icon__search

Complementarity, Not Kinship

Alan Shlemon

TRP’s “Talking Point #4” says, “The Bible does not teach a normative doctrine of gender complementarity.” We’ll explain what that means, but first a warning: Fasten your seatbelts.

Scripture, TRP is claiming, is actually silent on the idea that males were made by God as the appropriate sexual complement to females (the “normative doctrine of gender complementarity”). Rather, “the focus in Genesis 2 is not on the complementarity of male and female, but rather on the similarity of male and female, over and against the created animals. The ‘one flesh’ union spoken of in Genesis 2:24 connotes not physical complementarity, but a kinship tie.”

The one-flesh union then, has nothing to do with men and women being designed to physically fit together (complementarity) since, “There are simply no texts in Scripture that address the most common way that anatomical complementarity is defined: the ‘fittedness’ of penis and vagina.”

Rather, it’s referring to their kinship as members of the same species. Since two men or two women are kin in that sense, they are allowed to enter into a “one flesh” union that fits God’s design. “Jesus’ discussion of Gen. 2,” TRP offers, “focuses the discussion on a particular sort of kinship” [emphasis added], i.e., husband/wife kinship. Same sex unions would be another legitimate type, in their view.

This, to put it bluntly, is nothing short of willful blindness.

Eve was a suitable helper for Adam because she was human, not animal—true enough. But that is not the whole of it. God also said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Complying with this command requires more than a species kin relationship. It requires the “male and a female” genders mentioned in the verse right before it. Indeed, the reproductive system is the only human bodily function that requires uniting with a human being of the opposite sex to fulfill its purpose.

When a man leaves his parents, he cleaves to—becomes one flesh with—his wife (Gen. 2:24), not just to another human he is “kin” to. This is the kind of one-flesh union God had in mind, the only union capable of fulfilling the “be fruitful and multiply” creation mandate. That’s why there is not a single instance in Scripture where a pair of men or a pair of women are described in a “one-flesh” union.

And pardon us for asking the obvious, but do we really need a Bible verse to enlighten us that sexual organs are designed by God to fit together? Please.

Finally—and decisively, we think—the Gen. 2:24 “one flesh” reference appears in another vital passage about marriage that erases any possibility of ambiguity about God’s intended meaning. In Eph. 5:22-32, Paul cites heterosexual, man/woman, husband/wife marriage as a picture of the mystery of Christ and His bride, the church. The analogy only works if gender differences are inherent to marriage. Kevin DeYoung explains:

"The meaning of marriage is more than mutual sacrifice and covenantal commitment. Marriage, by its very nature, requires complementarity. The mystical union of Christ and the church—each 'part' belonging to the other but neither interchangeable—cannot be pictured in marital union without the differentiation of male and female… Homosexuality simply does not fit with the created order in Genesis 1 and 2."