From Ware’s paper on the subject, he argues that our first mother, Eve, received the image of God from Adam and so she (and other women after her) possess it in a derived fashion.

He doesn’t explicitly say “derived” equals “lesser” but that is what his paper goes on to imply since he uses it as an argument for the male authority and female submissive “roles.”

What is interested is that he says that women and men equally bear the image of God rather than that men and women bear the image of God equally. While that may be a semantic distinction for some, I don’t think it is for Ware.

If he were just a kook out there advocating such awful theology, who would care? But this is a man who trains pastors, leads a major seminary and has an extremely deep influence in the evangelical community (at least in America). Yet he’s not called out substantively for such gross distortions of Scripture. Since becoming aware that he’s written this and goes around the country teaching it, I’ve never seen a scholarly response to him on this topic – such as what goes back and forth between Wright and Piper over justification.

I was inquiring in case I missed it, so thanks for your response and blessings to you and yours!

Bruce Ware, as was mentioned here, has written and continues to teach that woman derives the image of God through man (in the first place) and that the image of God is passed down genetically through the male sperm, so that all humans receive the image of God through man (not woman).

I know it isn’t chic to contradict Bruce Ware in a lot of American evangelical circles (especially the “young, restless & reformed” ones of which I’m apart) but this seems to be one of the worst bits of false doctrine I’ve seen embraced or ignored in the evangelical community.

Do you know of anyone who is credibly able to thoroughly refute Ware on these points who has done so?

The way complementarianism has always defined itself, this view is not complementarianism. This is in fact the view that the people who first used the term were trying to distance themselves from.

I dispute your claim that the Bible takes these roles as better. It does say that it is better to pursue certain gifts. It does say that there are certain tasks that it is better to seek to do. Being a good person, achieving good things is better than not being good or doing good. What the Bible specifically denies is that playing one role rather than another makes someone better. The whole point of I Corinthians 12 is to show how each part of the body is indispensable. There are parts we treat with less honor, but we are wrong to do so.

I know you take the “first” in v.28 as a hierarchy of importance in terms of status, but I cannot see that interpretation as fitting with the main point of the chapter (or with the spirit of egalitarianism, which is that these things shouldn’t matter). Paul’s point is the denial of that claim. It might be that certain gifts have a more noticeable impact, and it’s worth pursuing them in the sense of making oneself available to God should he choose to distribute those gifts to us (after all, why seek to limit God?), but that doesn’t mean there’s any sense of someone’s being better for having them, and it doesn’t mean any particular sets of gifts and ministry tasks for using those gifts is better for me than another except insofar as it fits with God’s plan. Seeing gifts or tasks as rewards that God gives to the best people is contrary to the whole point here, but that’s the only way I can see this frustration you show with the idea that it’s wrong to give certain people “lesser” gifts or tasks, as if anyone deserves these at all and as if we should see people as better for receiving some and not others.