What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women

Kevin Giles has been writing on women in the Bible for over 40 years. His latest book What the Bible Actually Says About Women: A Reply to the Kostenbergers is to date the most comprehensive account of the issues involved in this debate: the womens revolution of the late 1960s; the opposing points of view among evangelicals on the disputed texts; related appeals to the Bible in support of slavery and apartheid; the house-church setting for the Sunday gathering in the first century; the consequences in the third world of subordinating and devaluing women; and the abuse of women and girls in all its guises. The ordination of women only gets a passing mention. The constant focus is whether or not the Bible subordinates women to men as the God-given ideal.To understand the evangelical debate over women a debate that is bitter and sharply divisive it needs to be understood that those who call themselves complementarians argue that in creation before the fall God set the man over the woman. Thus the leadership of the man and the subordination of the woman in the home the church and where possible in the world is the God-given ideal that is pleasing to God. It is this theology that Kevin Giles opposes.