The justice behind God’s creation of male and female and his arrangement of the different roles he chose for them may not always be apparent to us, according to Kathy Keller in her book Jesus, Justice and Gender Roles: A Case for Gender Roles in Ministry. The book starts with an analysis of New Testament passages relating to the role of women in the church and finishes with some observations about personal journeys of women in ministry.
The author says that 1 Corinthians 14:34 (“Women should remain silent in the churches”) cannot mean that women may not communicate orally in public gatherings of the church, as in other passages Paul clearly condones women speaking in church. Instead, the prohibition relates to teaching “with authority”. The “authority” role, the task of discerning right teaching from heresy, was reserved for male elders.
Thus the author subscribes to the “complementarian” view of gender roles, in which “teaching with authority” is the exclusive province of ordained male elders, while women are permitted to do anything else in the church including anything which an unordained man may do. In her view, this is a biblical command which we are required to obey, although the reasons why God has made this choice may not be clear to us; we just need to have confidence in his goodness.
I do not personally agree with the author’s interpretation of the biblical texts, or her conclusions on gender roles, but I do appreciate the clear, logical and gracious writing style which is very similar to that of her husband Tim Keller. Like most other highly successful male church leaders, Tim is married to an articulate and gifted woman, suggesting that successful church leadership is a team effort rather than the work of a single individual.