Should Wives Submit to their Husbands?... Wrap up

(pt 1, 2, 3, 4)

So, if you've stuck with the series, you know the answer is "yes."

AND husbands need to submit to their wives.

The whole thing is rooted in three things-

First, the brokenness of this world, which leads to a lot of pain, but specifically in marriage leads women to want to rule their husbands and husbands to want to dominate their wives (Gen 3:16).

But (secondly) the Gospel breaks down walls, begins to reverse the effects of the curse, calls us to participate in that reversal, and serves as a great leveler of rich and poor, slave and free, and male and female.

And specifically (and thirdly), it calls us to resist the urge to dominate one another by means of mutual submission. 

Yes, Paul says- you Wives still need to submit to your husbands- but not out of duty to the Hellenistic ideas of male superiority, not out of social convention and the pater familias family structure, but out of reverence for Christ and a desire to witness to a watching world that your husband may own you (in ancient culture), but it's JESUS who is your Lord.

And Husbands (even more radically in Paul's day, and apparently in ours as well) you need to submit to your wives.

In Eph 4:21, Paul commands us to submit to one another. This is SPECIFICALLY tied to the marriage verses which follow. How? In the Greek, the whole thing is one sentence with just one verb- Submit to each other- wives in this way, husbands in this way. "Submission" and "laying down your life" are really two ways of saying the same thing.

So why only tell the men they need to lay down their lives?

Maybe because most women already GET that submission means laying down your life- Paul doesn't have to tell them that. Most women do it almost daily in marriage and mothering.

But he reminds the women that are tempted to forget that and he needs to tell the men,Your submission to your wife looks practically like this: laying down your life. Those who believe that marriage is meant to represent Jesus and the Church (it is), but take that to mean that submission moves only in one direction misread (I believe) what Paul is saying here and miss the very example of Jesus in becoming a servant Himself- both in death and practically, as an example to His disciples in washing their feet. 

Submission runs both ways- and we see this in Paul's explicit command (Eph 4:21), by the working of the Gospel and by Jesus' example...

Paul's overall contextual desire (at least in the Colossians passage most of this has flowed out of) is this: "And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."  His main concern is that we represent Jesus well- that our relationships, be they marriage,  parent-child, or  those we  work for/with, represent Jesus well. 

Now, the big complaint in the comments of this series is that the complementarian ideal of marriage isn't "offensive." Well... I've seen "complementarian"marriages that were both offensive and non-offensive, at least on their face. However... I think the idea of stressing wives' submission misses both Paul's command to submit to each other as well as his intent. Stressing wifely submissionwithout balancing it out with husbandly submission is, I think, inherently offensive, and violates the spirit of what Paul is trying to do.   

Overall, here's how I read these commands to wives- Paul's not laying on this over-arching ethos of womanly submission as many seem to think. He's speaking specifically to those living in a patriarchal, abusive-to-women society and saying "Women, believing in Jesus doesn't give you the right to give your husband the finger. And men your duty as a follower of Jesus trumps your rights as Roman citizens/pater familias. As a Christ follower, you still have a duty to submit to each other- as to the Lord!"

And to me, the marriage which best represents Jesus to an onlooking world is one which understands and lives out the principles which Paul lays out here- which, like most things, probably look pretty different in our context than it did in theirs. 

Comments

[Eric Costa]

So, with that logic, Paul then goes on in Eph. 6 to call parents to submit to their children *in the same way* that the children are to submit to their parents (because it will make the Gospel more appealing)? Or perhaps it is simply a cultural expression that parents have authority over their children? I think it should be fairly obvious that this is not the case… Submission and service are not the same thing. One party in the relationships described in Eph. 5-6 submits, the other party serves (even laying down the life to do so). The church submits to her Lord; Jesus serves (he gives his life to build the church up). He's the one with authority (Lord!), not the church. But he uses that authority to serve. He's the one with the harder task (as any parent or employer should be able to confirm in their respective authoritative roles). Likewise husbands have authority ("the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church"). They are not to abuse it, lording it over their wives, but to use it to serve their wives in love (regardless of whether that wife reciprocates with her own submission). Bryan Chapell has a great book on this called "Each for the Other: Marriage as It's Meant to Be."

The Gospel is the "great leveler" insofar as we all have equal access to God, being reconciled through our Lord Jesus Christ (the obvious context of Gal. 3:28). This idea should not be used to destroy the concept of God-given authority in our society, relationships and the church.

[Bob]

No.

Paul does do something similar though. He says that children should OBEY parents (the Gospel does not free us from that obligation) and that parents should not not provoke or exasperate their children.

It's pretty clear that Paul fleshes out the idea of mutual submission by reminding husbands and wives of their duties and that the instructions to children, parents, slaves and masters are meant to flesh out what Gospel relationships should look like, not expand on "submit to one another."

WHile we're trading book titles, how about "Discovering Biblical Equality" by Pierce and Groothuis?
:)

[Eric Costa]

Respectfully, it seems a bit arbitrary to say that the husbands-wives relationship is a commentary on *mutual* submission, while the parents-children and masters-slaves relationships are not. If you want to apply "submission" even to husbands, you already (unnecessarily) stretch the textual idea from 5:21… to then cut the idea off before applying it to the other relationships seems (again, respectfully) to serve ulterior purposes. There is no break signified in the text. Either all those relationships are fleshing out *mutual* submission from 5:21, or none of them are talking about *mutuality* in submission, but rather the roles of submission and service in relationships including authority. Interestingly, Paul spends the most time in theological defense of this concept with the marriage relationship (compared to the two relationships that follow).

I don't see the problem with the concept of equality of being, yet differing roles. Apparently the Eternal Son of God doesn't, either… seeing as how he is in every way equal in power and glory with the Father, yet submits in everything to the Father (John 5:19; 8:28-29; 1 Cor. 15:28).

Just because people abuse their authority doesn't mean God didn't give it to them (John 19:11; Rom. 13:1). This is not a license to abuse authority. Husbands should do the hard thing and love their wives as Christ loved the church. But for every husband who abuses his position, there's a wife who doesn't submit to her husband as the church submits to her Lord. We're all messed up. Paul's prescription is to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) and live accordingly.

[Bob]

It's a commentary on submission because he uses the word submission.

The relationships he then goes on to speak to he uses entirely different language about. And actually, I think there's good reason to make a break there... and I'm not alone. Those who (I think often very wisely) divided Scripture with chapter and verse breaks agree with me :)

I just think it's interesting that so many think "submit to one another" means "wives submit." :)

[Eric Costa]

I think it's interesting that some think "submit to one another, wives to your husbands…" and the lacking follow-up identical command to husbands means "husbands and wives submit to one another in the same way."

Seriously, you have to do some fancy tricks to get out of that passage not thinking clearly about the *authority* relationship between Christ and his church being mirrored in the marriage.

[Eric Costa]

But I suppose we can agree to disagree.

[Bob]

Fancy, huh? Five blog posts wroth of fancy!

It's NOT fancy if you reckon that Paul is speaking correctively to wives who weren't submitting. You DO get that I'm not saying wives don't need to submit to their husbands, right? I'm not sure why most complementarians completely ignore VS 21 when talking about EPh 5, but it seems pretty important. "One another" includes husbands, right?

The NLT does a great job of showing that VS 22-25 modify and explain VS 21:

"21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.

25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.[b] 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body."

[Bob]

"Worth"...
"wroth" is completely different...

[Eric Costa]

"Fancy" because the relationship shown between Christ and the church is one of servant King as the head of his people. Paul's whole reason for making the correlation is to show the mirrored authority structure of the relationship. I don't ignore 5:21, I just don't think it applies in the same way to all parties mentioned in these relationships. Would you make Christ put himself under the authority of his church?

Your NLT does a great job of interpreting the text for the reader in a way not at all congruous with the history of interpretation. And yes, respectfully, five blog posts worth of theological speculation that didn't emerge clearly from biblical interpretation, some might call "fancy." It does seem fairly obvious (to me, at least) that your desire is to interpret the text in a way Paul did not intend, therefore you interpret it in this way. Sorry if that sounds unnecessarily harsh. That's the problem when we both think we're right, and only one of us can be. But it's not an issue I'd persecute you as a heretic for. =)

[bobhyatt]

That's a bit unfair. Honestly- I've read SOLID scholarship on both sides of this issue- (though in my mind, one side was clearly more solid). Now, that is a matter of opinion as to which side is right, but let's be clear- if it's unfair of me to say you ignore 5:21, it's just as unfair to imply that the whole thing is a desire to interpret a certain way. This isn't an issue of ignoring Scripture and it's not an issue of "speculation."

[Eric Costa]

Maybe I used the wrong word when I used "speculation" (which means forming a theory or conjecture without firm evidence). I don't think you have *firm* evidence, but more to the point, I meant speculative theology, as differentiated from expositional theology. What you were proposing didn't emerge from a specific text; you were tying thoughts together in a more "systematic" way, which is fine. I just think the impetus for such thoughts lies outside the Scriptures, in the realm of culture. You think the same of me, but I would ask you whether the straightforward reading of any texts of Scripture (especially Eph. 5, 1 Pet. 3, or 1 Cor. 11) lead to your conclusions, or whether your thoughts (or the thoughts of your preferred scholars) have been overly informed by the feminist culture we inhabit. Surely none of us can escape this problem entirely. I just think the Scripture makes it clear enough on this particular issue that authority in the home is not a cultural construct, but an institution of God's own choosing, even based on pre-fall creation order.

Seriously, though, strong words don't mean I don't love you. =)

[Eric Costa]

I'm sure you're interested in the submission of wives to their husbands, according to Eph. 5. And you can be sure I'm interested in the self-sacrificial love of husbands for their wives, according to the same. So let's stop being pastors who wrangle about words on our day off.

[bobhyatt]

Ahh! That's the problem!
I'm on the clock! :)

Love ya, man...

[bobhyatt]

"I just think the impetus for such thoughts lies outside the Scriptures, in the realm of culture. You think the same of me, but I would ask you whether the straightforward reading of any texts of Scripture (especially Eph. 5, 1 Pet. 3, or 1 Cor. 11) lead to your conclusions, or whether your thoughts (or the thoughts of your preferred scholars) have been overly informed by the feminist culture we inhabit. Surely none of us can escape this problem entirely. I just think the Scripture makes it clear enough on this particular issue that authority in the home is not a cultural construct, but an institution of God's own choosing, even based on pre-fall creation order."

My thought on this is that the lens through which complementarians read this is no more objective.
I think the modern, evangelical understanding of "headship" is a culturally informed one- overly influenced by the misogynistic culture of our current and recent past.
You are correct, though- none of us escapes it- I just think our complementarian/hierarchical friends have a blind spot as to how culture has informed their reading of words like "head" and exactly what the relationship between men and women pre-Fall meant.
I think Scripture makes it clear that the Gospel brings back a pre-fall parity between men and women and begins to turn back the curse of one wanting to dominate the other.

[bobhyatt]

And to answer your question specifically ("I would ask you whether the straightforward reading of any texts of Scripture (especially Eph. 5, 1 Pet. 3, or 1 Cor. 11) lead to your conclusions"),
Yes-
Gal 3:28, Phil 4:3, Rom 16:7, as well as, to be honest, most of the Scriptures cited by complementarians, when read through the lens of what I believe is a correct hermeneutic- called by some the "redemptive hermeneutic" as outlined by William Webb in Slaves, Women and Homosexuals...

[Jen W]

I think you totally DO submit to your children actually. In the sense of "I don't want to play with Barbies, I think Barbies are the most boring annoying toy out there but because I love you, I will." That is, as a mom, just like submission.

[Jen W]

I'm curious to hear what your take is on 1 Cor 14:34-36 (and the passages about covering the head while prophesying etc). I have heard it convincingly argued that this paragraph and others are Paul quoting the Corinthians in a letter to him, so that it would read like an email:

>>The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.

Paul replies:
Was it from you that the word of God first went forth? Or has it come to you only?

(Basically saying, what is this nonsense you're talking about?)

Is that something you're familiar with or agree with?

[Jen W]

Er, what I mean by "nonsense" since I just realized that probably doesn't read well, let me rewrite that:

Paul replies - Where in the Law is that written? Did the word of God only come to you (men who are writing to me)?

...
What's your take, Bob?

[Eric Wright]

I know I am late to this conversation, but it is interesting that in all this discussion no one ever goes back to the Creation store as a foundation. You almost did, Bob, with your reference to the curse, but not quite far enough.

In Genesis, God makes the decision that it isn’t good for man to be alone and then sets out to do something about it. God seeks to make a helper suitable for him. There are two words that need to be looked at in this section:

ezer “helper/help” and kanegdow “like opposite him, as in front of him”

A very literal translation of the Hebrew would be “I will make him for him a helper as in front of him.”

Ezer or helper is not to be seen as a subordinate role. This word is often used as Yahweh’s role with Israel…God is Israel’s helper or ezer. Definitely not a subordinate role.

“like opposite him, as in front of him” kanegdow…this someone who corresponds to him. The new creation will be equal to the man. Another way of putting this is that this new creation will be able to stand “toe to toe.” This idea of equality is also reflected in the fact that both male and female are considered to have been made in the image of God.

God parades the animals in front of Adam. The animals are creatures but unfit to be a helper to Adam. Also we have a naming sequence. To give a name is to speak from a position of authority and sovereignty. We are not suggesting that man has sovereignty over the animals, but that he is taking authority to “subdue” and “have dominion over” them as God has directed. The adam does not name the woman until after the Fall; reflecting the attempt to dominate the woman.

Just a few thoughts.

[Eric Wright]

Sorry "store" and "story" are two different things. Though I do live near Cincinnati and the Creation Museum, so I am almost certain there is a Creation Store there.