judgment, having died to sin and put to death the old man in Christ — these waters that are typified by the great flood and the Red Sea and even the Jordan River. And when the baptized emerges from these waters, this signifies his resurrection to new life — life as a new man, a new creation, in Christ by faith (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But when Jesus received John’s baptism at the Jordan River, it became Christian baptism, and he and his disciples continued the practice during Jesus’s earthly ministry and beyond (John 3:22; 4:2; Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38). Those who did not receive this baptism as Christian baptism, but only as John’s baptism, had to receive the true sign of which the Holy Spirit is the seal (Acts 19:1–7).

In fact, when Paul encounters some disciples who had not heard of the Holy Spirit, he seems to fault them for not understanding John’s baptism, which they had received. In Acts 19:3, Paul asks them, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answer, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul’s response is instructive: “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus” (Acts 19:4). In other words, if John’s baptism is received as Christian baptism — baptism into Christ — then it is true baptism.

In this way, it seems proper to understand New Testament baptism as a continuation of what John began and Jesus received in the wilderness, beyond the Jordan River. I do not think it is a coincidence, then, that John 1:28 says, “These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” Perhaps John chose this site intentionally, as the place where Israel would have camped and even crossed into Canaan as they prepared to enter the land, first coming to the city of Jericho, not far across the way from where John began his baptismal ministry.

With John in the Jordan

It has been tradition for many Baptist churches to have a mural of the River Jordan painted over their baptismal. If the texts and implications in this exploration hold together, this imagery rightly offers at least a partial understanding of the meaning and origins of both John’s baptism and Christian baptism.

We too have crossed the River Jordan, being put under the waters of judgment, following the new Joshua in a new exodus under a new covenant, and by faith in him we have at least begun to enter the promised land as citizens of a new kingdom and a new King. God has caused us to return, to repent, for the kingdom of God is near — indeed, it is at hand, and though we are sojourners, we are no longer in the wilderness. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

In the New Testament and across Christian tradition, baptism signals at least three realities:

Identification with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4; Colossians 2:12)
Purification from sin and its effects, which have separated us from our Maker (Acts 22:16)
Incorporation into the body of Christ, the church (Acts 2:41; 1 Corinthians 12:13)

Given these connotations, and given the assumption that Christian baptism is new with John the Baptist’s initiation — a baptism received by Christ at the beginning of his earthly ministry to signal its inauguration and association with the dawn of the new covenant — how does Christian baptism relate to Old Testament practices? Where did the idea of baptism come from? After overviewing the meaning of Christian baptism, this article seeks to briefly explore the connections between baptism and Old Testament ritual washings.

Buried and Raised with Christ

When considering the meaning of baptism, it is important to distinguish the word’s definitional meaning from its symbolic or metaphorical meaning. Literally, or definitionally, the word baptize means “to dip” or “to immerse.”1 But this definition does not exhaust the meaning of Christian baptism in the New Testament.

Paul gets to the heart of the meaning of Christian baptism in Romans 6:3–4:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

In this passage, Paul connects Christian baptism to union with Christ, especially in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection in the place of, and on behalf of, his people (see also Colossians 2:12). This connection explains why immersion was the normal baptismal practice of the early church, a practice that has continued in some traditions to the present day.2 Immersion in water, and the believer’s subsequent emersion from the water, symbolizes union with Christ and his work: Christ’s death and burial in our place, Christ’s resurrection on our behalf.

“Immersion in water, and the believer’s subsequent emersion from the water, symbolizes union with Christ and his work.”

In this way, baptism pictures the new birth, without which no one can “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). By faith, the old man is “crucified with him” (Romans 6:6) and buried — represented by being submerged under the waters of judgment with Christ (Romans 6:3) — so that emerging, the newborn person might live in new life and resurrection hope in union with Christ. In this way, the act of baptism heralds the good news that Christ saves sinners from sin and death through identification with his life and holiness.

Circumcision and Baptism

Although identification with God in Christ is central to understanding baptism — hence why the Christian baptismal formula is “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and why the New Testament speaks of being “baptized into Christ” (see Galatians 3:27) — other biblical-theological symbols can help us understand and appreciate the full meaning of Christian baptism. One, which we cannot explore at length in this short article, is baptism’s connection with the old covenant rite of circumcision.

Paedobaptist traditions often justify their practice of infant baptism by positing a strong continuity between the old and new covenants: as the (male) children of God’s old covenant people received the old covenant sign of circumcision on the eighth day, so today, children born to new covenant believers should receive the new covenant sign, baptism.

We should note that the connection between baptism and circumcision is biblically justified (see Colossians 2:11–12). But paedobaptists misidentify the point of connection. Yes, people are born into the new covenant community, but this is the new birth of which Jesus spoke, and the new covenant children are those who have the faith of their father Abraham (Romans 4:11). In other words, those who are newborn by faith into the new covenant community receive the new-covenant sign of baptism, thus being incorporated into Christ’s body, the church.

‘Wash Away Your Sins’

But what of Old Testament washings? Are these practices part of the symbolic furniture that can help fill out a New Testament understanding of Christian baptism? Acts 22:16 seems to indicate so.

In this passage, Paul recounts for the Jews gathered at the temple in Jerusalem his miraculous conversion and subsequent baptism. As Paul relays his testimony, he includes Ananias’s instructions after he supernaturally received back his sight (an event that is probably meant to symbolize the moment of Paul’s conversion). Ananias said to Paul, “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16). In this verse, baptism is related to the washing away of sins. But how? Seeing baptism as the efficient cause of washing would be to overread the connection and to ignore the qualifying participle, “calling on his name.” But failing to see the symbolic connection between baptism and washing would be to underread this verse.

The apostle Peter makes a similar connection between baptism and washing, or purification, in 1 Peter 3:21. After he references Noah and his family’s safe passage through the flood on the ark, he writes, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

This notoriously difficult verse has been used to justify a doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which teaches that the waters of baptism are an efficient cause of salvation. But as in Acts 22:16, the call to God in faith qualifies such an overreading. It is not the water-washing of baptism that saves, but what the water-washing symbolizes: “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And such an appeal can only be made by faith.

Old Testament Washings

Given the relationship Paul and Peter draw between Christian baptism and washing, what specific relation might baptism have to Old Testament washings?

“Baptism is an appeal to God and a symbol of the decisive act of the Holy Spirit, who washes, regenerates, and renews.”

While some rites of washing and purification were immediately related to physical hygiene and the spread of disease (see, for instance, laws regarding leprosy and bodily discharges in Leviticus 13–15), other ritual washings addressed the spiritual uncleanness that comes from living as sinners in a sinful world. For instance, in Exodus 19:10–11, Israel is told to wash before they meet God at Sinai. In Exodus 29:4, Aaron and his sons are to be washed with water to be consecrated as priests. Exodus 30:17–21 includes instructions for priests to wash their hands and feet before they enter the tabernacle.

As my colleague Randal Breland puts it, death, disease, and disorder, which the Bible teaches are all downstream from sin, make one unclean, or impure. And in order to relate to a holy God, we must be made clean. Old Testament ceremonial washings addressed this fallen reality in two ways: first by confronting sinners with their perpetual uncleanness — if they wash, they are tacitly acknowledging their uncleanness — and second by giving them a divinely ordained way to be made clean and so relate to God on his terms.

Cleansing the Heart

Even so, Scripture makes clear that ritual washings are not sufficient to deal with sin and its effects once and for all. In Luke 11:39–40, Jesus addresses the spiritual implications of ceremonial washing: “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?”

Mark records Jesus in a similar context expanding this observation into a spiritual principle with implications for ritual washing: “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:14–15; see also Matthew 15:1–20). In other words, the deeper spiritual reality and meaning behind the act — not the washing itself — is most significant.

This spiritual significance of washing, and its relationship to baptism, seems to lie behind Jesus’s response to Peter in John 13:9, where Peter tells Jesus to wash not just his feet, but his head and his hands. Jesus responds to Peter that he has already been made clean: “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you” (John 13:10).

Significantly, Jesus tells Peter that he does not need to perpetually wash his head and his hands, as the priests of old did, in order to come to God. He has been made clean, once for all, by his faith-union with Christ, which is symbolized by the “bathing” of baptism in which Peter had been submerged — head, hands, and all. But notice: the twelve all had received baptism when they followed Christ, they all had “bathed” (see John 4:1–2), but only eleven were clean. Judas was baptized, but he was not clean.

True and Greater Washing

What then is the symbolic connection between Christian baptism and Old Testament washings? Just as Old Testament washings occurred in obedience to the command of God and symbolized purification from sin, so also baptism. But as in the Old Testament, the act itself does not effect the cleansing; God does. Baptism is an appeal to God and a symbol of the decisive act of the Holy Spirit, who washes, regenerates, and renews in his application of Christ’s work to our lives. As Paul writes in Titus 3:5, “[God] saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”

In this way, we leave behind the “various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Hebrews 9:10), while also recognizing how they teach us of and point us to the true and greater washing by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:13–14) and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, all of which is symbolized by baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, let those of us who by faith have been baptized “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22).

“I do not believe God created an egalitarian world.” (“Membership,” in The Weight of Glory and other Essays, 36)

Having made it my aim to read everything I can get my hands on from C.S. Lewis, I would venture to say this sentence from his 1945 essay “Membership” goes a long way toward summarizing his position on a good many topics. In a word, Lewis believed in hierarchy:

I do not believe God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen, patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful form of government. (“Membership,” 36)

We could distill Lewis’s worldview from this passage into three essential components: First, rightful authority is good and to be embraced. Second, inequality is not always and inherently bad. And third, both authority and hierarchy are rooted in God’s original, creational design.

Lewis the ‘Complementarian’

While Lewis would not have referred to himself as a complementarian — the term wasn’t coined until after his death — most would recognize his views on men and women as complementarian, especially when it comes to marriage and church office.

For example, many are familiar with his book Mere Christianity, which is an apologetic for baseline, historic, orthodox Christianity. But some have been surprised to find multiple arguments for male headship in marriage in his apologetic for a mere Christianity:

[Christian society] is always insisting on obedience — obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. (Mere Christianity, 84)

Note a few things. For one, Lewis assumes wives obeying their husbands is simply a given for a properly ordered Christian society, alongside the obedience of citizens to magistrates and children to parents. He assumes such, of course, because this is what the Bible teaches in places like Ephesians 5:22–24 and 1 Peter 3:1, 5–6. Complementarian reasoning did not originate with American baby boomers, as some charge.

But what is perhaps more striking is that, even back in the 1940s, Lewis considered this teaching “very unpopular.” And yet he presented it anyway in his argument defending the truth and goodness of Christianity, demonstrating his confidence that what the Bible teaches is worth not only preserving, but promoting, regardless of which way the societal winds are blowing.

“For Lewis, the past must be upheld insofar as it is consistent with God’s revelation.”

Lewis’s essay “Priestesses in the Church” insists on the necessity of the male-only priesthood for maintaining the integrity of the church. He was writing against those in his time who were advocating for women’s ordination to the Anglican priesthood. For Lewis, “To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment [would be] to cut ourselves off from the Christian past” (“Priestesses in the Church,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, 235). The “Christian past” Lewis refers to was certainly rooted in tradition, but it was a tradition grounded in a reality far deeper than mere history. For Lewis, the past must be upheld insofar as it is consistent with God’s revelation, which he believed maintained a distinction between the sexes when it came to church office.

Lewis the Egalitarian?

Now, this isn’t to say that everyone is agreed on this assessment of Lewis’s views. To the contrary, there is a small but growing cottage industry dedicated to proving Lewis may have been more progressive in his views on women than many have previously understood.

According to this set, Lewis perhaps did not really mean what he said in “Membership” or Mere Christianity or “Priestesses in the Church.” Or if he really meant it when he wrote, he changed his mind toward the end of his life, after he had been enlightened by other relationships and experiences, such as his own late marriage. These arguments often proceed from an amalgamation of snippets from private correspondence, psychological assessments of his relationships with various women, and other bits from his later writings. The best argument in this genre is given by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen in A Sword Between the Sexes? C.S. Lewis and the Gender Debate.

I remain wholly unpersuaded by this revisionist reading of Lewis. Instead, I want to demonstrate how Lewis’s views on the sexes are more conservative and fundamental than what could be undone by a passing comment in one of his private letters or in a eulogy for his late wife. As we will see, Lewis’s views on the sexes were not even really primarily about manhood and womanhood at all, but about the way God made and ordered the world.

Masculinity and Femininity

Lewis’s views on men and women are most clear and accessible in his non-fiction work. But as is so often the case with literature, Lewis can be very persuasive in his fiction. This is why my main argument takes us to an unexpected place: to Perelandra, the name Lewis gives the planet Venus in our solar system.

The setting is the middle of book 2 in Lewis’s space trilogy. In this scene, the main character, Ransom, sees two angelic beings named Malacandra and Perelandra, who rule Mars and Venus, respectively. What strikes Ransom most about these two beings, though, is the evident difference between them, even though they exhibit no obvious sex characteristics:

But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try — Ransom has tried a hundred times — to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. (Perelandra, 171)

At this point, the reader realizes Lewis has set this scene to make a deeper, philosophical point about masculinity and femininity:

[W]hat Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. (Perelandra, 171–72)

Here, in the middle of Lewis’s space trilogy, we begin to see the true depth of his understanding of complementarity. Complementarity, and by extension sex, is not merely accidental, or even incidental in creation. It is wired into the world. The polarity is the point, and it is reflected in all of creation: Mars and Venus, sun and moon, day and night, land and sea. Male and female he created them.

“Our differences aren’t just roles, or masks that can be put on or put off. They are part and parcel with reality.”

In this way, Lewis’s concept of complementarity is related to what he elsewhere calls the Tao. Our world is infused with objective meaning, including complementarity. And all of it demands a certain value response. Whether or not we act accordingly, there are ways of living and moving and having our being in the world that are fitting, and there are many ways that are not. When we downplay or ignore the Tao, or in this case the differences between male and female, we hinder ourselves and limit our true potential as created beings. Our differences aren’t just roles, or masks that can be put on or put off. They are part and parcel with reality.

Complementarity in Marriage

This idea of complementarity is one of the overarching messages in Lewis’s space trilogy. The themes and structures of these books deserve their own essay — indeed, entire volumes have been written with just such an aim. But generally speaking, the first two books, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, unfold astride the male-female binary. The first book takes place on the planet Malacandra, or Mars, which is known for its hard lines, sharp landscape, and warlike inhabitants. The second book is set on Perelandra, or Venus, which in almost every way is opposite Malacandra: fertile, soft, and lush. That Hideous Strength takes place on Earth. Notably, the first word of the first chapter hints at the trilogy’s meta-theme: Matrimony.

A closer look at the third book reveals complementary arcs in the marriage of the two main characters, Mark and Jane. As the book progresses, each bends away from stunted versions of masculinity and femininity toward a full embrace of complementarity. Mark, who is previously an unassertive workaholic, learns to shun passivity toward his wife and to live out self-sacrificial leadership. Jane, a feminist and careerist, learns to joyfully submit to her husband and embrace her natural femininity. Along the way, Lewis makes sure the reader does not mistake him for promoting degenerate stereotypes, as hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity are lampooned in the story’s villains.

The turning point for Jane’s character is especially instructive. It comes in a conversation with the main character, Ransom, who is now known as the Director. The quote begins with Jane speaking of her own marriage to Mark.

“I thought love meant equality,” she said, “and free companionship.”

“Ah, equality!” said the Director. “We must talk of that some other time. Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another’s greed, because we are fallen. Just as we wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes, ripening for the day when we shall need them no longer. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know.” (That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups, 145)

What is deeper than equality? He has already given an answer in the trilogy’s very structure: complementarity.

Deeper Than Equality

In the same conversation, the Director gives Jane marital advice. She admits to him that she doesn’t share his view of marriage, and his response is striking: “[I]t is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it” (That Hideous Strength, 144). Jane is still hampered by her feminism, fixated with tunnel vision on equality. This fixation makes the Director’s advice all the more jarring. Obedience, he recommends to her. Obedience and humility.

The reader can almost hear the last gasp of feminism leave Jane, while something deeper and primal begins to stir in her. Lewis, in his own creative way, has simply exegeted in narrative form the Bible’s own teaching and rationale on marriage and complementarity, which itself is rooted in God’s original design for male and female in Genesis 1 and 2.

Even if Lewis did change his views later in life — I remain unconvinced that he did — his own words in the mouth of the Director would stand witness against him: It is not a question of how you or I look on it, but how the Master does. And the Master has told us in Scripture how he views the husband and wife in marriage. He is the one who made them male and female, after all.

Revelation over Revolution

At heart, Lewis was a conservative and a traditionalist, an old soul and a “dinosaur,” as he once referred to himself. But he wasn’t a reactionary. He didn’t define his position over against the “progress” of his day, although functionally that’s where he often found himself. Instead, he saw himself as holding onto the good, true, and beautiful, because that is what God revealed.

To take a step away from what has been revealed by God in Scripture and nature would have unintended consequences, especially when it comes to marriage and how we live as male and female. He telegraphed where the sexual progressives of his day were headed in “Priestesses in the Church”:

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purpose of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters. (“Priestesses in the Church,” 236)

Neuters. Androgyny. Non-binary. This is where Lewis knew we would land if we pursued the path of interchangeability. As we look around today, we can’t help but admit he was right. But this doesn’t mean we can’t still return. We should heed Lewis’s words:

We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us. (“Priestesses in the Church,” 239)

Further up and further in. As we press into God and his revelation, we find the meaning of masculinity and femininity, as well as the meaning of marriage.

Like Lewis, I don’t believe God created an egalitarian world. But I do believe the world God created is good. And we would do well to receive and celebrate it as such, including the differences between men and women, and stop shuffling and tampering so much.