In his February 2024 Reformation21 article, “In Defense of Patriarchy,” Peter Van Doodewaard urges readers to reclaim a word and doctrine he believes modern Christians have wrongly abandoned. He writes that “patriarchy simply means father-rule,” and that “acquiescence to the popular equation patriarchy-is-evil will result in the loss of our nation, the Christian home, the church and the Gospel.”[1] His argument rests on a sweeping identification of fatherhood, male leadership, and divine order: “Reality was designed a good patriarchy, ruled by the Triune God.”[2] To reject patriarchy, he contends, is to reject God’s Fatherhood and the very grammar of redemption.

The aim of this essay is to show that Van Doodewaard’s defense of patriarchy is not a defense of biblical fatherhood, but a confusion of categories—of Creator and creature, of providence and redemption, of headship and hierarchy. Scripture never presents patriarchy as the created or redeemed norm. It is a feature of the fallen world Christ overturns, not a structure he institutes.

The Confusion of Fatherhood and Patriarchy

Van Doodewaard’s central claim is that patriarchy “is God’s language with profound meaning and import,” so that to question it “runs against the grain of the nature of God and His creation.”[3] This reasoning conflates divine fatherhood with human male authority. Our catechism teaches that God is Spirit (John 4:24). He “does not have a body like man.”[4] Thus, to read gender back into God’s fatherhood actually runs against the grain of the nature of God and confuses him with his creation. The Westminster Standards guard against precisely this kind of confusion. They confess that the Father, Son, and Spirit are “the same in substance, equal in power and glory” (Westminster Confession of Faith 2.3, Westminster Larger Catechism Q.9, Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.6). The distinctions among the persons are not ranks of authority but relations of origin—begetting, being begotten, and proceeding. The Son’s obedience belongs to his mediatorial office according to his human nature, not to his eternal divine nature.

It is a poor “grammar of redemption” that confuses linguistic grammar with divine ontology. In Scripture, “Father” is used in several ways: to define an eternal, internal relation between divine persons (1 John 1:1–4), to describe God as Creator of all (Eph. 4:6), and redemptively, “Father” is revealed as a covenantal name that discloses God’s gracious relation to his people, not a model of gendered rule.

When the Lord calls Israel his “firstborn son” (Exod. 4:22) or Christ teaches us to pray “Our Father” (Matt. 6:9), fatherhood signifies adoption and mercy. It is not a masculine principle of government but a revelation of love within the economy of grace. God’s self-revelation in this language is analogical, not biological or political. Isaiah can just as readily say that God comforts his people “as one whom his mother comforts” (Isa. 66:13). The divine fatherhood from which all families derive their name (Eph. 3:15) transcends sex and social structure.

To equate divine Fatherhood with male authority collapses the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The relation between the Father and the Son is eternal, internal to the Godhead, and utterly unlike temporal relations of rule. When God creates humankind male and female in his image, he communicates shared dominion and fellowship—not subordination of one to the other.

Creation: Mutual Dominion, Not Male Rule

Van Doodewaard writes that “God instituted fatherhood when he made Adam (first), then Eve, then marriage, and then gave the command to be fruitful and multiply.”[5] Yet the text of Genesis does not identify Adam’s chronological creation as an office of rule. The divine commission in Genesis 1:26–28 is joint: “Let them have dominion” (emphasis added). Both man and woman bear God’s image, both receive the mandate, both share the blessing.

Patriarchy appears nowhere in the pre-fall order. And to import it into Genesis 3:16 misses the redemptive promise found there. Genesis 3:16 must be read in immediate continuity with 3:15. The verse is not instituting marital hierarchy or even describing domestic disorder; it carries forward the protoevangelium, unfolding as it were the covenantal dimension: The woman’s desire and the man’s rule signify not subjection but the coming union between the Redeemer and his people. The woman’s תְּשׁוּקָה (teshuqah, “desire”) is oriented toward her אִישׁ (ish, “Man”)—not Adam as husband, but the promised Redeemer of 3:15. This reflects the mutual desire on display in Song of Songs 7:10, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire (תְּשׁוּקָה, teshuqah) is for me.”

The canonical parallel in Genesis 4:7 confirms this redemptive frame: There the חַטָּאת (chattaʾt), “sin-offering,”[6] “lies” at the door; its “desire” is toward the sinner, and he must “rule with”[7] it—language of sacrificial union, not interpersonal subjugation.[8] Read this way, Genesis 3:16 announces the church’s longing for her sin-offering Man and anticipates his shared, life-giving rule with his bride. It is a promise of union amidst enmity, not a charter for patriarchy.

Genesis 2 deepens the picture by portraying the woman as the עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ (ʿēzer kenegdô), “a helper corresponding to him.” The term עֵזֶר (ʿēzer) is most often used of God himself as Israel’s helper (Deut. 33:29; Ps. 33:20). It conveys strength and partnership, not subordination. The climactic phrase “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24) reveals a union of communion, not hierarchy.

The Misreading of Genesis 3:16

Van Doodewaard advocates for “father-rule” as part of divine order. While he does not cite Genesis 3:16 explicitly, he works within the broader complementarian/headship framework in which that verse is often presumed. Genesis 3:16, read in its redemptive context, speaks of something far deeper. In my earlier study, “The Church’s Desire toward Christ Her Sin Offering in Genesis 3:16,” I argued that the text should be read in light of the promise of Genesis 3:15 and the vision of Revelation 12.[9] The woman’s pain and desire are not domestic emotions at all but redemptive travail.

Revelation 12 describes a woman crying out in birth pangs while the dragon seeks to devour her child—the Seed promised in Eden. This woman symbolizes the covenant community laboring toward the birth of the Messiah. Her agony is the persecution of the faithful, not the discomforts of motherhood. When Genesis 3:16 says, “Your desire shall be for your man (אִישׁ, ish),” the term points forward not to Adam but to the promised Man, the Redeemer whose bruised heel will crush the serpent’s head. Eve’s first exclamation, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD” (Gen. 4:1), reflects this expectation—in fact, grammatically the Hebrew “אֶת” (’êṯ) could be a preposition (“with”), but can also mark a direct object, yielding, “I have received a man, the LORD.”

Thus Genesis 3:16 is not a charter for male authority but the first announcement of the church’s hope in Christ. It reveals the woman’s desire for union with her sin-offering, not her subjection to her spouse. The verse looks to redemption, not regulation. [10]

The Failure of Patriarchal Logic in Redemption

Van Doodewaard insists that “the church’s government notably has as its head a man, the man Christ Jesus.”[11] True—but the character of that headship is decisive. Van Doodewaard once again confuses and conflates categories. Christ’s mediatorial rule in the church is based in his Davidic kingship, not conjugal[12] headship. In Scripture, Christ’s headship is organic and mystical, not hierarchical or official.[13] Christ’s headship signifies vital union—the living bond of grace by which he communicates his life to the members of his body (John 15:5). It belongs to the order of redemption, not to the order of authority. Thus, Isaiah 9:6–7, which Van Doodewaard believes supports his thesis as it describes Christ’s fatherly relation to his spiritual children, actually argues against him, as the text depicts a familial communion, wherein the life and interests of the members are extensions of Christ’s life, and his interests intertwined with that of the members of the household.

When the New Testament calls Christ “head of the church” (see Eph. 1:22–23; Col. 1:18), it describes inward communion and union, not a chain of command. Every believer—male and female—is directly united to the head through the Spirit. No human “headship” mediates this union. To model male rule on Christ’s headship is therefore a category mistake: It collapses mystical union into governmental hierarchy.

Van Doodewaard’s patriarchal logic treats authority as an ontological property of maleness. But in redemption, authority is cruciform and ministerial. The One who reigns does so by serving, washing feet, and dying for his bride. His kingship serves His headship by bringing his people into shared life, not subordinate ranks.

Ephesians 5:22–33 and 1 Peter 3:1–7: One-Flesh Communion, Not Hierarchy

Paul and Peter both situate marriage within the larger drama of redemption, not within the social conventions of empire. The household codes of Greco-Roman society are not baptized into Christian ethics but transfigured by the apostles into expressions of cruciform communion. In Christ the ordered household is no longer a miniature kingdom of male empire but a sign of the new humanity in which head and body, husband and wife, are joined by the same Spirit who unites the church to her Lord.[14]

Ephesians 5: Christ and the Mystery of Union

Paul’s exhortation that wives “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:22), cannot be read apart from verse 21: “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The entire passage unfolds within that mutual posture. The wife’s submission mirrors the church’s receptive faith toward Christ—the trust that rests in his self-giving love. Yet that same love defines the husband’s vocation. Christ’s headship is not administrative rule but personal union: He “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (v. 25). His giving is the act by which the two become one flesh—and that one flesh union with Christ is one upon which both spouses of any human marital union depend for life.[15]

To call Christ κεφαλή (kephalē, “head”) is to speak of organic relation, not domination. Life and nourishment flow from the head to the body; the body lives in the head’s vitality.[16] So the husband’s headship signifies not hierarchy but communion—an embodied participation in the self-offering that makes the church his own. He loves her “as [his] own bod[y]” (v. 28) because she is his body; the metaphor collapses the distinction between giver and receiver into a single life of shared grace.[17]

Paul quotes Genesis 2:24—“The two shall become one flesh”—to reveal that marriage was always ordered toward Christ. “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32). It is an enacted prophecy of the union accomplished in the cross. In that union, authority is transformed into service, and obedience becomes worship. The husband’s “giving up” and the wife’s “receiving” converge in the same cruciform pattern: Both live toward one another in the Spirit of him who emptied himself. The result is not hierarchy maintained but enmity healed; not roles preserved but communion restored.

1 Peter 3: Witness in Cruciform Faith

Peter’s instruction to wives and husbands continues this same pattern. The call for wives to “be subject to your own husbands” (1 Pet. 3:1) is framed by his earlier exhortation that the entire community live “for the Lord’s sake” as sojourners in a hostile world (1 Pet. 2:13–17). Submission here is an act of witness, not subordination.[18] The wife entrusts herself to God’s justice even when her husband does not yet believe. Her adornment is not external power but “the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Pet. 3:4)—a posture of faith that reflects the meekness of Christ before his accusers.

Likewise, husbands are summoned to dwell with their wives “in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel” (1 Pet. 3:7). The phrase does not assign rank but calls for reverence. The husband, mindful of his wife’s bodily vulnerability in a fallen world, is to honor her as a co-heir of grace. His failure to do so disrupts communion with God himself (“so that your prayers may not be hindered”). Peter’s vision is profoundly symmetrical: Both husband and wife stand before God as fellow pilgrims, both sustained by the same inheritance, both called to suffer well in conformity to Christ, both being disenfranchised from this earth and enfranchised into heaven where their life is hidden with God in Christ.

From Hierarchy to Holiness

Read together, Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 announce not an order of authority but an order of holiness. The household becomes a miniature liturgy of redemption—a space where the self-emptying of Christ is rehearsed in daily faith and fidelity. Headship and submission are redefined through the cross: no longer mechanisms of control but modes of communion. The husband’s vocation is to embody the love that sanctifies; the wife’s is to trust the God who vindicates. Both are participants in one mystery, the great mystery Paul names in Ephesians 5:32, where the story of man and woman finds its telos in Christ and his church. “This mystery is profound . . .”

In this light, the modern habit of translating these texts into the language of “leadership” or “male authority” is a reversion to the very power structures the gospel overturns. The apostles do not appoint “leaders” in the home; they unveil a new creation in which all relations are gathered into the obedience of love. The head is not the boss of the body but its life; and the body is not subordinate to the head but the means through which the head is made visible. Marriage thus becomes an icon of union, not a diagram of hierarchy—a participation in the mystery of Christ who reigns by serving and restores by surrendering.

The False Parallel between Creation and the Trinity

Van Doodewaard writes that patriarchy is “God’s language,” since “Jesus was not ashamed of His Father.”[19] Here again, the analogy fails. “God’s language” is his Word (John 1:1–4) who became flesh (John 1:14), not patriarchy. The relation between the Father and the Son within the Trinity is eternal and ineffable; it does not mirror human gender roles. To do so confuses the Creator/creature distinction. The Son’s obedience in history is not that of a subordinate creature to a male ruler but the voluntary condescension of the divine Mediator accomplishing redemption. To draw a straight line from the eternal Father–Son relation to human patriarchy is to confuse ontology (theology proper) with redemptive economy (soteriology) and to turn the mystery of the Trinity into a sociological model.[20]

Scripture guards this distinction. “The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing” (John 5:20); “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Equality of essence and unity of will define the divine life. The gospel does not reveal hierarchy within God but perfect communion. When humans imitate that communion, they reflect divine love, not divine hierarchy.

The Gospel Against Patriarchy

Van Doodewaard concludes that “patriarchy is good news” because “the Father’s rule is safety.”[21] Yet in Scripture, the good news is Christ (Luke 2:10–11) and his Kingdom (Luke 4:43). God delivers his people from the dominion of sin and death—not restores them to old systems of power. The gospel proclaims a kingdom “not of this world” (John 18:36), a rule established through self-giving love, not through the reassertion of hierarchy. Van Doodeward has substituted patriarchy for Christ as both “God’s language” to us and “Good news for us.” In so doing, he would turn redemptive marriage back to the mastery of Egypt.

Christ explicitly contrasts his kingdom with worldly patriarchy: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. . . . But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42–43). To claim that patriarchy is the divine pattern of rule is to ignore the form of power revealed at the cross, where authority is redefined as sacrifice.

Van Doodewaard warns that rejecting patriarchy will destroy “our nation, the Christian home, the church and the Gospel.”[22] But the survival of the gospel cannot depend on the preservation of male hierarchy. The kingdom of God does not fall with the fall of patriarchy. It stands in the resurrection of Christ, who has made one new humanity in himself (Eph. 2:15).

The gospel does not rehabilitate fallen structures; it creates new life. As Paul declares, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This is not the abolition of creation’s goodness but the restoration of its communion. Grace does not legitimize what sin has created; it restores what sin has destroyed.

It is very concerning that Van Doodewaard warns that rejecting patriarchy will result in “the loss of our nation, the Christian home, the church, and the Gospel.” This progression—from nation to home to church, as well as the possessive pronoun “our”—reveals more than rhetorical flourish; it exposes a theology of cultural preservation masquerading as biblical order. The argument reveals a kind of Christian nationalism and social gospel: Patriarchy becomes the linchpin of a sanctified civilization, the structure by which divine authority flows from fathers to families, from families to churches, and from churches to nations. Is this not the literal argument of the counselors of Xerxes in Esther 1:16–22 as footnoted above? Van Doodwaard’s warning that the fall of patriarchy will mean the fall of civilization repeats the anxiety of exile, not the hope of redemption.

Van Doodwarrd’s logic is not the logic of the gospel, but of the bestial kingdoms of this world. Under the New Covenant, Scripture never presents the stability of earthly nations as the measure of faithfulness. The cross does not uphold civilization; it judges it. Christ gathers his people not by preserving a patriarchal order within a single culture but by calling a new humanity out of every tribe and nation. To identify the continuance of patriarchy with the preservation of the gospel is therefore to confuse the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of men. It is to barter the birthright of Christ’s kingdom for the thin stew of worldly order.

The Redemptive Movement Towards Communion

The biblical story moves from domination to fellowship, from Cain’s city of man to the New Jerusalem. Every social hierarchy introduced by sin is progressively undone in Christ, who gathers a new humanity of shared life and love.

Headship, rightly understood, dismantles patriarchy. It is an organic union—the living bond by which Christ imparts his life to his body, not hierarchy. Having ascended to the Father’s right hand, he reigns as the incarnate Son whose kingship flows from his hypostatic union and is exercised through his mystical union with his people. As Vos observes, “His outward rule proceeds from this inward life; his kingship serves communion, not control.”[23] Authority is provisional, serving love until all things are made new. Patriarchy, by contrast, corrupts this pattern—a counterfeit that turns communion into control.

Kingship Fulfilled in Communion

Christ’s kingship does not cease; it is eternally his. Yet in the consummation, his reign, now exercised over a world still marked by sin and division, will be unveiled in its fullness as perfect communion. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev. 11:15). The Head reigns not through the structures of this age but by his Spirit and Word, gathering his people into one body where his life fills all in all.

The hierarchical arrangements that have come to shape fallen human life—whether civil, cultural, or domestic—are not divine designs or providential instruments but distortions born of sin’s disorder. They persist under God’s sovereign patience, not his prescription. Redemption neither perfects nor purifies fallen orders; it replaces them with the communion of saints in Christ. In the new creation, every vestige of subordination gives way to the unmediated communion of the saints with their King.

Kingship is glorified in the Lamb’s righteous rule; patriarchy is condemned and ended by his redemption. The reign of the Lamb becomes the life of his body.

Conclusion

Van Doodewaard closes his essay by calling fathers to embrace patriarchy as their mantle: “You rule your home. To make this a pretext for abuse is vile.”[24] In that warning against abuse we can agree; the tragedy is that his chosen framework ensures the very abuse he decries, because the heart of abuse flows from entitlement. If the husband is divinely entitled to his wife’s obedience, then there is either no practicable definition of abuse, or it is non-existent altogether in the relation between husband toward a wife. Patriarchy’s problem is not only moral but theological—it mistakes the outworking of sin for the shape of grace. It seeks redemption in the rehabilitation of fallen earthly power rather than in the cruciform life of Christ.

The Fatherhood of God is not an archetype of hierarchy but the source of communion. To imitate that Fatherhood is not to rule but to give life. The church’s task, therefore, is not to restore a patriarchal system in the world but to embody the new humanity where all are one in union with the Son, the Lamb of God who makes us children of grace, sons and daughters of his Father, gathered into one body under one Head. The Father’s glory shines not in patriarchy but in the harmony of the redeemed united to the Son, where every voice joins in the song of the Lamb who was slain and now reigns forever.

Endnotes

[1] Peter Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy,” Reformation21 (February 5, 2024): https://www.reformation21.org/blog/in-defense-of-patriarchy.

[2] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[3] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[4] First Catechism (Great Commission Publications, 2003), Q/A 9.

[5] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[6] Aaron P. Mize, “The Church’s Desire toward Christ Her Sin Offering in Genesis 3:16,” Ordained Servant Online (Apr. 2024): https://opc.org/os.html?article_id=1115.

[7] The Hebrew particle ב can be translated “in, at, with.”

[8] Some may note that “sin offering” in Hebrew is feminine in gender. How then can it refer to Christ, a man? A similar parallel can be found in Exodus 29:14 where a male bull is a חַטָּאת (chattaʾt), “sin offering.” See also Lev. 4:21, 23–24.

[9] Mize, “The Church’s Desire.”

[10] This is contrary to the forced reading of Susan Foh, who views the woman’s desire as only insidious, and the reason for the need of husband-rule. “What is the Woman’s Desire?” Westminster Theological Journal (1974).

[11] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[12] from con- (“together”) + jugum (“a yoke”)

[13] Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Lexham Press, 2014), 179.

[14] Contrast this with the litigious and misogynistic view of household in the Persian imagination that Israel experienced in Exile (Esther 1:16–22). See Rev. Adam Wells, “Master of the House,” sermon, Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Middletown, PA, February 13, 2023, accessed Nov. 4, 2025.

[15] Gal. 2:20–21.

[16] See Eph. 4:15–16; Col 2:19.

[17] See Eph. 5:29-32; John 17:21-23.

[18] Submission (from submittere, “to yield or place oneself under”) denotes a voluntary posture of trust and communion. Whereas subordination (from subordinare, “to arrange under rank”) denotes a hierarchial ordering of status—one expresses union in grace, the other gradation in power. Cf. Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.vv. “submittere” and “subordinare.”

[19] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[20] One of the deeper problems underlying Van Doodewaard’s argument is his uncritical use of the relation between the Father and the Son as a model for human hierarchy. This error arises, in part, from the way the modern distinction between the ontological and economic Trinity is misunderstood. What was once a careful dogmatic distinction meant to preserve divine immutability and freedom has, in some modern formulations, become a conceptual gap between who God is in himself and who he appears to be in his works. This separation has proven fertile soil for subordinationist thinking.

[21] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[22] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[23] Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:179.

[24] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

Aaron P. Mize is an Orthodox Presbyterian minister serving as the pastor of Trinity Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bothell, Washington. Ordained Servant Online, March, 2026