Marilyn to John:
Having said that, I’m not exactly the typical complementarian wife. I work outside the home. I also represented the market segment complementarians view to be the most difficult to reach – the “I’m an evangelical feminist because nothing as ugly as the complementarianism on which I was raised could possibly be Biblical.”
John to Marilyn:
The market segment I represent is even harder to please: “I’m a fourth generation egalitarian who has seen over and over again that egalism is far from being a Holy Grail or a saving grace. Who do you think you’re fooling if you wish to suggest that complementarianism is some sort of Holy Grail or saving grace?”
Marilyn to John:
Many complementarians undoubtedly question whether it is appropriate for me to work outside the home. Related to this, I think that complementarians don’t have good answers for the “but, what about personality differences” questions. Put in Myers-Briggs terms, complementarian wives are supposed to be ESFJs. It sometimes seems as if the extent of a wife’s deviation from an ESFJ personality is defined by complementarians as a sin issue. So, I still struggle with the question of what is sin versus woundedness versus giftedness issue.
John to Marilyn:
I think comps and egals need to allow more room for gift-based authority. Gift-based authority represents almost by definition a deviation from the norm. So what? Open your eyes, as John Wesley did on more than one occasion, and be ready to see God do a new thing.
At the same time, extraordinary gifts and wounds go together. I sometimes go so far as to say that extraordinary gifts are wounds.
Sins and gifts also go together. A harder topic to broach, but it stares us right in the face if we look around. All the great saints in the Bible were also great sinners. Fancy that. It makes one wish for mediocrity at times.
It is no accident that Moses and Paul were both murderers. Was murder a necessary preparation for their life-giving subsequent missions? Murder was a misuse of the gift, the same gift of zeal and sense of justice that God went on to use in positive ways.
Marilyn to John:
On the other hand, I also believe that I should follow traffic laws. If a stoplight is red, I should stop my car even if there are no other cars in sight. If everybody disobeyed traffic laws when they didn’t see an immediate need to follow them, the result would be chaos. (And, chaos is what we’re currently experiencing when stop lights turn yellow.) I think there’s a parallel to gender roles, but I’m either unable or unwilling to develop the argument. And, of course, Thomas’ point about our being put in our marriages to serve is always relevant!
John to Marilyn:
More traffic lights, please. I would say that egal family life tends to look like slightly regulated anarchy these days. You would think that Christian comps and egals alike would make common cause against the tendency, for example, to give teenage children almost full control over their lives at an increasingly early age.
That’s an easy case, but it’s not that different with respect to the question of gender roles. The question: what is the right balance between cultural expectations and flexibility so as to make room for the exercise of particular gifts? More generally: in what sense is the Christian faith to accommodate culture, or instead be counter-cultural, and on what grounds? As you will notice, I have more questions than answers.
Marilyn to John:
I’m not sure that I have a complete response to the egal domain-based arguments that you have raised. I guess there are two issues – our roles and how we relate to each other. With respect to roles, I see the key issue as the couple’s intent, not their outcomes. Even if a husband and wife earn comparable incomes, I do believe that they view their jobs differently. She wants to choose whether to work. He wants to choose where/how to work. That difference is huge. The husband assumes the primary responsibility for provision and protection. That supports his authority, irrespective of whether the practical outcome is that she earns a comparable or higher income.
With respect to how the couple relates, Emerson uses the example of Margaret Thatcher, who when once asked how she winds down after a difficult day with Parliament, responded along the lines of, “I curl up in my husband’s arms and have a good cry.” That example resonates with me. How I want to be perceived in the work place is not who I want to be or should be in relation to my husband.
John to Marilyn:
Your examples are well-chosen. I note that the role-reversal of which you speak was not across-the-board in Margaret Thatcher’s case. Indeed, she needed it to be incomplete in order to maintain her sanity. However, I would describe provision and protection on the one hand, and choice on the other, along domain-based lines with sufficient scope given for exceptions to the norm in terms of who detains authority in a particular domain.
For example, in the home, the norm is that the mother provides in the kitchen and protects the physical health of all family members, whereas the father may choose to do so on particular occasions. And if for some reason, roles are reversed for a time, as often in today’s world, or even permanently on relatively rare occasions, I fail to see how that alters the norm. BTW, I don’t believe that all current cultural norms are excellent. For example, I think the greatest and most destructive gender imbalance in our society right now is the lack of male teachers at the K-12 level. But I appear to be a voice howling in the wilderness on that one.
John wrote: “I think comps and egals need to allow more room for gift-based authority.”
and
“I would say that egal family life tends to look like slightly regulated anarchy these days.”
If John wants to speak about his own life, that is fine, but to make such broad statements about egals is simply false in both cases, every egal family I know is very aware of gift-based authority (and I will let comps speak for themselves on this aspect) and no egal family I know looks like slightly regulated anarchy; so I ask John to retract these statements as unsupported per the forum guidelines.
I find that such unsubstantiated statements do not contribute to the discussion, so I wish John would stop claiming these kinds of things.
Don,
If it helps, in the future I might add a phrase like, “in my experience.” But really, that is usually not considered necessary in a discussion like this. Note as well that I preface one remark by “I think” and I include the relativizer “tends to” in the other.
I think you interpret the guidelines too strictly. After all, there is no way you or I could substantiate your claims either, that every egal family you know is very aware of gift-based authority and does not look like slightly regulated anarchy.
But I will not ask you to retract your statements, or to substantiate them.
I will simply marvel at how different your experience is from mine, and make the same point I made before, speaking in the experiential mode, just as you do.
In my experience, I see comp marriages full of positive authority, mutual deference, and agape love. I also see egal marriages of the same kind. What distinguishes these marriages from all others is the quality of the Christian walk of the parts, not the framework.
I sometimes see a comp marriage, or more exactly, a marriage in which one of the parts wishes the marriage were complementarian, though it isn’t by biblical standards, that is notable for a lack of self-understanding of one or both of the parts.
In these cases, it is the husband who doesn’t seem to understand what a jerk he is, and is looking for ideological cover for it. Rarely, it is the wife who is looking for a father figure in her life, and does not want to be her husband’s equal in any sense. I sometimes see egal marriages in which the same dynamics are evident.
People are like that. What they want to be and what they are, are two different things. Paul speaks about that in Romans 7. Romans 7 applies to both comps and egals, not to one and not the other.
I see all families, comp and egal, subject to the pressures of the prevailing egal culture, which is characterized by a breakdown of the family structure. Presumably I don’t have to substantiate this last claim. It is a commonplace of Western sociology.
It is also my experience that typically, egal families are less protected than are comp families from the pressures and negative aspects of the prevailing egal culture. No wonder: a positive view of authority “on behalf of” remains to be worked out among egals, or if it has been worked out, no one has pointed out yet where.
If I understand you ocrrectly, Don, you say there is no need to work out positive concepts of authority and hierarchy, because the priniciple of mutual consent is sufficient on its own.
There we disagree.
Wow, that was a lightbulb moment for me. Complementarian wives should be ESFJs. I’m INFP — no wonder I spent years feeling I was an intrinsically wicked woman just for being me!
And yep, I’m a strong egal precisely because I was so badly wounded by living under compism. It took me years of reading to be convinced that God had really given me permission to be me — now I feel sick inside at any suggestion that I should return to prison
“Complementarian wives should be ESFJs. I’m INFP . . .”
I understand the force of these observations. But they convince me more than ever that there must be some ingredient in the recipe for a strong and healthy marriage far more important than the framework.
Otherwise, one might turn things around and say:
(1) ESFJ’s should be comps if women;
(2) INFP’s should be egals if women.
But that doesn’t follow.
It doesn’t follow if you are an ideological comp or egal, because for those positions, what four letters best describe one’s personality is not nearly as important as living marriage out in a comp or egal way.
It doesn’t follow for me because what four letters best describe one’s personality is not nearly as important as living marriage out according to Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and Philippians 2.
A marriage will be strong and healthy, regardless of one’s four letters and regardless of framework, if and only if it is lived out according to these passages.
“I think you interpret the guidelines too strictly. After all, there is no way you or I could substantiate your claims either, that every egal family you know is very aware of gift-based authority and does not look like slightly regulated anarchy. “
I’m with Don on this one, John. I’m in my 60’s and I can say that where I’ve lived (Mich., Ore., Calif., HI.) I’ve never known a family that supported mutuality to not support gift based authority. Nor have I seen a family supporting mutuality look like barely regulated anarchy. Anarchy being complete lawlessness, every man/woman for themselves, I don’t see how one could do that and at the same time support mutuality.
My guess is that our definitions cross by oceans. Whatever you are calling egalism that is barely regulated anarchy, is likely not egalism at all, but just wildness, without any structures or orderliness.
And FWIW, a qualification of “in my experience” is quite reasonable. After all we have not all lived in the same back yard.
John,
My most basic concern is that such general negative statements that you make do not add to the discussion. Other things you write do add to the discussion, but not the gratuitous and unsubstantiated dinks.
Using qualifiers to try to make them more plausible does not mean they are beneficial to the discussion.
If you want to speak about your own experience where you made a mistake, go ahead if you feel safe doing that, we can all try to learn from others mistakes. Since you claim to be egal, perhaps you have experienced too much anarchy in your family, and what you have learned could be useful to others.
Also, just a thought here, but I do think that there are more marital structures, besides Patriarchal, complementarian, and egalitarian. Some marriages have no structure at all of any sort. And there are other cultures with other marital structures.
Believer333,
I'm sorry if I must register disbelief in your claim that couples in the states where you have lived, if they "support mutuality," have marriages that do not break up at more or less the same rates as those who don't, have children who are obedient, and are otherwise living already in the kingdom of heaven.
On the other hand, perhaps we are in agreement after all. Perhaps by "supporting mutuality" you mean to refer to people who put passages like Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and Philippians 2 into practice.
If so, I concur with your statement, and would simply add that that there are plenty of comp couples who put these passages into practice as well.
Don,
I continue to disagree with your most basic premises.
You may not like the fact that I continue to bring up the crisis of the family in Western society, and that I contend that egalitarianism as currently defined contributes to that crisis. You may not like the fact that I do not see egalism as a cure-all to the problems a couple typically faces in a marriage.
Still, you have done little to convince me that once the principle of mutual consent is honored, everything falls into place.
On the other hand, perhaps we are in agreement after all. Perhaps by "egals" you simply mean to refer to people who put passages like Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and Philippians 2 into practice.
If so, I concur with your statement, and would simply add that that there are plenty of comp couples who put these passages into practice as well.
I think it comes down to this.
On the one hand there are comps / egals who identify the framework they have chosen or inherited as a necessary and sufficient condition for a strong and healthy marriage.
Then there are comps, like Jolly Bogger, not to mention Gary Thomas and Emerson Eggerichs – the authors we ought to be discussing on this thread – and egals like myself, who identify something else, something like (1) the practice of Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, and Philippians 2, as a necessary condition for a strong and healthy marriage. For people in this category, the first and most important emphasis belongs on (1).
Obviously I also wish to emphasize other ingredients of a strong and healthy marriage: thinks like (2) the exercise of authority "on behalf of" and (3) domain-based hierarchies, (4) a wide but not unlimited application of the principle of mutual consent.
However surprising it may be to some egals, all four things just mentioned are emphasized, though not with same words in every instance, in Sacred Marriage and Love & Respect.
I would have thought that this degree of convergence would be grounds for rejoicing among comps and egals alike.
What does it say about us if we cannot "mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice," unless they adhere to our preferred framework?
John, I am guessing that everyone who visits this blog agrees with you that every marriage, regardless of ideological framework, works best if couples put “Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and Philippians 2 into practice”. I sure do.
Are you simply trying to get each side to recognize that those with whom they disagree ideologically have this very important foundational fact in common, and so contribute to the dialogue?
Or is there something more that you are hoping will benefit us by citing these foundational Bible passages?
I think the greatest and most destructive gender imbalance in our society right now is the lack of male teachers at the K-12 level. But I appear to be a voice howling in the wilderness on that one.
I have already discussed with you that this is a key concern of our staff (all egals). You must come and join us and then you will feel less like a voice in the wilderness. For us, typically men are more than 50% of secondary teachers, less than 20% of elementary teachers and less that 2% of resource teachers.
I am myself in a job that most men would not touch with a ten foot pole. I am touched by your concern about this. It is hard to get a man to take a job with the very young or special needs child. It is even hard to interest women in this job as teaching at the university level has far more status, pay and overall clout.
What do you think could be done to inspire men to follow this calling? I would value your input into something that is an ongoing concern for us.
Wayne asks, with respect to my emphasis on the cardinal importance of texts like Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, and Philippians 2:
“Are you simply trying to get each side to recognize that those with whom they disagree ideologically have this very important foundational fact in common, and so contribute to the dialogue?”
No, I mean to do more than that. I mean to suggest that both ideological comps and egals have their priorities goofed up.
Let me illustrate. ESV Colossians 3:12-19 reads, without a break in the original, as follows:
“[12] Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.
And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
[18] Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.”
According to Don, it is important to symmetricize Paul’s teaching in order to bring it into line with egalitarian principles, so let’s do that where necessary in the above passage – only the last two sentences are affected:
“Husbands and wives, submit to one another, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands and wives, love one other and do not be harsh with one another.”
BTW, there is absolutely nothing unbiblical about the egal version of Col 3:18-19. But it is not what Paul wrote.
There are actually a couple of rigidly egalitarian “translations” of the Bible in print now with something very much like the egal version of Col 3:18-19 I just offered, but the “translations” were not produced by evangelicals.
Now, if I read an author like Gary Thomas or Emerson Eggerichs, whom I consider to be biblically balanced comps, I discover they are long, so to speak, on the long part of Paul’s exhortation (3:12-17), and short on the short part of the same exhortation (3:18-19). Bravo, I say. [Will all egals join me in so saying? If not, why not?]
I discover the same ratios more or less if I look at David Lang or Letitia’s emphases, or those of Jolly Blogger brought to our attention by Molly. Once again, cheers. [A number of egals have showered praise on David, Letitia, and Jolly Blogger for precisely the reasons I suggest.]
On the other hand, based on what little I’ve read of an author like Bruce Ware, it seems to me that he is short on the large part of Paul’s exhortation, on long on the short part. [Buzzer sounds after a Ware-like lecture: is that your final answer?]
But mis-prioritization occurs among ideological egals as well. All the emphasis is placed by them on symmetricizing asymmetrical texts like Col 3:18-19 based on the principle of scripture interpreting scripture. All the emphasis is placed by them on making gender-specific advice in the New Testament gender-neutral.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe there is biblical warrant for emphasizing that love and respect are supposed to be given and received by both husband and wife in a Christian marriage.
But I also think a case can be made – against Don, who suggests as I understand him that there is an unbridgeable chasm between the first century and ours on this point – for proposing that it remains relatively more important that a wife receives agape love and a husband receives reverence and respect than the other way around.
Emerson Eggerichs makes the case well. I don’t see why egals cannot follow him there, though egals understand marriage as a reciprocal authority arrangement and Eggerichs does not, at least not to the same degree.
In short, it remains controversial that an emphasis on passages like Romans 12, Colossians 3:12-17, and Philippians 2 understood as applicable to marriage is a “very important foundation[]” comps and egals share.
Occasionally on these threads, hard comp sermons have been cited to the effect that passages like the above are not applicable to marriage. Perhaps there are comps who so argue. To be honest, I could not give the hand of fellowship to a self-identifying Christian who so argued.
Occasionally on these threads, a comp like David Lang has been “accused” [my word] of acting in an egal manner because he effectively applies Colossians 3:12-17 to his married life.
This suggests that some egals see the application to married life of passages like the one just mentioned to be a specifically egal trait, in contradiction for some reason with comp principles.
Clearly, some comp marriages are short on Col 3:12-17 and long on 3:18, and ignorant of 3:19. Just as clearly, such marriages must be defined as sub-Christian marriages. From a biblical point of view, they are comp marriages falsely so-called.
But there are also plenty of traditional and neo-traditional marriages that are long on Col 3:12-17 and short on 18-19, just as they should be, based on Col 3:12-19.
I am blessed to be able to witness a number of such marriages within my extended family and among friends, and with respect to the “love-obey” framework, among older couples in my parish work. From a biblical point of view, these are comp marriages rightly so-called.
In short, according to some egals, the cardinal importance of texts like Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, and Philippians 2 is not “a very important foundation[ ]” that comps and egals are equally committed to.
Rather, the cardinality of said texts is understood by them as something which egals by definition, but comps only by accident or out of common sense put into practice.
But this way of framing the debate means that ideological egalism wins hands down by definition.
As I’ve pointed out before, such a way of looking at matters assumes that egals are not subject to the contradiction of which Romans 7 speaks, nor to the well-known law of unintended consequences.
Would that such were true. It isn’t, for comps and egals alike.
Suzanne says:
“I am myself in a job that most men would not touch with a ten foot pole. I am touched by your concern about this. It is hard to get a man to take a job with the very young or special needs child. It is even hard to interest women in this job as teaching at the university level has far more status, pay and overall clout.”
I think you hit on the reasons very well. Even among egals, men are expected to bring home the bacon more than women are, and being a special-ed teacher, relatively speaking, doesn’t cut it.
Money and prestige, furthermore, pretty much go hand in hand. And yes, the feminization of a profession, historically or as a recent fact, correlates with a loss of prestige. Again, this is true among egals and non-egals alike.
It is an example of a way in which the prevailing egal culture is not egal enough, according to Christian standards, as in Mark 14:3-9 (note location and verse 9’s exaltation of raw diaconia: a like recognition for any other kind of act is not to be found on Jesus’ lips) and John 13.
Among Christian men, there are examples of actually living as one would if the passages in Mark and John referred to were taken seriously. At least to my knowledge, the two most luminous examples of individuals who dedicated their lives to special needs people were both men: Jean Vanier and Henri Nouwen.
Note however, that both, not by accident, are Catholic.
Of course, go to any l’Arche, and I imagine most people who make it happen are women. So I don’t want to make too much of this reversal of the usual.
There are all kinds of things that could be done if the gender imbalance in the profession of teaching were taken seriously, but most of them require the kind of political will that is sorely lacking today. As a stopgap measure on the local level, men could be encouraged to volunteer more in the schools.
If I were a politician, I might
launch and fund a program whereby men with a college degree in any field could earn very decent money tutoring elementary school children in after-school programs.
A number of churches have what are known as “latch-key” after-school programs in which tutoring for anyone who needs it in the community is done by volunteers.
The positive bonding I have seen between older men and young boys and girls (many of whom have no decent male figure in their family lives) in that context convinces me that the model needs to pursued with vigor.
Maybe there are no evangelical churches, Suzanne, in Vancouver which are outside the box of the an all-preach and no-reach church model with no active presence in the community. That would be terrible if true. In my neck of the woods, the opposite is true, though I have not yet pushed hard enough for the start of a latch-key program in my own congregation.
The latch-key programmes or programmes of that type exist. The churches most involved in my area tend to be the “liberal” churches. I don’t know that this is a generalization but it is what I see.
Men are involved in some and I have seen some retired university professors, men and women, become reading tutors. It is the low prestige of being paid to work with the young and the handicapped that is a problem. I don’t think that getting more men to volunteer to work with children will reverberate in the paid profession.
I am familiar with L’Arche and work with a similar ethos myself in respecting the full humanity of the young and the handicapped. I know what it is to be deprived of this and I know what it means to offer this to others. I work out of my own deep experience of deprivation of personhood and am concerned to recognize full personhood in those who are at risk. I accept that they must be protected and have advocates for their full humanity. The tragedy of my life is how this was missing for me and I still intensely feel the lack, I still feel the lack in some arenas of the protection of full personhood for women. This tragedy will be with me in some way for my life. I am reminded by many interactions of the tenuous status of women both in the world and in the Christian community.
The best male teachers of the very young, that I have seen, have been very egal. I have also worked with men raised in complementarian teaching, and I saw that they wanted to work with the hightest grade in the school, and they wanted to be leaders of women who were older and more experienced than themselves. They wanted to be leaders on the basis of their maleness, and this was not possible. We need leaders, male and female, who are leaders out of their own humanity, not denying their masculinity or femninity but acknowledging that gender does not entitle one to leadership and authority over others, but only to give and enable others, not deprive them.
I have based my egalism on the commandment to love one another as Christ has loved us, on the command to love one’s neighbour as oneself, and on Phil. 2 for 17 years now. I cited these texts in an appeal to a congregation 17years ago, when I wrote to the elders in defense of a woman who was raped by her husband.
I was at a wedding this weekend in which the sermon was based on the scriptures 1) that Christ loved the church and gave himsself for it, 2) that love within the marriage is described in 1 Cor. 7 as symmetric and reciprocal, 3) that Christians are to love one another as Christ loved them.
This was the marriage of a couple in their 70’s. The marriage sermon was given by an elderly gentleman raised in the Brethren tradition. In spite of the silence of women in that church, there was also among some, a deep cultural mutual respect between men and women, that I have not seen in my more recent experience with comp teaching. Within the strict traditions of my childhood, there was mutual respect that gave birth to this egal sermon.
The marriage vows were officiated by Noel Churchman, long time co pastor with Grace Irwin. Within the traditionally cultural circles of my youth the egal ethic was also present.
The vow to obey was also absent. This traditionalism of my upbringing has morphed into a fully egal but deeply traditional ethic. I do not see any of the so called “goofs” of egals present in any of the egal circles which I inhabit. No anarchy or individualism, but deeply traditional and committed men and women.
I see the modernization and human sinfulness which you deplore but I do not see that it is a correlate of egalism. I see a gentle egalism which has infused these circles with the gift of humanity to other.
I deeply mourn the part of my life that was alienated from this egal ethic.
That egal is not enough, I can certainly accept. But it lays a foundation of mutual respect for humanity in one’s partner that I have seen to be so sadly absent.
In the many interwoven threads of traditional, egal and comp ethic that I have seen, there are some themes that must be torn out, whatever they are called. There is a way to treat someone else, that is supported by the notion that our humanity is not symmetric, that women do not need the respect and dignity that men need, that women were created differently than men, and do not need to be treated as a man needs to be treated. There are too many women here who have experienced this.
Selfish individualism also harms. I have never seen this taught in church by anyone and I would protest it just as vicoferously as I now protest the rampant teaching that a woman is to be devoid of personal authority, that she must have a part of her humanity torn out of her.
Hi Lynne,
I can empathize with your experiences! The reason that L&R so captured my heart when I first read it in September of 2004 was its emphasis on how I am to relate to my husband. In contrast, other complementarian books emphasized legalistic interpretations of what Titus 2:5b says about the activities I am permitted to engage in. It is no overstatement to say that I picked up L&R at a point in my life when I was so jaded by complementarian excesses that I viewed reading the complementarian marriage literature as the arm-chair equivalent of a blood sport.
That’s why the L&R message jumped out at me. It’s not that roles don’t matter. In fact, how we are to relate to each other is intertwined with our roles. But, the message in Ephesians 5 is the importance of how I am to relate to my husband.
My guess is that you would really appreciate Sarah Sumner’s Men and Women in Christ. She makes this same point very beautifully from a soft-egal perspective.
P.S. I’m setting aside your super comments on gifts and serving, to keep my comment on point with thread. But, that’s definitely an issue we should take up in a future thread!
”I’m sorry if I must register disbelief in your claim that couples in the states where you have lived, if they “support mutuality,” have marriages that do not break up at more or less the same rates as those who don’t, have children who are obedient, and are otherwise living already in the kingdom of heaven.”
LOL did I say that. No, I didn’t. But I will contribute something to those thoughts. According to Barna, those who live in mutuality (he may have called it egal marriage) suffer fewer divorces than those who live in hierarchal marriages. Children are something else entirely. Whether they are raised well or not does not guarantee as much as we would like in how they turn out.
Perhaps by “supporting mutuality” you mean to refer to people who put passages like Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and Philippians 2 into practice.
Yes, I certainly support those passages. However, I believe that to support mutuality would also entail a lack of required male dominance or female dominance or legislated domain based authority. Those supporting mutuality will order their marriage not only around the Scriptures you cited, but around what is best for their relationship and their family. And I would agree that there are plenty of comp couples who put these principals into practice as well. They may couch it in different terms, but in application it often looks almost precisely the same.
You said to Don, ”You may not like the fact that I continue to bring up the crisis of the family in Western society, and that I contend that egalitarianism as currently defined contributes to that crisis.”
And I would disagree strongly that anything that I have described as egal/mutuality contributes to the current crisis in Western Society. What you describe as egal is simply wildness, self-serving, and without any structure or orderliness. IMO that, coupled with abusive male dominance, and profound promiscuity are the primary contributors to the marital crisis in Western society.
John wrote: “But I also think a case can be made – against Don, who suggests as I understand him that there is an unbridgeable chasm between the first century and ours on this point – for proposing that it remains relatively more important that a wife receives agape love and a husband receives reverence and respect than the other way around.”
I do not think there is an unbridgeable chasm between the 1st century and ours, but I do claim that there were many differences, so that “teleporting” some text directly from the 1st century into the 21st risks MAJOR mistakes. So I do the interpretation 2-step:
1. exegesis ala original reader as best I can, knowing I have limits.
2. application for today.
I agree that Paul gave gender specific advice to couples living in the 1st century. But it can lead to big mistakes to think that Paul would automatically give the same advice today, in a different cultural context.
So how can I make the advice the MOST relevant today? As a safe default I can make it symmetric and use it as a starting point for individualized counsel by ASKING them/the other.
Is respect very important to a wife for some reason? This does not make her strange or masculine! Once the spouse knows that respect is VERY important, then one can act based on that to make sure one shows respect in a way that is recognized.
The same with love. WHAT makes the wife feel loved? It may be (and often is) different than what makes the husband feel loved.
And if it ends up with the wife wanting love and the husband wanting respect, sobeit; in this case the gender-specific advice from Paul given in the 1st century happens to be the correct advice for this couple living today. Great!
But it was worked out by THEIR discussion and THEIR choice, it is what works for them. And there is no need for them to claim to others that this is THE way God wants every couple to be.
Believer333,
I think we agree on the fundamentals. Actually, we have some differences when it comes to the sociology of marriage and family, with my views influenced by reading an author like Don Browning. But I will leave that discussion aside and concentrate on the topic of greater relevance to this thread.
You define egalism to mean adherence to passages like Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, and Philippians 2, an understanding of marriage that is not legalistic in its assignment of domains, with no “requirement” that the husband has “dominance.”
As you say, plenty of comps understand their marriage in similar terms, though they might couch their understanding somewhat differently. Indeed, I don’t see how a biblically-balanced comp can speak of “required dominance” without also qualifying that language in theory and in practice such that the substance ends up being anything other than “authority on behalf of” based on shared goals rather than self-interest.
Marriages of this kind, whether comp or egal, are strong and healthy almost by definition. The chances of them being torn apart are relatively small.
However, this compegal category is difficult to isolate sociologically because people are good at knowing what they should do and what they want to do, based on their beliefs, and then doing something quite different in practice.
Two best-selling comp authors, both discussed here, Gary Thomas and Emerson Eggerichs, by means of their teaching have greatly enlarged the category of “plenty of comp couples” who are virtually egal by your definition.
The authors self-identify as comps and like you make no distinction between framework and adherence to the passages referred to. Framework and adherence to the passages referred to go hand in hand for them. As you point out:
“in application it often looks almost precisely the same.”
I don’t know if you have Thomas or Eggerichs, but my feeling is that you would class them as “egals” by your definition except that “they couch it in different terms.”
From their point of view, they couch it in terms that are more adherent to those of the biblical witness.
Eggerich is not egal, as he believes and teaches that the husband has a trump card. He may mitigate this in many good ways, but the trump card is still taught.
rom their point of view, they couch it in terms that are more adherent to those of the biblical witness.
Terms, symantics, choice of words. Really, everyone here is doing their best to “couch the dialogue in terms that are more adherent to those of the Biblical witness”.
I’m not convinced that that is as important as having a marriage that works well for both spouses, helping them both to mature without limits to become more like Christ, and which is a good witness to the saving freeing love of God in every believers life.
Don,
How can it called a trump card if the husband is forbidden to use it, i.e., the authority delegated to him, in pursuit of self-interest?
As Eggerichs also teaches, Paul’s statement that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church applies precisely in the exercise of the authority delegated to him, which must be, to use Luther’s terminology, “authority on behalf of.”
John,
How does a husband following Eggerich know that he has not deceived himself about his own self-interest?
Claiming to do something to another that is really for the best interest of the other person without that person’s informed consent is something we might do for/to our children, but to/for adults?
Believer333,
I agree with your sense of priorities. That’s why I don’t see my task as a pastor to be that of making traditionalists or comps into egals, or vice-versa, egals into comps or traditionalists.
I try to identify dangers that are framework-specific but also dangers that are connatural to the prevailing culture we are all subject to. For the rest, authors like Thomas and Eggerichs have a lot to teach comp and egal couples alike.
That’s easier for me to say than it is for some egals because a number of more typically comp themes, I’m convinced, deserved to be worked out carefully along egalitarian lines. The necessary changes, in a biblically balanced context, are minimal.
“As Eggerichs also teaches, Paul’s statement that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church applies precisely in the exercise of the authority delegated to him, which must be, to use Luther’s terminology, “authority on behalf of.”"
I haven’t read Eggrich, so I don’t know what exactly what he has in mind with that teaching. But my question to him would be to question of assigning ‘authority over’ someone just because one has been admonished to love them like Christ loves us. Ephe. 5:1-2 says that every believer is to love others with the same sacrificial love that Christ does. So exactly where is that admonition giving them authority over anyone. I do not see loving someone sacrifically as equated with taking authority over them for their own good in the estimation of another.
Don,
You say,
“How does a husband following Eggerichs know that he has not deceived himself about his own self-interest?”
That’s a good question. Obviously there are no guarantees, but this applies equally to egals.
Jointly and singly, egals are also subject to confusing self-interest with shared interest, and, of crucial importance in a Christian setting, their shared interest as they define it with the will of God.
For the rest, in both egal and comp marriages, informed consent is often given on principle, not on a case-by-case basis.
That is, my wife looks after the health needs of our children and informed consent on a case-by-case basis comes into play only rarely, at her discretion.
Is such a system open to abuse? Of course it is. All domain-based authority, and “overall” authority however that is routinized, is subject to abuse. But it also an efficient and life-enhancing way to organize a common life together.
That’s why societies organize themselves into crisscrossing subunits in which people are emphatically not equal in function.
You can try to take gender out of the equation – gender as a social construct, an alchemy of nature and nurture – but why is it necessary to do so?
It is not a necessary corollary of egalism, and indeed, even the most hard-boiled egal allows that some inequalities of function are connatural to gender differences.
It is probably true that some comps overplay these typical differences. I would so claim. But it is also true that some egals underplay them.
As Eggerichs also teaches, Paul’s statement that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church applies precisely in the exercise of the authority delegated to him, which must be, to use Luther’s terminology, “authority on behalf of.”
Is there a quote from Eggerich that illustrates his concept of authority?
Are there any further recommendations to get men into the nurturig role with children and the handicapped? I had forgotten to mention that Noel, who worked with Grace Irwin, formerly worked with the handicapped. For me, a male in this role is typically an egal. Is this typical or just my experience?
FWIIW, I think Eggerich is teleporting verses in his discussion of Eph 5 starting on p. 215 of L&R. He also does some eisegesis, e.g., husband as head of household (nowhere stated).
He apparently does not even TRY to understand these verses in 1st century context; he apparently believes that some text written to 1st century believers can be automatically teleported into the 21st century.
He claims there is a principle where the husband has 51% of the responsibility, so it follows that he has 51% of the authority and that the wife should tell her husband this is the case. I AGREE that IF the husband did have 51% resp. then he should have 51% auth., but I deny he has 51% resp. This may be a "nice" way to phrase it, and I am glad he asks the woman to say it; but a woman should know that she does not need to say this; this principle is not in the Bible.
Yes, I can deceive myself about my own self interest being behind some decision I make. I can also just want to do something and not mask it as something else. But I do not have a trump card that ENFORCES that self interest if push comes to shove.
I hope everyone can see that a 2 party negotiation is affected if someone has a trump card compared to when no one does.
I am charged by Jesus to love others AS myself; the normal challenge in that is not in loving oneself, it is in loving others as much as oneself. In our imperfect world I see mutual submission as aiding me in loving others.
“He claims there is a principle where the husband has 51% of the responsibility, so it follows that he has 51% of the authority and that the wife should tell her husband this is the case.”
Perhaps 51% would be acceptable for the person with 51% of the responsibility. But my sense is that a husband who claims he has 51% of the responsibility is going to want all of the authority as if this were a vote. Anything over 51% “wins” all. Sometimes who has the most responsibilities changes week by week. None of that entitles anyone to a “trump card”.
I think that in order to get young men involved in caring for children, older men have to model this. I am not sure that rigid gender roles contribute.
This topic has been brought up more than once. Are there any suggestions?
“I think that in order to get young men involved in caring for children, older men have to model this. I am not sure that rigid gender roles contribute. “
It seems there used to be less fear involved with men being involved with children. But ever since the huge discovery of many male Catholic priests abusing the young, that Christians have been testy about male involvement with the young. A few years back one church had a young man (late teens) with ADHD that was really harmless, and very friendly with children. The children loved him also. And people fussed so much, the whole family left the church.
No John, I didn’t mean that it was ok for ESFJs to be comp etc. i meant that, whatever reasons you choose for believing in a particular lifestyle, the fact remains that, for any lifestyle choice people of some temperaments will be more comfortable in it than others, irrespective of the passion with which you may or may not believe in what you’re doing. irrespective of other reasons that some of us have decided we can no longer believe in compism, while we were comps we moved heaven and earth to try and be something we weren’t. It’s another facet of what nearly destroyed us. I apologise to comps for using strong language like “destroyed”, I’m not trying to have a go at anyone, i’m just talking about my personal experience. i happen to believe that compism is wrong for everyone (with due respect to those who think MY choices are wrong)– i’m just saying that, in our natural selves, some of us are going to find it even harder than others.
Don,
You say:
“I am charged by Jesus to love others AS myself; the normal challenge in that is not in loving oneself, it is in loving others as much as oneself. In our imperfect world I see mutual submission as aiding me in loving others.”
Paul makes the same point in not so many words in Ephesians 5:28. Paul however combines that with gender-specific advice (be subject to / love; agape love / respect, reverence). In a patriarchal context, Paul’s advice was appropriate insofar as his goal was to redeem the culture rather than overturn it.
Human culture so far as I can see is remarkably continuous so I do not find myself in the situation of having to tear out pages from the Bible because of cultural change. Thus, in an egalitarian context, I see the emphases of Thomas and Eggerichs as redemptive in nature, not subversive. In effect, they re-situate Paul’s advice in contemporary cultural coordinates.
Once more on the trump card. The discussion so far has been rather cramped for my tastes. All the emphasis is being placed on how a trump card can be misused. This has it backwards. First of all, it is important to learn how to use a trump card well.
Trump cards are of the essence of hierarchy. For example, at some point, a boss in the workplace will simply say: that’s the way it’s going to be, period. Otherwise everything would grind to a halt.
But not that everyone is given a trump card in the Bible, irrespective of one’s place in a hierarchy: the trump card of a greater good which means that normal rules are set aside.
Consider Tamar and Judah. Note what crazy things Tamar does, and how she subverts authority in the process. She is praised for it! We would not have the Messiah without her actions.
A practical implication: as a pastor I feel it is my obligation to tell people that sometimes it is appropriate to do whatever it takes, outside the box, to reach a greater good. This has implications in a variety of situations, inclusive of those involving battered spouses and children.
It is a shame that these things are not taught more often. They are right there in the Bible.
Believer333,
You say:
“So exactly where is that admonition giving them authority over anyone.”
Husbands are given authority over their wives the moment that wives are told to submit to them in all things. However, that authority is carefully qualified, in Luther’s terms, as *authority on behalf of.*
As far as men being involved in caring for their children, this is a big emphasis of the involved father movement. As time goes on, that is bound to affect things beyond the nuclear family.
There are plenty of comp and egal marriages in which the father is involved in caring for the children to a degree that was virtually unknown in previous generations. However, it remains normal that the mother calls the shots in this domain. Typically, that seems appropriate.
Eggerichs discusses authority in the series of chapters in which he describes wifely respect, not the series of chapters in which he describes husbandly love.
I find this insufficient. For my money, the most urgent thing is to develop a concept of "beautiful authority" based on biblical teaching, and connect it with love and authority *on behalf of*. It's not that hard to do in my view.
It's not that Eggerichs fails to do this. But he develops a positive view of authority in his counsel to wives, not to husbands. I would develop it explicitly in counsel to husbands.
Eggerichs begins his authority chapter with an anecdote from the Q & A time of an L & R conference of the kind he and his wife Sarah lead. In that context, a young wife whom he characterizes as simply being honest, not belligerent or demanding, said the following:
"I want him to be the head. I want him to be the leader. I just want to make sure that he makes decisions in keeping with what I want."
To me that's a great quote because, in a soft egal context like my own, it remains representative. That's also how young wives in my context tend to see things.
Here are a set of quotes to get you started.
P. 216: "we have seen that the good-willed husband does not try to use his position of head as some kind of club to beat down his wife and his children. He acts responsibly – and lovingly – to be the leader that God asked him to be."
According to this quote, the exercise of authority is loving, or it is no longer responsible. The content and goals of the husband's leadership are defined by God, not by the husband.
Eggerichs is no dummy, so he is able to concede all of the following without backing away one inch from calling husbands to be responsible leaders of their households (p. 216):
"many wives would tell you that they are better decision-makers than their husbands, and they often are. They have better judgment than their husbands on many fronts, yet they are stuck with this concept of having to defer to their husbands and let them 'be the boss.'"
Further on, the principle of mutual consent is given wide scope [p. 219]:
"in most cases when love and respect are both present, couples resolves the conflict. Two good-willed people who feel loved and respected almost always discover a creative alternative that resolves the conflict."
A husband's authority is far from absolute. When it becomes an excuse for sin, it is no longer acceptable. Separation in the case of abuse and divorce in the case of adultery are legitimized (p. 219):
"A wife's submission to God takes precedence over her submission to her husband. . . . sadly, let me add, a wife may need to physically separate from her husband (1 Cor 7:11) or divorce him for adultery (Matt 19:9)."
Specifically, his advice to wives is the following (p. 221):
"Tell him that you see him as having more authority because he has more responsibility before God – the responsibility to die for you, if necessary. My prediction is that the nature of your arguments and disagreements will change dramatically."
This is in the part where he talks about the husband having "51 per cent" authority.
I don't find percentages a very helpful way of talking about authority, but I'm sure most people do, so I'm not going to take issue with it so much as suggest that authority understood theologically and christologically just isn't a zero-sum game.
To put it theologically,
the more God exercises authority in the Bible, the more we who are subject to his authority are empowered, including, for example, responding to God with prayer which, in the bold faith of the psalmists, is sometimes a form of in-your-face reproof. With this comment, I've barely unveiled the tip of the iceberg.
In Christ, we see how power and authority are "on behalf of" by nature. Is Christ's authority diminished when he submits to the request for healing brought to him by the Syro-Phoenician woman? Absolutely not. It is reinforced.
True authority in marriage will involve losing a lot of arguments, just as Jesus lost his argument with the Syro-Phoenician woman. Mature authority of this kind works this way. It is goal-oriented like a laser. And the goal has nothing to do with self-interest.
Lynne,
You say:
“I happen to believe that compism is wrong for everyone.”
I respect your opinion in the same way I respect the opinion of the one who thinks that egalism is wrong for everyone.
But I strenuously oppose both views.
On your view, the patriarchal culture God approved of in the law of Moses given to the people of Israel was wrong for them. On your view, Peter, a married man, was wrong to give the advice he does, in which he says, in a patriarchal context, “Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands” (NRSV 1 Peter 3:1).
On your view, unless I am misunderstanding, those in my extended family and among my friends who practice a form of complementarianism in their marriage because of cultural background (Filipino, Japanese, etc.) are in the wrong.
On your view, the compism those in my extended family have chosen for themselves despite having been raised egal is wrong for them.
I beg to differ.
On the other hand, I assume you would agree with Paul thus far, that his “submit / love” and “love / respect” advice might be okay if men could be trusted to actually love their wives.
It seems to me that some egals want to argue that because men can’t be trusted to hold up their end of the bargain, the advice Paul gives isn’t valid. That’s how I hear the “trump-card” debate.
The reply that, what was good for the 1st century is not necessarily good for us, doesn’t fly. In the specific case, if it doesn’t fly now, how much less, in a thoroughly patriarchal context, would it have flown back then.
It seems likely that Paul was clear-eyed about both the grace of God and our humanity and knew full well that some husbands would ignore his teaching and want respect from their wives but not love them as Christ loved the church. I imagine he knew that some wives would ignore his teaching and want Christ-like love from their husbands so long as they modeled their desires on their own.
Such is, after all, the way of the world. But Paul had another way in mind, and seems unfrightened by the risks involved in promoting it.
Don,
You say:
"[Eggerichs] apparently does not even TRY to understand these verses in 1st century context; he apparently believes that some text written to 1st century believers can be automatically teleported into the 21st century."
Don, your point is very interesting, but if Eggerichs did, in the context of his L & R conferences, engage in historical exegesis and explain how the verses he depends on worked in a 1st century context, what would he end up saying?
That, in a 1st century context, a wife was far less of an equal partner than a wife is today according to Eggerich's own model.
And, though a wife was far less of an equal partner by law and culture than is the case today, Paul did not advocate overturning those realities, but requalified them from the inside. Just as he does in the cases of slavery and parenting.
In a nutshell, this is what historical exegesis leads us to say. It's good background information, but I'm not sure how it would positively add to L & R.
It isn't true that Eggerichs teleports the verses he depends on into our setting. He calibrates them to our cultural context and supports the calibration in terms of contemporary social-scientific research (John Gottman et al). Some comps have given him grief for his appeal to secular research.
Such comps, as do some egals, want a Bible-only approach to these questions. But I'm with Eggerichs on this one all the way.
Hi Don,
Could we talk a bit more about your position that complementarians “teleport”? I see the validity of that argument in the context of, for example, older complementarian discussions of women’s roles. Too frequently in the past, there was an implied Eleventh Commandment, “And The Wife Shalt Not Work Outside The Home.” That type of interpretation of gender roles seems at odds with a basic understanding of history and the fact that the Industrial Revolution shifted productive activity from the home to the market place.
But, I’m not following your argument as applied to L&R. In each chapter of L&R, Emerson draws practical applications from Biblical texts, but also points out how the advice is consistent with contemporary social science evidence. For example, Gottman, himself, uses the words love and respect. Gottman’s research also shows there to be a continuum, with men feeling disrespected during conflict and women feeling unloved. And, if anything, contemporary neuroscience is pointing in the direction of gender differences being even more pronounced than we currently acknowledge.
To illustrate my point, let’s look at the argument that men have a fundamental desire to work and achieve. Emerson begins with Genesis, pointing out that Adam was put into the garden to cultivate and keep it, before Eve was created. Eve was created to help Adam. He is oriented towards work, she is oriented towards him. (And, yes, the primary orientation of both is to be towards God. And, yes, her status as ezer means she is not to be defined as his personal assistant. And, yes, he is oriented towards her, and she enjoys work. We're talking about relative emphases, not absolutes.) Emerson is not the only complementarian to make this argument. But, he then applies the general principle to the contemporary context, pointing out that women today view work as a choice while men view it as an obligation. That describes me, and that describes my husband. It also describes the views of just about every woman who has posted here. So, the Biblical principle is not culture-specific. It applies today, but today’s application will differ from applications in the past. We may differ about the proper application. But, do we really differ about the sociological evidence? And, how is this “teleporting”?
Could we also talk about your statement that “In our imperfect world I see mutual submission as aiding me in loving others”? What I’ve seen of egal marriages and egal relationships during the four years my husband and I attended a conservative evangelical egal church is that this is not true. Rather, in the mutual submission model, the more verbally adroit partner has a huge advantage. Egals very much want to hear each other’s opinions and are willing to listen to each other. (In fact, the amount of time spent on communication can be argued to be a negative of the model.) But, I frequently heard egals spouses make statements to the effect of, “I can’t put a finger on it, but there is something wrong with that argument.” Or, alternatively, “This isn’t fair. He/she is always able to convince me that he/she is right. I don’t feel that he/she is right, but I don’t have a good counterargument.”
In contrast, if the spouses are good-willed, Emerson’s gender-nuanced communication framework sensitizes the couple to these types of issues. The couple is aware that when he offers his insight, she will often perceive him as micromanaging her. She is to remind herself that of his protective intent, while he is to back off trying to fix all of her problems (i.e., to be more loving). The couple is aware that if she verbally confronts him to connect, he will perceive himself as being controlled by her. She is to soften her approach (i.e., to be more respectful), while he is remind himself of her loving intent. On just about every page of L&R, the message is one of empathy for one’s spouse. Husbands and wives are to acknowledge gender differences and to use an understanding of those differences to put themselves in their spouse’s shoes. The beauty of the Love and Respect framework is that I’m called on to step into my husbands shoes…..to put on respect even when, as a woman, it seems to me to be neither the comfortable nor the logical thing to do. Similarly, my husband is called on to love me, even when it seems to him to be neither the comfortable nor the logical thing to do.
My personal experiences are consistent with my observations from the egal church we attended. I simply do not see a general commitment to “mutual submission” as forming a sufficient communication framework for marriage. The party with the superior verbal skills dominates. Here’s an example from my marriage. I grew up in a home where children were to be respectfully silent. In contrast, my husband’s dad is a university professor who values in his children, an ability to verbally engage with him. When I started grad school, my husband explicitly told me that he thought one of the side benefits would be that I would be better able to hold my own in discussions with him. As a practical matter, the egal model may work decently for highly educated couples in which the husband and wife have comparable verbal and analytical skills. But from what I’ve seen, it does not play out well when there is a disparity on either of those dimensions. And, basic gender differences suggest that there often will be a disparity.
In contrast, the L&R model encourages an empathetic understanding of these sorts of differences between spouses. Women, for example, often communicate to realize their emotions. Rather than expressing frustration when I’m not able to communicate my views as succinctly as he can, my husband now listens with the knowledge that what seems to him to be an initially rambling conversation is often a necessary prerequisite to my being able to articulate my views. In the past, he would often say something to the effect of, “Well, Marilyn, we’ve talked about this for a while. I’m not following what you’re saying. But, if there is a concern you can enunciate, I’ll be glad to listen to it.”
Finally, I would like to push you to explain the egal position on gender differences. In the limit, if there are no meaningful gender differences, then there is no difference between a heterosexual marriage and a homo-erotic relationship. I don’t mean to imply that you or other egals equate marriage and homosexuality. But, I do think it is a logical implication of a marriage model that takes gender out of the equation. So, to me, the fact that egals do not equate heterosexual marriage with homosexuality suggests that egals do, in fact, believe in gender differences. And, if those differences were clearly laid out, it’s my belief that egals would embrace much of the L&R message.
On gender distinctions that I recognize as an egal (not speaking for all egals) there are 3 main ones and others derive from those.
1. The obvious physical reproductive differences. A woman can bear, birth, and nurse a baby; a man can impregnate a woman.
2. In the womb, the male brain seems to have many connections severed during formation, when testosterone hits. I see this as God’s design, males often can focus on one thing; females often can see connections.
3. As a general statement, males are larger and stronger than females, altho there is considerable overlap.
There are differences that derive from the above, but this will do for a start. I can learn also. Since I am male, I am sure there are many things I do not know about what it is like to be female.
Finally, I would like to push you to explain the egal position on gender differences. In the limit, if there are no meaningful gender differences, then there is no difference between a heterosexual marriage and a homo-erotic relationship. I don’t mean to imply that you or other egals equate marriage and homosexuality. But, I do think it is a logical implication of a marriage model that takes gender out of the equation. So, to me, the fact that egals do not equate heterosexual marriage with homosexuality suggests that egals do, in fact, believe in gender differences. And, if those differences were clearly laid out, it’s my belief that egals would embrace much of the L&R message.
October 27, 2008 8:39 AM
Wayne, are you really going to allow this? Notice how she 'plants a seed' of poison just like CBMW.
How insulting! On purpose. If we do not believe that women are emotional, etc., then we do not believe there are gender differences? that is basically what it boils down to in Marilyns world. Never mind that gender differences are quite obivous because they are 'physical'. They are not always emotional. Marilyn is using the EXACT same type of debate tactics that CBMW does. They plant seeds of poison and Christian brothers and sisters spend time defending themselves they are not in same sex marriages, as Russell Moore calls egal marriages.
This is why this blog is losing credibility. You promote people like Marilyn and John who with many words slip in their ridiculous generalizations and insults.
What ever happened to the Bible? Why are we dissecting what a mere man teaches and applying it like it is Holy Writ?
On teleportation interpretation, I have done it myself, unknowingly. In my studies someone will point out that some term could not possibly have a 1st century meaning that I think it has in the 21st century. I go oops, I need to be more careful.
Some treat 1 Cor, for example, as if it was written to their own local church; or 1 Tim as if it was written to them personally. However, 1 Cor was written to a flesh and blood church in the 1st century (and we do not go to that church) and 1 Tim was written to a flesh and blood church leader at Ephesus in the 1st century (and we are not Timothy).
This means that what we THINK the meaning of some text is may not actually have been the meaning in the 1st century, so we need to be humble. Letters by their nature are like one half of a telephone transcript and the original readers would have both halves, the original readers would know the immediate context for which the letter was written. But we are not in that position, so we do our best and admit our limits. They are very precious, being the word of God, but OUR interpretation of some text may be mistaken, in some cases, seriously mistaken, simply because we do not recognize some term or the original context, etc.
This does not mean we give up trying to understand; but it does mean that we recognize in some cases we might need to do some serious digging in doing our best to understand that original meaning.
Lin wrote:
Wayne, are you really going to allow this? Notice how she ‘plants a seed’ of poison just like CBMW.
Lin, I am deeply distressed by the problems with comments on this blog. That is why I turned off comments for awhile last week. The problem is that I have a fulltime job and am unable to read everything thoroughly to catch every problem. I am hoping that you and others can help moderate blog comments by pointing out the problems, as you have just done.
I wish I could work with this blog fulltime, but I cannot. I would not get my work done for my employer. I and other bloggers here who have moderation privileges do the best job we can within our time limits and abilities to pick up on problems
If you would be willing to moderate messages for this blog, please contact me via private email and we can discuss possibilities. My email address is:
wayne dot leman at gmail dot com.
Periodically I consider shutting down this blog because I get criticized from all sides for permitting comments which are considered inappropriate. But I hope that even with things that fall through the cracks we might be able to get some value out of the dialogue which does occur, as fallible as it is.
But if the majority of those who blog here and comment here would feel it would be more valuable close down this blog, one of the few forums where comps and egals can dialogue openly, I would be willing to do that. I want to do what’s best for the Body of Christ.
lin,
I assumed Marilyn asked an honest question and do not see it as poison. I tried to give a short answer, which can continue the discussion, as desired.
Some non-egals DO teach that embracing egalism may lead to accepting homosexual marriage; so I see the question as a fair one.
Some non-egals DO teach that embracing egalism may lead to accepting homosexual marriage; so I see the question as a fair one.
October 27, 2008 10:12 AM
It is not a fair question.
Marilyn wrote this:
“But, I do think it is a logical implication of a marriage model that takes gender out of the equation.”
#1. Who took ‘gender’ out of the equation? Could you be specific and show me where gender has been ‘taken out of the equation’ on this forum?
In any event, Marilyn’s question is illogical because it is starting with a wrong premise. Homosexuality is rampant in Patriarchal cultures and it has been this way for thousands of years. How do we explain this since detailed gender distinctions are the main focus in those cultures?
Wayne, I will e-mail you. Thanks
I am all for using Gottman’s research and others, just that all of it is subordinate to the Bible.
For me, this is just like going to a medical doctor as well as asking for prayer. Who says you can only do one or the other? Do both.
Eggerich DOES teleport the texts he discusses, there is absolutely no discussion about the 1st century as far as I can recall. We KNOW is other examples from the NT advice does not necessarily translate, very few greet all believers with a holy kiss, which is an imperative! This is because of cultural considerations and by not discussing those he BYPASSES some insights which are critical, IMO.
P.S. A lot of what Eggerich does say is very good, but there are 2 ways to improve it, IMO:
1. Rip out the non-egal stuff.
2. Make the advice symmetric and use it as a starting point for individuals.
John wrote: ” (Eggerich wrote:)”I want him to be the head. I want him to be the leader. I just want to make sure that he makes decisions in keeping with what I want.”
To me that’s a great quote because, in a soft egal context like my own, it remains representative.
This quote is not egal at all. Egal marriage is partnership marriage.
As far as I can tell, what you mean by soft egal is soft non-egal, so I find your terminology confusing, and unnecessarily so.
I agree with Don.
Marilyn’s question is not to be confused with the kind of polemic one runs across among CBMWers or CBEers.
There are plenty of blogs designed to promote a particular version of compism or egalism. Of course such blogs major in polemics against versions of the same or the opposite they disagree with. Like political campaigns, they spend an inordinate amount of energy and resources attacking opponents.
I don’t remember my experience on CBE as a positive one. It’s possible to characterize Sarah Sumner as a soft egal or as a very soft comp. But on CBE, she was treated by most as some kind of traitor to the cause. Once again, fine, I should have expected it. That’s what movement blogs do.
This blog is not a movement blog. Not surprisingly, it tends to attract readers who are not stock-in-trade CBMWers or CBEers. Neither of those movements is in search of anything. Both movements deny that they find their salvation in anything other God’s grace, but in my experience it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that they think they have the truth (their particular version of compism or egalism), and the truth has set them free.
This blog is about dialogue. Dialogue is not really possible if we think we know it all already and have nothing to learn from others who may not agree with us on certain things.
Dialogue is also very hard if we see logs in the eyes of those we disagree with, and not even specks in our own.
If a question like Marilyn’s does not fall within the guidelines, I would have to say that the guidelines are too strict.
Lin, let me try again. (And, thanks, Don. I appreciate your willingness to not attribute bad intent.) I read the egals on this list as being hesitant to draw gender distinctions. In fact, there was a thread to that effect not too long ago. I understand that hesitation. Labels can lead to legalism. But, I also believe that it is a naïve argument that leads to some illogical and inappropriate conclusions (which I won’t repeat for fear of offending you further). Nor do I believe that it is an accurate representation of the egal position, which before interacting with the egals here, I had assumed to be “complementarity without hierarchy.” What do egals mean by that, and what does it imply for how egals structure their marriages? That’s what I’m here to learn. But, I can’t learn if egals are unwilling to engage in a discussion about the differences between egal and comp perspectives on complementarity, because egals view the costs of drawing gender distinctions to outweigh the benefits.
Lin, I am not planting seeds of poison. I think it is a completely viable position to argue that egalitarians make different gender distinctions than complementarians. It is a completely viable position to argue that complementarians over-emphasize gender differences. But, I don’t think it is viable to argue that gender distinctions are so unimportant or susceptible to misinterpretation that they should not be made. That’s all I’m trying to say! I hear egals disagreeing with the gender distinctions in L&R. O.k., but with what do you propose to replace them? I don’t think “nothing” is an acceptable answer.
Don,
Perhaps you would be surprised at how many ordinary egal couples think of their marriage as a partnership, and also think of the husband as the head of the household.
It is also very common for egal wives to want their husbands to show some leadership around the house, in family life more generally, etc. As in taking out the trash, for example. As in disciplining the kids. As in praying with the kids before they go to bed.
It gets better. It is also very common for egal wives to want their husbands to lead them, not just the children, by example. To lead the whole family by example when it comes to going to church and turning off the television.
That kind of leadership is not oppressive, and it is always wanted. A husband’s leadership is not a tainted concept among non-ideological egals. Its practice, rightly understood, is compatible with marriage as a partnership.
Don, thanks for your explanation of teleporting. I think I understand the concept. What I’m not seeing is why you believe L&R to be an example of teleporting. As I explained in my earlier posts, Emerson starts with the Biblical text and then uses current sociological evidence to derive present-day applications for the various complementarian conclusions about the Biblical text. I don’t see him as teleporting, because his applications are drawn from current sociological evidence. It’s possible, of course, that egalitarians have a different framework, so draw different conclusions from the same sociological data. If so, I want to hear those conclusions. That’s the type of interchange that would be beneficial to all of us. At a minimum, we would come away from the discussion with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for our own beliefs. We might also learn something from each other. I understand that you may not have the time to engage in that discussion. I also understand that you may not view L&R to be the best frame for the discussion. Feel free to offer a different frame. But, regardless, I don’t think it’s fair to summarily dismiss L&R with a generic statement that Eggerichs teleports.
P.S. I'm not sure I've properly understood your more recent post. Could I try to make sure that I've understood you by rephrasing what I hear you saying? I hear you saying that there are no meaningful distinctions to be made in how men and women relate to each other. All advice to husbands and wives should be symmetric. Additionally, I hear you saying that there are no meaningful differences in roles, apart from the fact that women bear children. Am I interpreting you correctly?
Don,
You say:
“1. Rip out the non-egal stuff.
2. Make the advice symmetric and use it as a starting point for individuals.”
Of course, Eggerichs does not feel obliged to do that, because he has two starting points: (1) the Bible, which supports both comp and egal readings; and (2) research like that of Gottman’s.
Both starting points are easily taken to suggest that advice should not be symmetric but gender-specific.
Marilyn,
”As I explained in my earlier posts, Emerson starts with the Biblical text and then uses current sociological evidence to derive present-day applications for the various complementarian conclusions about the Biblical text.”
I think what Don is saying is that Emerson fails to check how the historical cultural application of the times it was written it applied. One of the basic points of correct exegesis is to seek to hear what the author intended when he wrote, as well as to seek to hear what the author said with the ears of those he first spoke the words to. Once we can clearly see that, then we can find the correct principal to apply to our times 2000 years later.
Marilyn asked: “I’m not sure I’ve properly understood your more recent post. Could I try to make sure that I’ve understood you by rephrasing what I hear you saying? I hear you saying that there are no meaningful distinctions to be made in how men and women relate to each other. All advice to husbands and wives should be symmetric. Additionally, I hear you saying that there are no meaningful differences in roles, apart from the fact that women bear children. Am I interpreting you correctly? “
I am sure that as generalizations, many/most men relate differently than many/most women. We are not clones, but the Y chromosome is 1 of 20-something chromosomes so the genders are more alike than different at the level of DNA.
On the NT advice to husbands and wives, all the “good stuff” advice, to love, respect, submit, etc. was given in a 1st century culture which was different than ours in many ways. Good stuff does not need to be limited by gender just because Paul decided to target some advice. My take is the targeting is for emphasis; as in wives, be sure to respect your husbands and husbands, be sure to love your wives.
It might be the case that husbands today really needs respect like a 1st century husband or it might need to be tweaked. Respect is very important. But who wants to stop there, does not a wife need respect also? Does not a husband need love?
As an egal, my take is we get to make our own roles, except where prohibited by physical constraints. The goal is to make the marriage/family succeed and to assume ahead of time that the man does X and the woman does Y can in some cases limit that family from accomplishing what it could otherwise accomplish. In other words, there is freedom.
See, Marilyn, his book is based on sociology. His use of a few Bible verses is window dressing. I found the book extremely frustrating (and indeed, I only read the first part because I only wanted to read “my own mail” so to speak). Frustrating because I LIVED what he preaches for 22 years and my husband- emotionally arrested and non-empathic- escalated in selfishness and abuse. In your case, your husband was on board with DOING HIS OWN HOMEWORK!!! Telling women to do this stuff unilaterally is IMO putting them on a hamster wheel of enabling ongoing selfishness and immaturity of many a man who needs to grow up. This “functional fixedness” as Gary Thomas calls it will ruin many a marriage.
When I read his book I did some very basic word study homework on the verse which is (ostensibly) the premise of Eggerich’s whole thesis (though I don’t buy that the Bible is the premise at all. The premise is sociology and Gottman, etc).
His premise is that an UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and UNCONDITIONAL RESPECT COMMAND come out of Ephesians 5:33. The word which is indeed translated “respect” in the NIV version of Eph 5:33 is PHOBEO/PHOBOS.
Almost everywhere else the words are used, they are translated “fear” and “be afraid”. Among the definitions of phobeo in any of the lexicons at Tufts “respect/reverence” is not listed.
Translating the word “reverence” exclusively when it comes to marriage and the H/W relationship is not doing wives OR husbands any favors IMO.
The results:
1- misleads christian women en masse into a destructive form of “husband idolatry”
2- binds up a burden too heavy to bear on the wives of disobedient (abusive) husbands
3- robs women of their calling to be help MEET
the first definition of reverence from dictionary.com = a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration.
I bet Sapphira of Acts 5 felt that about Ananias. What she SHOULD HAVE felt was appropriate FEAR!!!
And great fear (phobos) came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. Acts 5:11
Why did “great fear” come upon the church?
(for the rest of the story read Acts 5:1 ff)
Was this “great fear” a GOOD thing, a HEALTHY thing?
The story has a “before” and an “after”
BEFORE: not much appropriate FEAR
AFTER: GREAT FEAR
I maintain that Sapphira lacked appropriate FEAR (phobos/phobeo)- toward God, toward her husband. She did not take seriously her husband’s power (to initiate evil in this case) She did not act as his lifesaving ezer/help MEET and intervene in his best interests.
How would you respond to a wife who says the following about her husband? Would you chastize her for disobeying her wifely duty?
“pay no attention to that wicked man [insert husband's name]. He is just like his name—his name is Fool, and folly goes with him.”
The woman is Abigail and the story is an excellent illustration of how God desires a wife to exercise an appropriate FEAR in response to her husband’s foolish, dangerous actions. (see 1 Samuel 25)
I noticed that the Ephesians 5-6 periscope uses the word “fear”/phobeo/phobos in three instances:
Eph 5:21Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear (phobos) of God.
Eph 5:33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence/phobeo her husband.
Eph 6:5Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear (phobos) and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;
Does the latter sound like what one thinks of as “respect”? I don’t think so! This phobos/phobeo TREMBLES. That sounds like FEAR not “respect” to me! To me, the repetition of this phobeo/phobos/fear instruction in the 1 Peter 3 instructions to wives of disobedient (abusive) husbands makes the case even stronger that “reverence” is not an accurate, appropriate, nor wise translation choice.
OTH, I would have no trouble if Eggerich wrote a book about “how Gottman says love and respect can help your marriage”. I can read Dr. Phil and take what I like and leave the rest. But when someone claims they are speaking with biblical authority and preaches something which is so destructive when only one side of the marriage takes it to heart… I find that very distressing!
And what you said about fearing intimacy pushing him away by being disrespectful… well my husband is extremely disrespectful to this day. And as Don says, it is an intimacy killer no matter who is doing it to whom. At least now, I don’t think I have to have “a feeeeeeling of veneration and awe” for him when he is calling me names and making false accusations.
Another thing I recall which is utterly unbiblical and untrue is his assertion that male humans have some sort of “natural respect”.
Men are depraved. I could give examples, but I don’t want to make you sick and get myself angry.
Its one thing for a sociologist or psychologist to publish such advice, but someone who is teaching with authority in the church will be held responsible for the carnage in their wake (and his book is used in many a married Sunday School) A girlfriend is near the end (which I never read)in her Sunday School and apparently a wife is supposed to listen with respect and understanding to why her husband wants to look at porn (excuse me? this passes for Biblical???) I really hate that it is getting such a high profile here and I hope it doesn’t boost the sales. Its part of why I would not publish a book review of it. I will only review books which I can say kind things about.
John wrote: “Don,
You say:
“1. Rip out the non-egal stuff.
2. Make the advice symmetric and use it as a starting point for individuals.”
Of course, Eggerichs does not feel obliged to do that, because he has two starting points: (1) the Bible, which supports both comp and egal readings; and (2) research like that of Gottman’s.”
I have no problem incorporating Gottman, e.g., if he shows as a class husbands tend to need respect and as a class wifes tend to need love; this is good to know as a default expectation.
But people in a specific case are individuals, not a class.
On the Bible supporting both egal and comp readings, do you really believe BOTH are equally correct and intended by God? If so, this is a new perspective I have not heard before.
I STUDY both sides and learn from both but OVERALL think egal understandings are preferred most of the time. Of course, I am egal, so if I thought different I would not be egal.
I do agree that FOR SOME VERSES, there are 2 (or more) possible interpretations and one faithful believer might accept one and another another. In those cases, we are to be gracious while not necessarily agreeing.
gem wrote: “A girlfriend is near the end (which I never read)in her Sunday School and apparently a wife is supposed to listen with respect and understanding to why her husband wants to look at porn (excuse me? this passes for Biblical???) “
I have not seen anything like this, not even close, so I would want a page number to see exactly what was being said.
Sorry Don, I don’t own the book anymore and she is out of town. Was there something about his roaming eyes? My girlfriend was quite bothered by it whatever it was (she’s a long time older Christian in her 60’s). She said Christian men should be taught to “take their thoughts captive” rather than to expect wifely coddling when they are in sin like that! I think they are well along in the book, perhaps near the end?
Gem,
I do not doubt that your husband should inspire dread in you, nor that you need to protect yourself from him.
But your question is what phobeo means, and what it means in Ephesians 5:33. The dictionaries at Tufts are just not specific enough for your purposes.
The specific connotations phobeo sometimes has in NT Greek has to do with the fact that the particular usage in question is a Hebraism. Thus we read:
In almost five sixths of the occurrences of φοβέομαι in the canonical books of the Hbr. OT it is a transl. of the stem ירא “to fear,” “to be afraid,” “to have in honour” (Kittel, Gerhard (ed.) ; Bromiley, Geoffrey William (ed.) ; Friedrich, Gerhard (ed.): Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. electronic ed. Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1964-c1976, 9:197.
“To have in honor,” “reverence,” “respect” – the verb in Hebrew the Greek comes to represent among Greek-speaking Jews does have that meaning on occasion.
Furthermore, I think you would agree that when both Paul and Peter exhort believers to fear God or Christ, we are being asked to have a kind of fear that is appropriate to its object: God / Christ who loves us and cherishes us.
What do we normally call fear if the object of fear is someone who loves us? We call it reverence or respect. That’s why John can say, without contradiction, that “perfect love casts out all fear.”
In short, the people who translated Ephesians 5:33 from KJV (reverence) to NASB, NIV, NKJV, and NLT (respect) are on the mark. Note that the standard New Testament lexicon in the field, Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich, also places Ephesians 5:33 under their meaning #2 for phobeo: “reverence, respect.”
Don asks:
“On the Bible supporting both egal and comp readings, do you really believe BOTH are equally correct and intended by God?”
Based on a 2 step process of interpretation like the one you support, one thing we know for sure: that Ephesians 5-6 and the other household codes did not overturn the patriarchal structures of the time, but requalify them christologically.
That’s why no one thought of suggesting that these passages imply egalism until after the rise of modern feminism.
However, culture changes. Maybe not as much as some comps and some egals like to think, but it changes. Is it possible to apply the insights of these passages to all three sets of relationships – husband/wife, employer/employee, and parent/child – in today’s world?
I am convinced it is, without having to become a complementarian. That’s because I uphold a version of egalism in which both authority and hierarchy are seen as positives for a healthy marriage, comp and egal alike, and gender specific advice remains appropriate, though I agree completely that both love and respect are due both husband and wife.
Furthermore, I think you would agree that when both Paul and Peter exhort believers to fear God or Christ, we are being asked to have a kind of fear that is appropriate to its object: God / Christ who loves us and cherishes us.
touche ole john!
GOD is ever so wise to choose the precise word he chose! IF a wife has a husband who is not LOVING her and cherishing her, she can still obey her part of the passage because she doesn’t have to have good feeeeeeelings of awe and veneration for a cruel man. She has to PHOBEO him. Takes a great deal of pressure off of longsuffering women! Really, Ephesians 5 is SUPPOSED to be a symmetrical arrangement where each does their part… but a woman can still PHOBEO even if she’s married to a Nabal (fool).
John wrote: “Based on a 2 step process of interpretation like the one you support, one thing we know for sure: that Ephesians 5-6 and the other household codes did not overturn the patriarchal structures of the time, but requalify them christologically.
That’s why no one thought of suggesting that these passages imply egalism until after the rise of modern feminism. “
I differ.
Paul uses the same 6 nouns as Aristotle, but only the same verb 2 times, for children and slaves to obey. The other 4 times he uses different verbs, effectively redefining the dynamic of the relationship from the inside out.
And can people miss what is there? Sure, some verses have been misunderstood for most of the time since the 2nd century, Mat 19:3 is an example of one where context was lost until the 1850’s.
Gem,
My addled Greek-filled head is still not quite convinced by some of your reasoning, but I trust your conclusion completely.
BTW, I would reiterate that most marriages are difficult.
I might even say, in an unguarded moment, that a lot of men are jerks
and lot of women are dripping faucets, which means that a lot of marriages are a jerk-faucet duet.
I do, however, prefer to dwell on other facts of life.
Furthermore, John, personally I think the demands of the passage on husbands are exponentially more difficult (as is the requirement exclusively upon men to LEAVE and CLEAVE) and I think that the omission of wives from the agape command is deliberate on God’s part in HIS great wisdom, mercy, and foreknowledge. He knew that we would someday be reading that passage and thinking that love was feeeeeeeeeeelings and HE knew that women will not feeeeeeeeeeel warm toward a cruel man, and HE knows how a woman will beat herself up mercilessly for her FAILURES, so HE left it out. When women were allowed to get an education and could figure out that the Bible commands us all to agape- even our enemies, well that puts another light on the whole “agape love” concept. The marriage becomes practice in Christlikeness rather than a standard which is impossible to achieve (its about becoming HOLY not being happy because someone is filling my cup)
Matt 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor[g] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,[h] 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren[i] only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors[j] do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
Don,
I agree with you that Aristotle and Paul differ in very important ways.
For me, the fundamental difference is Christology. Paul redefines everything in terms of Christ. The result, if applied to real life, is absolutely earth-shaking.
Let me try to express myself in such a way as to agree with you as much as possible. Paul opens up patriarchy to new developments.
Fast forward to the modern age. Not by chance and not by accident many early feminists were Christian. Not by chance and not by accident, there are feminists today, comp and egal, who are Christian. [Did you notice that Marilyn self-identifies as an evangelical feminist?]
I’m not suggesting that everything associated with feminism is healthy. Far from it. I don’t want to make the trajectory argument bear more weight than it can really bear. But still.
Ssssh. Don’t tell anyone. The vast majority of comps today are far more egal, and happily so, than their foremothers and forefathers in the faith 19 centuries ago. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I think their foremothers were more egal.
And I cannot find Paul giving his approval to patriarchy nor slavery, so I do not think he did. However, he did work with the existing structures to transform them, so as to be unrecognizable, except for appearance sake.
Don says:
“Their foremothers were more egal.”
That depends on whether you think of people like Aimee Semple McPherson, Anne Graham Lotz, and Sarah Palin as anomalies or not. I don’t think they are. These figures and many more like them could not have existed in any other age but our own.
You also say:
“I cannot find Paul giving his approval to … slavery.” I understand what you are saying. Tolerance is not the same thing as approval.
But note that Christians did not stop having slaves and being slaves and conceiving of marriage in patriarchal terms in his day and until recently. Nor did said Christians see their doing so as in contradiction with Paul’s teaching.
I don’t think Christians can be faulted, then or now, for not understanding that Paul, rightly understood as you would seem to suggest, is anti-slavery and anti-patriarchy.
It just isn’t clear that Paul doesn’t come right out and condemn slavery and patriarchal marriage *only because of government spies,* something you’ve suggested, I think, in the past.
You will know by now that many other egal scholars think as I do, if you have read Andrew Lincoln, Carolyn Osiek, John Elliot, and others.
It is not implausible to suggest that Paul believed that both slavery and patriarchal marriage were redeemable without changes in Roman law or basic framework.
To be sure, Paul and many other moralists differed from Mr. Hardnose Aristotle in important ways, but that is *not* the same thing as saying that Plutarch or Paul were on that account egals.
I am also convinced that many Christians did live godly loving lives within the frameworks of patriarchal marriage and slavery people took for granted in those days.
I assume you disagree, but I imagine you will at least admit that this is something about which reasonable people can disagree.
“Lin, I am not planting seeds of poison. I think it is a completely viable position to argue that egalitarians make different gender distinctions than complementarians. It is a completely viable position to argue that complementarians over-emphasize gender differences. But, I don’t think it is viable to argue that gender distinctions are so unimportant or susceptible to misinterpretation that they should not be made. “
That is not what you said before. Had you asked it that way there would be no problem because above you did not equate homosexuality with egal marriage.
And I want to add that many here have explained ad nauseum about their view of gender differences on this blog.
There was NO reason to suggest or even imply that the egal view of gender differences is the same as homo erotic marriages.
I made the point that Patriarchal cultures had homosexuality as we see going back to Genesis. They still do. How do rigid mandated gender definitions in those cultures apply to that?
To even suggest that Christian egal has anything to do with homosexuality because they do not see all the gender differences that comps do is to take a page from the tactics of CBMW and all the comp seminars I sat through for years that always brought this up about Christian egals. It is fearmongering and has no basis in logic.
I am hoping this is not a reply of the ‘Christian Feminist’ ‘dialogue where you refused to define that term after using it to describe some folks.
In order to have decent dialogue, it first and foremost needs to be honest. It is not a ‘movement’ to suggest such or defend against unwarranted attacks.
Gem,
We have found common ground! We are at odds over the interpretation of Ephesians 5:33, but are in agreement that there is no credit when it is easy and that there is a reward awaiting those who stay the Biblical course in a difficult marriage.
John,
FWIW, I don’t self-identify as an evangelical feminist. I dropped that label four years ago, when I sat down to read evangelical feminist materials and found them unconvincing.
I really appreciate the way the discussion has been honing in on the essential elements underlying the comp-egal debate.
John, you said,
Ephesians 5-6 and the other household codes did not overturn the patriarchal structures of the time, but requalify them christologically.
I think that Paul’s statements redeemed the patriarchal structures of the time, overturning its abuses and preserving those elements which are essentially timeless. I believe that one of the abuses that was overturned was the very thing that Ephesians 5 is used so often to uphold: male leadership and authority other than and outside of the bounds of sacrificial and nurturing headship.
It is not possible that the text of Eph. 5 implies both a hierarchical, one-sided leadership/submission where leadership/authority = husband’s role and submission to that leadership/authority = wife’s role, while at the same time also implying a relationship in which there is no hierarchy or one-sided leadership/submission. It has to be one or the other, for they are mutually exclusive.
This is why I suggest that wifely submission is not to husbandly authority, but to husband as head. Christ’s headship is described in Eph. 5:23-31, 1:22-23, and 2:15-16: He is “head of all things to the church” – head being first-ness, origination, provision. However, the authorities that Christ has are certainly not granted husbands – authority to judge persons, power to forgive sin, prescience, authority over heaven and earth and over evil spirits.
Therefore, if one is to say that a husband has analogous authority over his wife because of the authority that Christ has over the church and, indeed, the whole universe, then one is obliged to provide proofs of what that (different) authority is – and none such exists. Proofs generally offered are cultural, not spiritual (timeless).
You also said,
I uphold a version of egalism in which both authority and hierarchy are seen as positives for a healthy marriage, comp and egal alike, and gender specific advice remains appropriate, though I agree completely that both love and respect are due both husband and wife.
I agree that authority and hierarchy properly understood are necessary for a healthy marriage, and that gender-specific advice is appropriate, as long as advice which claims to be such truly is. I also agree that both love and respect are due both husband and wife. However, one cannot base the proper authority and hierarchy for an egal marriage upon a leadership/authority/submission interpretation of Eph. 5.
Hi Marilyn,
Just in case you wonder why I thought you self-identified as an evangelical feminist, this comes from our dialogue:
“I also represented the market segment complementarians view to be the most difficult to reach – the “I’m an evangelical feminist because nothing as ugly as the complementarianism on which I was raised could possibly be Biblical.”"
I’m not well-read in evangelical feminism anymore, and I would think it would be hard road to follow. I do have friends who are “feminists for life,” which I’ve always thought is a no-brainer.
Bonnie,
You are doing a better job than I have on honing down the discussion to the questions of
(1) in what sense, exactly,is the husband a “head” as Christ is;
(2) in what sense, if any, are “headship” and “authority” connected;
(3) if “headship” and “authority” are connected, but only, per the text, on the analogy of Christ, in what sense does the analogy hold?
I see submission on the part of the wife, the slave, and children in Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. as implying that said categories are to *benefit from* the exercise of loving authority on the part of the husband, owner, and parents.
In any case, I don’t see how the concepts of submission and authority can be disjoined.
For example, in the domains in which my wife makes the decisions, usually without consultation because I trust her per Prov 31, when I submit to her lead, I benefit from the authority she exercises on my behalf and on behalf of the whole family.
I am in an egal marriage, so final say is not pre-tilted in one direction, but in any case, in case of deadlock, and it’s, say, my wife’s position that becomes that of both and the whole family, surely both the submission to that decision and the authority exercised to get it passed are goal-oriented in terms of the common good and God’s own will. Otherwise, the act of making and accepting the decision would fall outside of the permission of NT ethical counsel.
Do you see what I’m doing? I’m describing a positive submission / authority template based on actual experiences of marriage. I’m choosing examples in which a wife exercises authority and the husband submits to that authority so as put in parentheses the problems comps and egals differ about, among themselves and over against each other, with respect to ideals in terms who exercises authority / submits in which domains.
With respect to ideals, like Don and egals in general except for the “it should be 50 / 50 crowd” which strikes me as very impractical, I would argue for flexibility, but also, lack of surprise that this stuff gets routinized in rather predictable ways.
I don’t think it catches everything the NT household codes intend to teach, but I would agree with you that a huge chunk of the head-body metaphor involves provision and nurturing on the part of the head, though once again, it is a matter of emphasis, since no one in their right mind would deny that a marriage is based on mutual nurture and mutual provision.
In any case, rather than trying to keep sacrifice and nurture in one corner, and leadership and authority in the other corner, such that the two never meet, I suggest that we define the latter in terms of the former.
Really, isn’t that what Jesus did?
In short, the authority Jesus models is that of the “pioneer” (Hebrews) who suffers on our behalf. It is the authority of one who says, come to me, all ye who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
BTW, a favorite term for marriage in the Old Covenant is “a place of rest” (menuchah). As Gem might say, the divine author chose his words very carefully.
Hi John,
“I represented” was meant to imply past tense…sorry for the muddy prose.
MARILYN said We have found common ground! We are at odds over the interpretation of Ephesians 5:33, but are in agreement that there is no credit when it is easy and that there is a reward awaiting those who stay the Biblical course in a difficult marriage.
Here is another “take” on Ephesians 5 by Joel Davisson in “Man of Her Dreams, Woman of His”. Sounds to me like Joel is responding to Eggerich’s teaching:
QUOTE:
What is astounding about this passage is that Paul says so much to husbands and so little to wives. There are 183 words in the passage. Only ten small words at the end of the passage apply to wives, seemingly as an afterthought! What most people “get” from this passage are the ten words! The 173 words simply fade into the background of their minds.
What is really astounding and would make a great study in human nature is the amazing ability of men and women to give this one little phrase about respect the same billing! Ten words get equal billing to or even overshadow the preceding 173! …
Some authors and commentators take this approach to Ephesians 5:25-33….
There have been large amounts of material written on the need for a wife to “respect” her husband. It has been said that a man’s greatest need is to be respected and a wife’s greatest need is to be loved. They point out that a wife is not told to love her husband in this passage but only to respect him.
What happens when a wife is pressured to respect her husband in the “real world” regardless of whether he first fulfills his responsibility to love? Many husbands do not take their responsibility seriously. They do not listen to their wife’s heart, they don’t spend time with them; they belittle or ignore their concerns. The wife then feels that pressure to offer her husband underserved respect.
Most Christian wives cannot disregard their perceived duty in the same manner that their husbands disregard the responsibility to love them with agape love. These wives feel a deep burden to be obedient to God. They often struggle to respect their husbands regardless of their commitment to love.
We do not believe that Paul meant for wives to respect their husbands regardless of their actions. We believe that this was Paul’s consolation to husbands who take seriously his admonition to agape love their wives. Our message to wives is this: You do not have to offer undeserved respect to your husband. God does not require this of you. God has called your husband to agape love you. Four times in this one passage the message is repeated. Only after your husband is filling your cup with agape love are you asked to respond with a responsive, loving respect. Don’t worry wives; it is very easy to respect a man who is laying his life down for you!
Another thing which really troubles me about Eggerich’s assumptions- you referred to this in one of your comments Marilyn- is that husband desire to PROTECT their wives and a wife needs to believe that (or she is failing to live up to the Eggerich paradigm). Again, this is simply NOT BIBLICAL! Men are depraved. Why are all these marriages ending in divorce when men are supposedly so “protective”.
I really think that Joel portrays the REALITY which is behind the divorce rate. Joel was the PASTOR of a CHURCH. He was not out to “protect” his wife and he admits it!
Joel Davisson: “My ‘looking down’ on Kathy had simply been a pride- and ego-protecting mechanism common to abusive men….. I got some kind of bizarre satisfaction out of trying to make her feel inadequate”
I HOPE you will AGREE that this is NOT PROTECTIVE BEHAVIOR!!!!!
Joel and Kathy team wrote the book:
QUOTE:
I [Kathy] did not ever consider Joel to be physically abusive. The abuse was mental, emotional and spiritual. What is “spiritual abuse?” Spiritual abuse is when a man uses the Word of God to justify mistreatment of his wife. Instead of being gentle and kind toward his wife, he is harsh and condemning. He uses the popular submission scriptures to justify this harsh treatment and keep his wife “under his thumb.”
Joel discovered that he could use the Word to justify his inflicting emotional abuse upon and playing mental head games with me. I called Joel my “iron fist.” The iron fist would come down anytime I disagreed with him or asked him to treat me with respect.
The solution to spiritual abuse is found in Colossians 3:12-13. “Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another and forgiving one another.” The solution is simple, yet seemingly an unattainable goal for a spiritually abusive man to implement in his relationship toward his wife.
I lived for years being reminded regularly that the man is the head of the home and that I had to submit to him if I was going to live according to the Word of God. “Anything that he says goes.” There was no talk of mutual submission as the Word of God teaches. If I questioned Joel’s authority and position as head of our home then I was that “nagging wife and dripping faucet” that Proverbs warned him about!
Abuse can be physical, mental, emotional, sexual or spiritual. You can be controlled in many ways. (Pg 49)
[Joel speaking]
Kathy and I have discovered through study of the Word that God desires the husband and wife to lead the home together as a team. This eliminates the opportunity for the husband to use spiritually abusive phrases such as, “You have to submit to me” and “I am the head of this
house.” (Pg. 123)
My ‘looking down’ on Kathy had simply been a pride- and ego-protecting mechanism common to abusive men. I married at my exact level. If I looked down on Kathy I had to realize that I had faults that were equal hers.
This realization pulled the rug out from under me. I used to assign errands to Kathy as if I was her dad. I would send her out the door knowing that if she did anything wrong or incomplete I would use her mistake as an opportunity to insult her, belittle her, put her down or just give her one of “those looks” that translated into, “How can you be such an idiot?” I always found something that she did incorrectly or incompletely.
…
It did not matter how good of a job she had done at accomplishing my detailed assignment. For some insane reason I wanted Kathy to realize how inept she was! I got some kind of bizarre satisfaction out of trying to make her feel inadequate.
I now know that it was because I was afraid of losing her. By making her feel inadequate I thought that I could keep her under my thumb. By tarnishing her selfimage I could make her “feel” like she was fortunate to be married to me. If she lost me she would not be able to attract a quality guy. I rescued her from a low life!
(Pg 140)
Abusive men always think that they married “down”. This fantasy hides the fact that they are desperately afraid of losing their spouses. The physical, mental or emotional abuse is designed to keep their spouse off balance so that they do not feel confident enough to leave. This to the abusive man is his only hope of keeping his wife.
As someone said, “If he would just be a great husband, she wouldn’t WANT to leave!” Yes, this is true. By reading this book, an abusive husband can learn to be a great husband. He does not have to lock his wife in by degrading. He can lock her in by treating her with honor!
So God created man in his image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created THEM! Genesis 1:27
When God looks at your wife and you he sees your union as his crowning creation: “Man”. He sees you together as one rather than two separate and individual beings with different “roles” and “ranks”. This “roles and ranks” emphasis has been foundational in the Body of Christ for years. It contributes nothing that positively impacts a couple’s marriage relationship. Instead, it negatively contributes to justifying the controlling nature with which Christian men seek to dominate their wives. The emphasis needs to be re-examined and ultimately discarded. It serves no productive purpose. (143)
Gem,
I ordered that book (that you just quoted), per your recommendation a while back, and really enjoyed it! It has so much to say to those in marriages where the husband is controlling and otherwise abusive.
I hope it’s not to late to respond, finally…
John,
In response to Don’s “Their foremothers were more egal,” you said,
That depends on whether you think of people like Aimee Semple McPherson, Anne Graham Lotz, and Sarah Palin as anomalies or not. I don’t think they are. These figures and many more like them could not have existed in any other age but our own.
In terms of ability to achieve certain positions socially and culturally, this is true to an extent. But not in their homes and relationships. From what I’ve read of Ruth Bell Graham (Lotz’s mother), she was a “traditional” wife…yet not. Graham was a strong woman with her own identity and projects (including leadership) in addition to supporting her husband, working with him, and raising their five children while he was out on the road. (She is one of my heroes, btw.) And even in very patriarchal structures, you still see women who “don’t know their place.” It’s not that they didn’t (or don’t) exist, but that they are less accepted. Some of these truly don’t know their place, and some of them simply rebel against social norms (or some of both!)
But note that Christians did not stop having slaves and being slaves and conceiving of marriage in patriarchal terms in his day and until recently. Nor did said Christians see their doing so as in contradiction with Paul’s teaching.
I am also convinced that many Christians did live godly loving lives within the frameworks of patriarchal marriage and slavery people took for granted in those days.
The argument has probably been made by others, but a social system and structure cannot be changed overnight outside of something unspeakable like nuclear holocaust. However, Paul planted the seeds for a future free of both slavery and hierarchical marriage in his writings. (See what he says about slavery in I Cor. 7:20-24, esp. 21.) And I think we would find, even going back as far as medieval codes of chivalry, ladies in fairly high positions of esteem and authority.
I think it’s possible to live a godly life in just about any sort of socio-cultural arrangement, practically-speaking, without living the actual dynamic that those cultural arrangements might suggest or even foster. On the outside, i.e., socially, one can act in accordance and respect to cultural norms without living them in the home day-to-day, strictly-speaking.
John, to continue,
In any case, I don’t see how the concepts of submission and authority can be disjoined.
I don’t believe they can. However, it’s a matter of what authority. Can a wife not submit to her husband in Christ’s authority? In other words, she submits to Christ’s authority by submitting to her husband, not necessarily to her husband’s authority. (Although she might submit to that, too. And vice-versa.)
For example, in the domains in which my wife makes the decisions, usually without consultation because I trust her per Prov 31, when I submit to her lead, I benefit from the authority she exercises on my behalf and on behalf of the whole family.
Absolutely. I support this. (However, it is not supported by your stated interpretation of Eph. 5
).
I don’t think it catches everything the NT household codes intend to teach, but I would agree with you that a huge chunk of the head-body metaphor involves provision and nurturing on the part of the head, though once again, it is a matter of emphasis, since no one in their right mind would deny that a marriage is based on mutual nurture and mutual provision.
Absolutely. Some of the provision and nurturing are gender or role-specific (i.e., as husband, or as wife), and some aren’t. The nurture and provision a husband provides his wife is as what Christ supplies the church.
In any case, rather than trying to keep sacrifice and nurture in one corner, and leadership and authority in the other corner, such that the two never meet, I suggest that we define the latter in terms of the former.
I think we must go even further. Given the definitions of leadership and authority that already exist (culturally, and socially), it might be better to use different terms for describing what Paul teaches in Eph. 5 (and elsewhere). Or, we could define them as you suggest and say that the leadership and authority that anyone has is to be sacrificial and nurturing, as per the Holy Spirit, with Christ as our example. Which is egal, yet there is a specific charge to wives to submit to their husbands, who are their heads. A wife submits to her husband as her head, with deference to him as being the one for whom she was made. The husband was not made for the wife, but the wife for the husband (I Cor. 11:8,9) Yet since the wife was made for the husband, he basically owes her his life! And she owes him, although not in the same way in many aspects.
I think we need a language to explain male-female and husband-wife differences that does not assign authority and leadership only to the husband (or man), and submission only to the wife (or woman), as does the comp. interpretation of Eph. 5.
Bonnie,
You say:
“I think we need a language to explain male-female and husband-wife differences that does not assign authority and leadership only to the husband (or man), and submission only to the wife (or woman), as does the comp. interpretation of Eph. 5.”
If you find the time to read Thomas or Eggerichs, you will discover two best-selling comp authors who qualify the concepts of husbandly authority and wifely submission with considerable care. Furthermore, both understand authority and leadership in essentially positive Christological terms, such that, the more authority and leadership a husband exercises, the better, especially for the wife, who will herself then be in a position to exercise more authority and leadership in the positive sense than she would otherwise have been able to do. This is *leadership by example* and *authority on behalf of.
The whole notion of authority/leadership *on one side only* misunderstands positive authority. For example, in the employer / employee relationship, leadership is largely about delegation of authority, that is, authorization of others.
That is why the traditional “love-obey” marriage framework, generally speaking, was and still is a mutually satisfactory arrangement for those who take it for granted. Just as in an employer / employee relationship, it typically resolves itself into domain-based authority in which the titular head follows the lead of the titular subordinate on a domain-by-domain basis and in terms of specific gifts.
The language of positive authority, diffuse authority, moral authority understood as superior to legal authority, and more generally, the experience of life this language expresses, already exists. For example, it’s in the Bible and Christian tradition.
Thus, in the parent-child relationship, authority and leadership do not belong only to the parent. It is also true, precisely when God is most at work, that “a little child shall lead them” (Isa 11:6). It is also true that a child can and should take the lead with respect to divine calling at a tender age, even despite and against the better judgment of those whose authority he or she otherwise accepts. Think of Samuel. Think of Jesus in Luke 2:41-50. The last words are huge, and represent the experience of countless children: “But they did not understand his words.”
Note the dynamic between slaves and masters in a text like 2 Kings 5 in which a slave girl and then other subordinates save the life of their superordinate. The subordinates take the lead, and if they had not, all would have been lost.
It is no different in the case of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. She takes the lead. If she did not, all would have been lost.
I don’t think it’s true that Paul or Peter even thought of abolishing slavery or patriarchy. But they certainly knew that the gospel relativized all the structures in which we live life. Today, BTW, this is the case with egal structures no less than non-egal structures.
This is, indeed, my chief objection to egal-ism. Egal-ism understands itself as a recipe of salvation. But it isn’t. It’s just a framework. Like the comp framework, if the content which fills it is 1 Cor 13, Rom 12, and Phil 2, it will be a means of grace. Otherwise, emphatically, not.
Paul could say that in Christ, if we are married, we should live as if we were not. That would apply to the patriarchal setup of marriage Paul otherwise does not abolish but qualifies in various ways in Ephesians 5. The best marriages I have observed are so goal-oriented towards something beyond the marriage itself – that would be the glory of God – that the fact that the people in question are egals or non-egals is of relatively little importance.
Egals may wish to symmetricize Paul’s advice, but two things need to be remembered:
(1) Paul and Peter do not take this approach;
(2) Non-symmetrical gender-specific advice is compatible with egalitarianism.
In short, we may conceive of marriage as a reciprocal authority arrangement and still hold that typically – not absolutely -, what a wife needs most from a husband is sacrificial love, and what a husband needs most from a wife is reverential respect.
Obviously, everything changes if you (woman or man) are married to someone whose life is dominated by sin, sickness, or a combination thereof, and is therefore abusive, emotionally, physically, or otherwise.
It is no different if your father or employer is abusive or takes advantage of you sexually. In such cases, outside help is needed, and sometimes, only one solution seems possible: separation, the effective termination of the relationship.
I find Eggerichs being “kinder and gentler” than some non-egals, but still coming down firmly teaching the non-egal model. He tries to “sell” it by claiming the husband will protect his wife that way, that the wife should tell him he has 51% of the responsibility and therefore 51% of the authority. But everyone knows in a 2 vote system if one party has 51% of the power, then the other has no effective power at all IF the one with 51% decides that is the way it is. He tries to talk about good-willed men not taking advantage of this; but EVERYONE is a sinner and can be tempted to use power. Even the BELIEF that such is the power situation could easily mean a wife decides it is just not worth arguing about, as she KNOWS she will lose whenever he decides to play his trump card.
Altho such a softer comp model can be preferred to a harder one, I do not believe they are God’s best.
On my making symmetrical Paul’s advice, if you study Eph 5-6 you can see that all the examples starting with v.22 are subordinate clauses in the Greek; that is they are all 1st century EXAMPLES of the principle of mutual submission in v.21. This can be seen in Magill’s Transline translation, as evidence for my claim.
GIVEN that they are 1st century examples, the question is how do we translate this advice into the 21st century. My claim is that the wisest way to do this is to make the advice symmetric (as a starting point for discussion) and individualize them, as culture has changed in 2000 years and people are individuals.
That is, do not try to fit spouses into boxes, if a wife needs respect more than love, then a wise husband will give her that; the point is she is not wrong to want that because she may not exactly fit Paul’s general advice given in the 1st century.
I agree it is likely this will not be the case, but why try to force fit things? Let the wife and husband say what fits them.
Don,
It’s true as you say that everyone is a sinner. But that applies to egals as well. Egal husbands and wives have their own methods of getting their way.
Furthermore, insofar as they are sinners, egals also use “the trump card,” that is, they abuse authority in domains over which according to mutual consent they take the lead, if they so decide.
In short, it isn’t the case that a comp marriage and a egal marriage differ much if both are filled with love and respect. 51%, 50%, 49% – I don’t trust these numbers, but in any case, such miniscule differences mean little in practice.
Hi Don,
FWIW, my personal experience is inconsistent with how you suggest things will play out. My husband sees himself as my head. By design, he sees himself as having God-given responsibilities and authority to carry out those responsibilities.
I have two choices. If I accept his authority, it frees him to focus on the exercise of that authority for my good. He trusts my heart and does not hesitate to delegate considerable authority to me, because I am not in competition with him. He listens to me and incorporates my input. He responds to my respectful behavior by serving me.
Alternatively, I can refuse to accept his authority and assert that all authority is to be shared. Since he stills sees himself as my head, he will now view me as in competition with him. Rather than listening to me, he will mistrust my input. It will come across as a power play, and he will fight with me.
The first choice I presented describes the past four years of my marriage. The second choice describes the previous fifteen. Our experiences reflect those of thousands of couples who have “basic good-will” towards each other. (I.e., are not pathological abusers.)
I believe that gender differences reflect something very beautiful and mysterious about God’s design for the world. When all Biblical passages about marriage are made symmetric, it seems to me that a portion of the beauty and mystery in how we are to reflect God’s design is lost.
John,
Yes, everyone can use ANY method available to them to sin, that is a given.
As I see it, it is ONLY with a non-egal marriage that the man gets an ADDITIONAL way to sin and that is in using his trump card. That is why I toss mine away.
Marilyn,
If you WISH for a non-egal marriage, who am I to quibble with your choice.
If it is working better for you than previous methods, I rejoice with you.
If you ever need an escape valve, per Eph 5 you husband is to agape-love you and per 1 Cor 13 agape-love does not insist on its way. I hope you never need it, but some wives do.
For these others, non-egalism may not work better. Those are the ones who need to know there is another way, the egal way, the full partnership way with no one having a trump card.
On what a husband believes, I used to be non-egal, was challenged, and changed to egal after study. And I still study and learn from both sides. My point is simply that no one has to accept what their spouse believes at one point in time as unchangeable, people do change.
On gender differences, I certainly believe in them. And much that Eggerichs teaches I resonate with personally, I know I have a deep need for respect, for example. So altho I reject his hierarchy teaching, I can accept other aspects of his teaching.
On gender advice, I am NOT saying Paul was symmetric, what I AM saying is that he was giving very good general advice in a 1st century context and his advice to the husband for the wife was revolutionary and counter-cultural (love and serve instead of rule), while his advice to the wife was also but less obviously so as he simply omitted the expected advice of obey.
As the 21st century context is very different in some ways (yet people are still the same, believers are still redeemed sinners), the safest way to APPLY his teaching today is to make it symmetric and use it as a starting point for further discussion. This does not deny God’s design for marriage, it individualizes it for the specific couple.
Yes, there is a good probability that a wife will need love primarily and a husband will need respect primarily, as examples. The stats in his book suggest 76% of husbands say respect is primary over love for them.
With odds like that, even if a wife is not sure and there has been NO discussion it is worth trying to see what happens. It can easily be a pleasant surprise for a wife.
Bonnie,
”It is not possible that the text of Eph. 5 implies both a hierarchical, one-sided leadership/submission where leadership/authority = husband’s role and submission to that leadership/authority = wife’s role, while at the same time also implying a relationship in which there is no hierarchy or one-sided leadership/submission. It has to be one or the other, for they are mutually exclusive.”
Another question here might be where does one glean the idea of hierarchy out of the word “head of”. Using “head over” one immediately picks up an inferred hierarchy depending upon the rest of the anology. But in Ephe. 5, the example is “head of and body of”. This infers intimate interdependent life supporting relationship rather than hierarchies of leader and follower.
”This is why I suggest that wifely submission is not to husbandly authority, but to husband as head.”
I would agree with that. And in the same vein, husbandly loving sacrifices are to wife as “his own body (life)”, rather than a follower.
It is true that as Paul develops the head-body metaphor in Ephesians 5:28-29, the emphasis is on nourishing and cherishing. But in Ephesians 5:22-24, the emphasis is on head as that to which one submits.
In short, Paul develops the metaphor in two complementary ways. In the first instance, wives are to submit to their husbands, as to the Lord, *for* the husband is the head as Christ is the head. In this case, being the head entails that the body follow the head’s lead.
In the second instance, being the head entails that the head nourish and cherish the body.
Some egals effectively leave Paul’s first exhortation to one side, preferring to concentrate exclusively on the second exhortation. Some comps effectively do the opposite.
But it is possible for comps and egals to apply both of Paul’s exhortations to their lives. However, egals, if they are to take the first exhortation seriously, must be willing to develop a concept of authority on the analogy of Christ’s loving use of authority that fits in the husband-wife relationship.
John wrote: “But it is possible for comps and egals to apply both of Paul’s exhortations to their lives. However, egals, if they are to take the first exhortation seriously, must be willing to develop a concept of authority on the analogy of Christ’s loving use of authority that fits in the husband-wife relationship.”
I am an egal who seeks the whole counsel of God, every letter being inspired. I take all of Eph 5-6 seriously and take the mutual submission of spouses seriously, but I do not develop a concept of HUSBAND-ONLY authority on an analogy of Christ’s loving use of authority. It is not clear to me if you were implying this or not, so I am clarifying what I believe as an egal.
P.S. I agree I am far from perfect in my attempts at mutual submission, but that is my target, my goal. It is quite a different thing to have a totally different target or goal.
Don,
You say:
“I do not develop a concept of HUSBAND-ONLY authority on an analogy of Christ’s loving use of authority.”
Nor should you, on the basis of Eph 5:22-24. ONLY is not in the text. To import it there, furthermore, misunderstands how authority works.
This is the hard work I think egals have yet to do: speak in favor of positive, Christlike authority of the kind Paul expects the husband to have in Eph 5:22-24.
This is hard work if the only authority you have experienced from a husband is the abusive kind referred to in Gen 3:14. You have to imagine beautiful authority of the kind you would submit to willingly. Authority that empowers rather than brow beats.
John,
Thanks for the posts on Ephesians 5. I especially appreciated your point on the importance of maintaining a balance between the hierarchy implied by the head/body metaphor and the one-flesh intimacy that the metaphor also implies.
With respect to practical application, I think that there is a lot we can learn from each other. When comps emphasize hierarchy to the exclusion of intimacy, a sense of one-flesh unity between the husband and wife is lost. On the other hand, when egals emphasize intimacy to the exclusion of hierarchy, the couple can have an inward focus at the expense of reaching out to serve others.
Having spent time in both comp and egal churches, I’ve seen both sets of problems. To me, L&R is unique among comp materials in its balance – there is an equal emphasis on respectful communication that honors hierarchy and loving communication that furthers one-flesh intimacy.
John wrote: “In short, Paul develops the metaphor in two complementary ways. In the first instance, wives are to submit to their husbands, as to the Lord, *for* the husband is the head as Christ is the head. In this case, being the head entails that the body follow the head’s lead.”
This is a false conclusion but one that is regularly assumed by non-egals. P.S. I thought it was obvious that this was what was meant, when I was non-egal.
This is because Paul refines the use of hupotasso/submit-support in Eph 5:21 by making it “one to another” or symmetrical. A symmetric verb simply cannot imply hierarchy, this is why Grudem (wrongly) claims that it is not symmetric.
And this is exactly why it is essential, IMO, to see that it IS symmetric in Eph 5:21 and so carries down to Eph 5:22.
The basic principle is that the Bible gets to define and refine the words it uses and when it does this, we are to use the Bible’s meaning.
John wrote: “This is the hard work I think egals have yet to do: speak in favor of positive, Christlike authority of the kind Paul expects the husband to have in Eph 5:22-24.”
This is because the concept of authority just ain’t there. It has to be assumed or imported into the text.
I agree it can LOOK like it is there, due to the use of the word head and our 21st century connotations of what head means as a metaphor. It is a head-body metaphor, a claim to one-flesh unity, not a boss-follower metaphor. That many see it as a boss-follower metaphor does not mean they are correct in doing so.
Don,
The ground we are covering has been covered by others and at great length elsewhere.
BTW, when it comes to exegesis, I don’t go out of my way to read exegesis by NT scholars of a particular stripe. I just try to read the best, most scholarly stuff available, often written by egal Catholic, egal feminist, egal liberal, even egal Jewish scholars like Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt.
I was trained that way and I do not regret it. I hope that explains why I am non-plussed by references to prominent evangelical comp or egal scholars. I don’t care about those labels when it comes to exegesis. I just want to let the text speak for itself, in its own voice, not mine.
I do not agree with your exegesis of either Ephesians 5:21 or 5:22-24. I do not expect to change your mind but I want to point out that egals disagree among themselves about how both passages are to be understood.
There are plenty of egals – I have referenced a few of them in the past – who, based on their best understanding of the passages in question, the teaching of Paul in general, and the culture of the day, read 5:21 as an introduction to all of 5:22-6:9 in which Christians are exhorted to submit to one another in the three household realms that mattered most in that day: husband-wife; parent-child; master-slave.
No one would have ever thought, then or now, that Paul was therefore suggesting that parents submit to their children, or masters to their slaves, though of course loving parents and masters submit to the requests and follow the lead offered by children and slaves often enough, as often, indeed, as circumstances permit.
The same is true with respect to husband and wife. For Paul it is only natural that the wife is to submit to the husband and he counsels accordingly.
It is possible to note that this is the probable meaning of the passage and still believe that it is all right that culture changes, and that in much of Western culture, even among most or many complementarians, marriage has come to be understood in far more egalitarian terms than would have been thought acceptable in Greco-Roman culture.
Culture, even as it changes for the better, also changes for the worse. For example, modernity is famous for being authority-averse. The negative fallout on the family unit has been enormous.
If only comps are allowed to point this out, I get very frustrated.
There are also plenty of egals whose recognize that Paul’s use of the concept of submission in Eph 5:21-6:9 assumes the exercise of authority on the part of the one to which another submits.
You are right of course that the word “authority” is not actually in the passage. There are a lot of words we use in this discussion that are not found in Scripture: complementarian, egalitarian, mutuality, mutual consent, headship, and so on.
Nevertheless, Scripture does teach each of these things so long as the terms are properly qualified. The same holds true for authority.
People don’t have much trouble with authority when thinking about the parent-child or employer/employee relationships.
But some egals, when they see Paul exhorting wives specifically to submit to husbands and not the other way around, wish to avoid the obvious conclusion that Paul was not egal in the modern sense after all.
I find this approach to be ultimately self-defeating. Sooner or later, as one goes down this path, the realization sets in that picking and choosing is going on based on a prior assumption of the correctness of egalism.
Culture changes and we take the good with the bad. In the midst of it all, Scripture – all of it – continues to challenge comp and egal alike.
Marilyn,
I admire your ability to see problems that are connatural to the respective sides of the debate.
It is this kind of ability I wish to call everyone to cultivate for themselves.
John,
I also study both sides and even Amy Levine, tho I am not impressed with her.
I decline to use the word “headship” as that skews the discussion and so does many other such non-Biblical terms. Much better to stick to what is actually IN the Bible, as there is less chance that way to deviate from it. That is my recommendation for everyone, but you are free to choose otherwise.
I do not claim egals are monolithic, some I disagree with on something just as much as I disagree with a non-egal. (And sometimes I agree with a non-egal on something.) I only claim to speak for myself and I recommend that for everyone, to speak for themselves and not let others think for them.
I do think parents are to submit to their children and they do, they serve them in many ways. And if you choose to reject Paul’s statement to masters about “likewise” and its implications (submitting) go ahead, but I do not recommend it. If you see hupotasso as implying a hierarchy and authority, then you are arguing with Paul in Eph 5:21 and going beyond the Biblical text in Eph 5:22-25, which again I do not recommend. I cannot stop you but I can counsel others not to do it.
Paul is a Torah scholar, as such he KNOWS what a marriage is supposed to be, a partnership of equals when it is not distorted by sin. Marriage was not thought in egal terms by Greeks or Romans or Jews, on this we agree. The question is how much of these cultural things do we want to influence a marriage and I think the less the better.
Neither Paul nor Peter EVER claim a wife should obey her husband and this omission is absolutely critical to see, given the cultural assumptions. Some translations mix up obey and submit, I have also seen teachings that do this; but they are not the same. Once a wife sees that she can obey God yet not obey her husband, she has the ability to establish a healthy boundary and say NO so it sticks (and yet be submissive while doing it); but if she is taught that to do this is a sin, you can get the results of some who post here, namely lots of pain and confusion and depair. Such is NOT Kingdom living.
I am not authority adverse, but it needs to be Biblical. Husband over wife is cultural but not Biblical in the new covenant. It was not hierarchical in the garden and it does not need to be hierarchical today. If people choose that, that is their free choice.
Paul does ask believing husbands to submit to believing wives, if you choose not to see it, that is your choice, but I do not recommend it. And Peter discussing with one spouse is an unbeliever and again that symmetry making “likewise” is there, which I recommend accepting the symmetry implications.
Don,
Thanks very much for explaining your approach clearly. I agree, of course, with some of the things you say, for example, that Paul and Peter are light years away from Aristotle. But we disagree as to why.
For you, it’s because both go out of their way to exhort wives to submit to their husbands, which for you is less than obeying them.
I don’t see any evidence for the submission / obedience dichotomy you posit. Nor do I think there are any grounds for supposing that Paul asked parents to submit to their children or masters to slaves.
As far as I know, you are the first to claim this. However, if you know of a New Testament scholar who so argues, I would be grateful for the reference.
What makes Paul and Peter so different from Aristotle is that they ground submission, love, obedience, nurture, and respect – terms familiar enough from ethical advice of the time pertaining to the household – in Christology.
All of these things acquire meaning and specific content through analogy with Christ, and only through that analogy.
The analogy works itself out in the tradition of the church in fruitful ways.
In the East, husband and wife were crowns on their wedding day. The crowns refer to their reigning together with Christ precisely in the family setting. They also refer to martyrdom, in full awareness of the fact that getting along with another and raising a family is a form of martyrdom.
It is an earthy, realistic conception, yet authentically Christian.
As I see it, submission is a inside attitude while obedience is an outward action.
More evidence for the submission/obedience dichotomy is that obey cannot be mutual without using a trick like Paul did (see next sentence) while submission can be, per Eph 5:21. When Paul wants to show mutual authority implying obedience, he has to switch bodies in 1 Cor 7, saying the wife controls the man’s body and vice versa. (Some translations mess this up.)
Daniel was always submissive to the king, respecting his authority, but he did not always OBEY the king.
And one can obey but not be submissive about it.
Paul carefully crafts Eph 5 so that he tells wives they need to do what every believer needs to do, namely submit. He constructs Eph 5:22 so it borrows the verb from Eph 5:21, so the connection cannot be missed; altho some translations make this hard to see.
Greco-Roman society was a shame/honor based one, and Paul needed to remind wives to respect their husbands as he was calling on husbands to do things that in 1st century society would involve LOSS of honor from a pagan viewpoint, namely serving his wife.
The submission of parents to children will look different than the submission of children to parents. This is another critical reason it is important to see that such submission is NOT obedience, as obedience would make no sense.
Jesus gave the disciples the incredible example of submission by washing feet, which was the duty of the lowest gentile slave in a household.
Christ is used as an example of service and that a husband is to follow those examples. We know from other verses that ALL are to follow Christ.
On scholars, I have mentioned Magill’s Transline which shows that Eph 5:22 and the remainder of the pericope are all subordinate clauses to Eph 5:21, that is, they are all examples of the principle of mutual submission. Another scholar is Bruce Fleming. I have read others and gleam insights where I can, including the Holy Spirit on occasion. But I only claim to speak for myself.
P.S. “grounded in Christology” sounds to me like theology-speak and I am not sure what you mean; I prefer simpler concepts that are easier to understand.
Bruce Fleming’s book is titled “Familiar “Leadership” Heresies Uncovered” which I agree is a strange title, but it has many good insights.
From the title you can surmise he discusses heresies about leadership, which he defines as “a lie about spiritual things”. It is used in his book to label a teaching or belief that runs contrary to Scripture.
The sections are the Eden heresies, the Headship heresies and the Legalist heresies, covering creation, marriage and church.
In the household codes, I can agree that master/slave and parent/child are hierarchies, but not husband/wife, as submission does not imply obedience, at least not the way Paul uses it, which is what counts.
Neither Paul nor Peter endorsed hierarchy in marriage, but the culture assumed it; this is a critical difference. All either would have had to write is “wives, obey your husbands” or similar and hierarchy would have been endorsed, but they never wrote that. One needs to see what the Bible says as well as what it does not say.
Bruce says that people that use Gen, Eph, 1 Cor, 1 Tim and 1 Pet to teach that the males are to rule over females are wrong in their interpretation. My take is this would be regardless of what they might also say Rom 12 1 Cor 13 and Phil 2, altho I can agree that these verses can counteract the worst excesses of some non-egals.
The thing about using terminology like “grounded in Christology” is that everything for a believer is supposed to be based on Christ and it is simpler to just say “Follow Jesus.” or “Jesus loves you.” if that is what you mean.
Don,
You say:
“I have mentioned Magill’s Transline which shows that Eph 5:22 and the remainder of the pericope are all subordinate clauses to Eph 5:21, that is, they are all examples of the principle of mutual submission.”
I agree with the analysis of the syntax, but not your conclusion that Paul meant to suggest that husbands submit to their wives, parents to their children, and masters to their slaves.
Of course, there is a sense in which submission works both ways in positive hierarchies. But if that was what Paul intended to emphasize, Ephesians 5-21-6:9 would have an entirely different cast.
You also say:
“Another scholar is Bruce Fleming.”
Fleming is an articulate defender of one form of egalism. It is important to note that if he claims that Paul was an egal after his own heart, not very many NT scholars would agree.
I would defend Fleming insofar as I believe it is possible to profit from the whole counsel of God vouchsafed to Paul, taught in his letters, and passed on to us, irregardless of whether one is egal or comp.
But if he is saying that complementarianism as such, even those versions that put a proper emphasis on Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, and Philippians 2, is heresy, then he is the heretic as far as I’m concerned.
You also say:
“P.S. “grounded in Christology” sounds to me like theology-speak and I am not sure what you mean; I prefer simpler concepts that are easier to understand.”
By “grounded in Christology,” I mean that Paul understands submission, love, respect / reverence, obedience, and so on in a Christian household according to the particular sense and goal these terms have inside of and by analogy with our submission, reverence, and obedience to Christ on the one hand and his sacrificial love for us on the other hand.
You also say:
“The thing about using terminology like “grounded in Christology” is that everything for a believer is supposed to be based on Christ and it is simpler to just say “Follow Jesus.” or “Jesus loves you.” if that is what you mean.”
I understand your point of view, but Paul takes a different approach. He doesn’t simply say, “Follow Jesus.” He uses the relationship between Christ and the Church as an analogy for the relationship between husband and wife.
Analogical reasoning of this kind in the context of ethics is known as christological qualification.
I see that you regard Paul as a hierarchalist in two out of three of the realms introduced by Ephesians 5:21, but not in the other. I see no basis in the text for making the distinction you wish to make.
John,
Thanks for your response (of 11/3). I think that perhaps we are both tilting toward a similar goal; i.e., that Romans 12 and I Cor. 13 be the root dynamic in any relationship. However, I cannot conceive of this occurring within either a comp. or an entirely egal framework. I think that both are precluded by Rom. 12 and I Cor 13 (among other texts).
Marilyn,
I hesitate to address what you’ve stated about your marriage, because I deeply respect it as the domain of you and your husband. So please know that what I’m going to say is simply my comment on it, based on what you’ve said, which I realize may or may not actually apply to your marriage. (How’s that for a disclaimer?)
I wonder why your husband must see himself as, essentially, your superior in order to not view your part in the marriage as a threat, or as competition. I don’t think this is uncommon, but still suspect that complementarian doctrine was developed and articulated in order to “prop up” such an attitude on the part of husbands rather than call them to grow into a view of themselves that is grounded in true headship in Christ. Such headship needn’t be propped up by an unnecessary type of deference from his wife. (I am not saying that a wife must not defer to her husband; she certainly should, as it is called for. But then again, he must also defer to her appropriately as his wife.)
Again, I mean no disrespect to you or your husband. I have a great desire to see all husbands and wives find their strength and confidence in Christ, rather than in their roles as husbands or wives (or anything else). This is because I want to see people strong in Christ, so that Christ’s Body on earth is strong in Him, so that we all support and encourage one another as examples in this!
In other words, our practice and attitudes should not inform our faith, but rather vice-versa. Because if our practice and attitudes are informing our faith, then really, it is them in which we are putting our faith, not Christ.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for your sensitive and gracious comment. I so admire your writing and the loving heart it flows from.
Let me start with what I believe to be your primary point, which is a point where I think we’re in agreement. A strong marriage is a gift from God. But with any good gift, it is all too easy to worship the gift rather than the Giver. For a comp wife, I think you correctly identify the danger – an excessive focus on husband as head, rather than Christ as true Head.
For what it’s worth, I think the danger of idolatry is just as great for the egal wife. Here, however, the danger comes in the form of idolizing the feeling of connectivity associated with the extensive, ongoing discussions that occur when decision rights and role assignments aren’t clear. Her danger is abiding in her husband’s love, rather than abiding in Christ.
So, I think that for any Christian wife with a strong marriage, idolatry can be a problem.
How do I know when I’m approaching the danger zone? I don’t have a complete answer. And, I don’t know if I have a good answer! But, FWIW, I have constructed a personal early warning signal. My husband is very open with me. We typically find at least a few minutes to talk alone every day. Our ability to do this is aided by the fact that our kids are early elementary ages, so are in bed a couple of hours before we are every night. Additionally, we typically go out once a week. We’re the cliché evangelical couple with a “date night.”
Since we do not have a time-starved marriage, I monitor my emotional reaction to my husband’s acts of service to others. If I respond negatively to time he spends serving others, it is typically a sign that I am not holding loosely, the gift of my husband. I am in danger of viewing him as belonging to me, rather than belonging to God.
That’s idolatry, and that is an issue between me and God. Bonnie, if you (or anyone else who reads this) have insight on this issue and/or practical counsel, I know that I, for one, would benefit from hearing it.
However, I also think there are a couple of issues where we disagree. I do not believe that hierarchy and intimacy are incompatible. Paul tells us that the husband/wife relationship is to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church. I see my comp marriage as a reflection of the fact that the Christ who reigns over the Church is also the Christ who loves the Church and calls us His friend.
With respect to competition and hierarchy, I think we’re probably back to a discussion of Genesis and pre-Fall headship. Been there, done that on earlier threads on this list!
Bonnie wrote: “I think that perhaps we are both tilting toward a similar goal; i.e., that Romans 12 and I Cor. 13 be the root dynamic in any relationship. However, I cannot conceive of this occurring within either a comp. or an entirely egal framework. I think that both are precluded by Rom. 12 and I Cor 13 (among other texts).”
Can you possibly explain more why you claim an entirely egal framework is precluded by Rom 12 and 1 Cor 13?
Bonnie,
I like your language in which you say – here I up the ante slightly – that both complementarianism and egalitarianism are precluded by texts like Romans 12 and 12 Cor 13.
Martin Luther would be proud. He would have said that justification by faith through grace alone is what matters, in marriage like everywhere else. As soon as either comp or egalism is elevated to the status of a necessary and sufficient condition to a marriage that is pleasing in the eyes of God, idol-worship is in play.
Of course, clear-thinking comps and egals try to fix that by saying that compism encompasses Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, and Phil 2.
Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage succeeds very well at this, precisely because he nowhere makes a case for compism per se. He has his priorities right.
Thomas does not say all that needs to be said (here I would differ from the approach taken by some others.) But he puts front and center what needs to be front and center, and I am thankful for that.
It is what bothers me most about egal-ism. The implication seems to be that if one gets the reciprocal authority thing right, the rest falls into place, and conversely, if one doesn’t get the reciprocal authority thing right, a marriage will go to hell in a handbasket. Excuse that caricature, I can’t imagine anyone actually believing that, but once in a while that’s how some egals come across to me.
The view that egalism is a means of salvation is mythological in nature. It is no less mythological than is ideological compism according to which – excuse the caricature, I would hope no one would actually believe this – as soon as a marriage is returned to a “love-obey” framework, the rest will fall into place.
For the record, I see a great need for a lot more loving AND obeying in most marriages under my observation.
No, I don’t mean in one direction only, but I don’t mean to exclude that direction either.
Still, it is the tendency to exclude the traditionally complementarian direction of obedience from operating at all which actually puts egal marriages at considerable risk.
John wrote: “The view that egalism is a means of salvation is mythological in nature.”
What some comps may try to tie the gospel to non-egalism, I know of no egals that do this. I do not, so this is an unsupported straw man as far as I can see. Such claims are supposed to be disallowed by the guidelines.
John further wrote: “Still, it is the tendency to exclude the traditionally complementarian direction of obedience from operating at all which actually puts egal marriages at considerable risk.”
At further risk of what? Too much mutuality?
John wrote: “The view that egalism is a means of salvation is mythological in nature.”
Don wrote: “What some comps may try to tie the gospel to non-egalism, I know of no egals that do this. I do not, so this is an unsupported straw man as far as I can see. Such claims are supposed to be disallowed by the guidelines.”
John, I’m gonna hafta agree with Don here. I spent considerable time on the CBE board, one of those groups you claim that takes things to extremes. And in all the time I’ve been on there, I’ve never seen what you claim.
Even when I admitted that I was still working out where I stood with all the egal/comp stuff, that egal bunch was very gracious and gave me room to question and work out my position. I was never pressured or shamed or censored.
But I have seen visiting hardline comps (none of you sweet people here) come through and judge all the people that posted on that board of being unsaved because they didn’t embrace patriarchy. One fellow went so far as to say that if you reject patriarchy, you reject the Fatherhood of God.
He made very sweeping generalizations and all I ever heard, even from the hardest-liners, (even the most bitter formally abused women) from the egal bunch to counter his accusations in that area was that it wasn’t a good idea to wrap salvation up with comp or egal. They said in essence, “We don’t question you’re salvation. Why do you question ours. Why can’t we discuss the issues without bringing people’s salvation into question.”
This one particular man went on and on. And I took great strides at one point in trying to get him to see that perhaps CBE could exist to minister to the extremely wounded women who needed Jesus, but needed comp teaching like they needed a hole in their head just as wounded men might benefit from his ministry (that ministered to wounded men).
He would have nothing to do with that possibility. Absolutely nothing. To him CBE and all it stood for came from the pit of hell, Communism, and all things vile.
Now perhaps you know other egals somewhere else besides CBE that hold this crazy notion about salvation and egalism. But you did not meet any of them on CBE. Not in the last two or three years.
So please take care with comments like the one you made above. It was way out in left field and completely unsupportable.
Now, I think I may go to the CBE board to see if I can find that interchange so that if someone wants me to support my claim, I can direct you there.
Don,
Whenever egals claim that Scripture teaches egalism and that traditional and neo-traditional marriage frameworks have no support in Scripture, they effectively make egalism part and parcel of the Gospel.
Do you see my argument now? I have no intention of setting up a straw man. If Scripture teaches something and you willfully set it aside, you put your salvation in danger. So, if Scripture teaches that marriage must be understood along egalitarian lines and I then set that teaching aside, I put my salvation in danger.
Your comment about the place of obeying in a marriage illustrates very well our different approaches, though we are both egal.
Obedience is an important aspect of my marriage. Within specific domains, my wife tells everyone else in the family, including me, what to do. In principle and as a matter of course, we obey. In other domains, I am the one who normally tells everyone what to do. I have gone on at length about the limits and scope of domain-based hierarchies before. I won’t repeat myself here.
Love and obedience actually go together. This is a very old-fashioned thing to say, I realize, but it is not wrong for that reason.
Each framework has risks that are connatural to it. Compism if not appropriately tempered by 1 Cor 13 and Phil 2 will emphasize obedience on the part of the wife above all. That, indeed, would have no basis in Scripture. That approach cannot be argued on the basis of Ephesians 5:22-23 either, since that passages emphasizes the sacrificial love a husband owes his wife just as much as the submission a wife owes her husband.
An egal marriage if not tempered by positive concepts of authority and hierarchy runs the risks of becoming a mini-Parliament in which however there is no one who, after endless negotiation, can use what you call the trump card. That is, there is no one in principle who can cast the deciding vote.
Now you might counter that I am mis-identifying the risks that are connatural to the egal framework. Fine: I would only ask that you state what the real risks are.
But I would find it preposterous if you were to reply that the egal framework is risk-free. That sounds terribly unlikely to me. Everything I know in life, especially the best things I know, have risks attached to them.
I can name ten risks associated with being a Christian without any problem. Jesus himself does not hesitate to point them out after all.
What then, are the risks attached to egalism? It can’t be worth very much if none are attached to it.
Mara,
Thanks for your illuminating and encouraging comments.
My only experience with CBE was on their blog in which a blogging friend of mine (a CBE-er himself, I believe) invited discussion of a series of posts in which I reviewed a forthcoming book by Sarah aand Jim Sumner.
It was not a pleasant thread for me. Right from the start Sarah was labeled as a comp even though she does not self-identify as such. I thought it would be natural for people to find points of agreement with her positions, and build on those, but the opposite happened. Polemics upon polemics without so much as a hint of humility, capacity for self-criticism, and so on.
I expect that level of immaturity from patriarchalists, but it blew me away that egalists could be so defensive and critical of any position other than their own, no matter how close to theirs in some ways.
But I accept that the thread is not typical of the point of view of CBE staff. In fact, I know that it is not from conversations I have had with others.
This is, in any case, the kind of statement I would want to hear from CBE before declaring them to be asymmetrical with respect to CBMW:
Is it possible to be a saved Christian, growing in grace and wisdom [think Marilyn or Letitia or David Lang if you need actual examples in your head] and live one’s marriage along complementarian lines? Is it possible to be a growing complementarian Christian and encourage others to follow the same path? YES, emphatically, it is.
Nevertheless, we maintain that for many other Christians, living one’s marriage along egalitarian lines is no less defensible. Indeed, we wish to show how a Bible-believing Christian can live their marriage in an egal manner and not recede one inch from the whole counsel of God vouchsafed to us in Scripture.
We maintain that Christian egalitarianism captures certain truths conveyed in the Bible with greater coherence than does complementarianism. There are truths that complementarianism wishes to emphasize, and which we may not have emphasized enough. Fine: we are willing to learn from anyone, and seek the good wherever it may be found.
Here is a part of my teaching on marriage and divorce. This is on Biblical marriage types, seldom taught and to be used with caution.
Various Types of Biblical Marriages
Gen 1-2: Garden-of-Eden (Man and Woman)
Gen 3: Results-of-Sin (Adam and Eve)
Gen 4: Polygamy (Lamech and Adah, Zillah)
Gen 11: Free wife (Abram and Sarai) Gal 4:22
Gen 16: Slave wife (Abram and Hagar) Gal 4:22
Gen 22: Concubinage (Nahor and Reumah)
Gen 38: Levirate marriage (Onan and Tamar)
Ex 21: Slave marriage (both are slaves)
Concubine – a woman could become a concubine, if the woman’s parents could not provide a dowry
Slave wife/slave marriage – a Jewish slave had some rights, in other cultures a slave had essentially no rights
Levirate marriage – widow marries brother-in-law so his brother will have descendants
Which Marriage Do You Want?
If someone says they want to have a Biblical marriage, ask them what type!
Both should agree on the marriage type!
Due to sin, the Gen 3 results-of-sin marriage is always a possibility
Net: If you want a Gen 1-2 Garden-of-Eden marriage, you need to strive for it.
—– end of extract
If a female SLAVE can get married and it be Biblical, then any less extreme form of asymmetry is Biblical. So I agree that patriarchal, hard comp, soft comp and egal marriages are all Biblical.
Furthermore, from the example of Sarah in 1 Peter, we see that spouses can obey each other, Sarah obeyed Abraham and Abraham obeyed Sarah. So it is not the case that somehow obedience in a marriage is somehow inherently wrong.
Furthermore there are Christian principles that are more important than the marriage model. Love is the highest principle; if it would be UNLOVING to be in an egal marriage, then one should not do it; and similarly for a non-egal marriage. As I have pointed out previously as an example, a couple I know at church where the wife is childlike in some ways simply would not work in an egal arrangement. (Note this is merely an example where I see non-egalism as the most loving model, there can be others and I am NOT saying non-egal wifes are childlike.)
On Sumner, I think any reaction to her would be based on her claiming to be egal but not being egal. By her claiming to be egal, it might cause confusion to others and that would be a concern, as she is not egal.
The question of being egal or non-egal is a binary choice, one is either one or the other. If one believes that one gender in marriage has a final say (however it is worded), then one is non-egal. If one believes that neither gender has a final say, then one is egal.
I admire Sumner is trying to mitigate the possible extremes of non-egalism, but that does not mean she is egal.
I also believe that ultra-soft non-egal can be essentially the same as egal in practise; but wonder why one would not just be egal if this is the case. But I can learn why not.
DON: Which Marriage Do You Want?
If someone says they want to have a Biblical marriage, ask them what type!
Both should agree on the marriage type!
Due to sin, the Gen 3 results-of-sin marriage is always a possibility
Net: If you want a Gen 1-2 Garden-of-Eden marriage, you need to strive for it.
Interesting insights, Don
I neglected to clarify this before marrying and I’m afraid we fell right into the Genesis 3 “results of sin” marriage. Then I realized I have a CALLing to be ezer/help MEET so I moved to the Gen 1-2 paradigm, but I moved alone. I had to repent from husband idolatry, and then I had to put my marriage on the altar and be willing for it to die. I think the evangelical culture sometimes makes an idol out of marriage and family. Jesus said “I have not come to bring peace but a sword…” and the context clarifies that the conflict HE means is not countries, religions, political parties, or denominations. The conflict which will bring a sword rather than peace is within families.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword…… And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Matt 10:34,36
John: “Right from the start Sarah was labeled as a comp even though she does not self-identify as such.”
Well, John, I’m going to go ahead and tell you where this thread is on CBE I refered to in my previous post if you have time to look at it. In it I plainly say that I wasn’t sure yet whether the word “head” in Ephesians 5 contained the meaning of authority or not yet and was undecided. But the gal who commented after me (who was comp) decided that because I questioned it, that made me egal.
The thread occured in August of 2007. The title of the article was “If you can’t be a pastor”. there are over 200 posts on it. I had a series of four in succession. I broke it up that way for easier reading. My posts occurred on Sept 30 at 5:35, 5;39, 5:47, and 5;53, under the name HKH.
I appealed to the man I mentioned in my earlier to not judge CBE as promoting paganism and worship of the Goddess. Because, that, in effect was what he was doing.
John: “I thought it would be natural for people to find points of agreement with her positions, and build on those, but the opposite happened.”
Here lately, on complegal, women have expressed how destructive compism is in the hands of an abuser. There are many such women. Some of them have found a safe haven at CBE rather running to the afore mentioned “Goddess”. They brought with them their PTSD. If you give an abuser an inch, he(or she) may very well take your life. These women know this and are working to build up their boundaries again. When they see someone asking for an inch, they do react. I apologize for them, while my heart hurts for them. They must work out their salvation with fear and trembling, relearning a lot of things that have been so warped for them. Warped not by God, nor by balanced comp teaching, but by abusers both in the pulpit and in their homes.
John: “I expect that level of immaturity from patriarchalists, but it blew me away that egalists could be so defensive and critical of any position other than their own, no matter how close to theirs in some ways.”
I guess I am a little protective of CBE. They get attacked in ways you probably don’t know. Perhaps some of them are defensive. Okay some may be very defensive, I will concede. But it is either a reaction from past abuse or resistance to a very disrespectful tone and attitude from the immature patriarchs who visit their site to attack this “spirit of Jezabaal” that is single handedly destroying our nation. (in their less than humble opinion)
If you don’t have time to visit that long thread, I understand.
I was there when you visited and remember it. I didn’t interact on that thread because I didn’t follow the link in the original article and knew I could not talk about it intellegently.
Mara,
Thanks again. I understand your point. It is true that CBE serves as a safe haven for ex-hard comps. It seems as if CBMW serves as a safe haven for others who have tried egalism and found it wanting.
I am expecting a lot of these organizations when I suggest they should be less focused on proving someone else wrong, and more focused on building bridges with those who have different views. I really do want the polar opposites to be less polemical and more self-critical.
Maybe these organizations cannot be any of these things. Perhaps, but we can try another path here and elsewhere.
John
CBE and CBMW both see themselves as primarily dealing with exegetical issues in relation to the genders. They have different interpretations on many verses but in many cases either one or the other is correct; they cannot both be correct.
Either there is a God-designed male hierarchy in marriage or there is not. Choose one.
Either there are some leadership ministries in the church reserved for men or there are no such restriction. Choose one.
These are binary choices, put in a stark black or white choose-one or the other form. These are fundamental differences in how the genders relate. I believe that those in CBMW are believers, but I disagree with their interpretations on many verses on the gender issue.
Don,
I see shades of gray where you see black and white. For example, I think complementarians emphasize truths egalitarians tend to neglect, and vice versa.
Furthermore, there are versions of complementarianism, as this blog has demonstrated over and over again, that are virtually indistinguishable from egalitarianism from the selfsame viewpoint of egals. Notice how black and white do not exist in these cases.
Life’s choices rarely are binary in nature. Bonnie may have put it best. I would put it this way: both egal-ism and comp-ism are precluded by scripture rightly understood.
This is how it works out in terms of your dichotomy. You say there is God-designed male hierarchy or there is not.
Fancy that. You yourself are aware that patriarchy among other things is biblical. Indeed, many kinds of gender-based, class-based, and caste-based hierarchies are taught by Moses as enjoying God’s approval and blessing. I would add that Paul and Peter taught likewise. Patriarchy is biblical so now we have chosen.
Not so fast. The underlying assumption so far would seem to be that scripture is only compatible with cultural forms that existed at the time, and not cultural forms that have come into being since, such as marriage understood as a reciprocal authority arrangement.
It does not follow. Furthermore, on some versions of compism, biblically praised domain-based hierarchies are also overlooked. Furthermore, comp-ism tends to overlook the trajectories we find in Scripture. We’ve talked about these things before.
There is no used pretending that the Bible is trajectory-free. It isn’t. So what do you do with those trajectories? For example, what do you do with the prophecy of Joel repeated by Peter on Pentecost?
But once again, if the prophecy becomes a law to impose on people, the prophecy is denatured. In that and other senses, ideological egalism is also precluded by the very Good News it wants to base itself on.
“Either my way or the highway” egalism, which, correct me if I’m wrong, you just re-introduced after a short absence, is also precluded by Scripture rightly understood so far as I can see.
Don, thanks for your question. I regret that there is so much variation in definition of what both “comp” and “egal” mean, that when someone makes a general statement like I did, it is not clear just which definition the author has in mind!
By “entirely egal” I meant a view that minimizes true gender differences, or doesn’t accord any special meaning to a husband’s being head, or woman being made from man for man and not vice-versa.
I do believe in egalitarianism in terms of marital hierarchy; I am not convinced that a one-sided hierarchy of delegate-able authority or leadership (on the part of the husband) is supported by Scripture.
(I believe in egalitarian complementarianism…or complementarian egalitarianism!)
John wrote:
You yourself are aware that patriarchy among other things is biblical. Indeed, many kinds of gender-based, class-based, and caste-based hierarchies are taught by Moses as enjoying God’s approval and blessing.
Hmm. John, are there statements in the Bible which actually teach that patriarchy is how God intends people to act? Or are you thinking more that the Bible records patriarchy and there are no teachings saying that it is wrong?
In some sense, I suppose, one could say that the Bible teaches polygamy since it gives instructions for how men should not mistreat any of their wives, regardless of which order they occur in terms of marriage order.
I would like to think that there is a difference between how the Bible teaches people to behave, regardless of their social context, and how we should behave to change our social context. I don’t hear Jesus or Paul calling on people to overthrow Rome. Yet I’d like to think that each would prefer that there not be oppression of minorities or slavery, etc., as occurred within the Roman empire.
Just greenlighting here with you since I can’t think of all the relevant Bible passages, but my aging brain (very fallible) cannot recall that the Bible teaches that patriarchy is good or a preferred social system. We do know that there are many statements in the Bible calling on people to respect the system that they are in, to pray for their leaders, etc.
Wayne,
You are right that my previous comment needs qualification. Here is Don’s remark that I was alluding to:
“patriarchal, hard comp, soft comp and egal marriages are all Biblical.”
I was agreeing with Don on that.
But let’s explore the limitations of Don’s statement which I repeated in other words.
You pose the question in terms of what you’d like to think Paul and Peter’s views were on the oppression of minorities, slaves, and I imagine the abuse of wives and children in their day.
I agree with you if you are saying that if we took a time machine back to their day and had tea with them, we would discover that, besides their surprise at the taste of tea, Paul and Peter would register just as much horror as the next person at the mistreatment of people in the above categories.
I also imagine that both would speak about the imperfect world in which we live, that we long, with all creation and the Holy Spirit, for the “manifestation of the sons of God” (Romans 8).
But it is doubtful that they saw themselves or their fellow Christians as called to work for changes in Roman law. It would be centuries before Christians posed that question, when control of the Roman Empire fell into their laps. It is very interesting then to see what laws were changed, and what laws were not.
In terms of marriage, I think we would hear things like the following from Paul, that it is better not to marry at all, and if we do marry, our marriage should be so goal-oriented towards the Kingdom that it will be as if we were not married. There is a strong possibility that he would quote Jesus’ saying that in heaven there will be no marrying at all.
Perhaps there would also be conversation around the ideal of monogamy, how their Master clearly taught monogamy, yet how difficult it was to know what to do when a polygamist became a believer.
But honestly, I don’t think either Paul or Peter would say, “I think that Roman law should be less tilted toward the rights of the husband, parent, and master than it is now.” I doubt it was the kind of question they posed. It was not in their purview.
Jesus as well, in his spats with the Pharisees, who indeed were in a position to relax or tighten up binding regulation on the basis of the law of Moses, developed an alternative and far stricter regimen with respect to the possibility of divorce. But he did not develop an alternative in terms of the rights of women in general, which were as we know quite limited in his day.
Jesus offered great freedom to women, but he did so without calling into question the law of Moses which, let’s be clear, does more than just record patriarchy. The law of Moses, understood in the Bible to be a gift of God to the people of God, puts its stamp of approval on many patriarchal practices.
This does not mean, by the way, that faithful interpreters of the Law saw their task as sticking with the letter of the Law. On the contrary, both Jesus and the Pharisees interpret the law against its letter and with its spirit as they understood it over and over again.
Examples include the practice of polygamy (restricted or forbidden by the above, despite the letter of the Law) and the practice of the death penalty (severely restricted, once again despite the letter of the Law).
If you were to say that Jesus focused on divorce because the ease with which divorce could occur was devastating to women and children in particular, I would agree with you and say, and how has that changed today?
As in Jesus’ day, the property rights of women, whether they are many or few, matter far less than how easily people (in Jesus’ day, men for the most part) can walk away from a marriage because they’re unhappy.
(I am not making an argument for any particular change in divorce laws. But I think it is an essential topic of discussion among people who truly care about men, women, and children.)
Jesus and Paul, however much they would have agreed that Roman power was oppressive, advocated loyalty toward it, not opposition.
Paul and Peter, when it came to household ethos, the three realms everyone focused on in their day in terms of ethical instruction – husband-wife, parent-child, master-slave – do not overturn the basic structures everyone took for granted. They ground those structures in our relationship with Christ and by way of analogies which fit those structures.
What is amazing thousands of years later is not how, after so much cultural change, Paul and Peter’s advice have become inapplicable to our situation. The opposite is the case. Even in a culture which sees marriage as an egal arrangement by law and by ethos, Paul’s gender-specific advice to husbands (show agape-love) and wives (show reverential respect) remains surprisingly relevant.
The same goes for his advice to parents, children, employers, and employees.
Hi Bonnie,
Would you be willing to expand on you last comment? You have something very important to say, and I would love to hear more. I hear you saying that the husband is more than the titular head of the family. I.e., head means more than accepting the check at restaurants and representing the family in various ways. Or, perhaps titular head is, in fact, what you mean?
How comfortable are you with the following, which is a paraphrase of Sarah Sumner’s take on the Ephesians 5 sacrifice/submit pairing? (Sorry, I couldn’t find the exact quote from Men and Women in the Church.):
God commands me to submit to my husband, who sacrifices for me. My husband is commanded to sacrifice for me, the wife who submits to him. The difference in the nature of how we serve each other reflects our gender differences. My husband's experience of serving me is best described as a sacrifice. By contrast, my experience of serving my husband is best described as submission. In marriage, there is a constant interplay between my husband's sacrifice for me and my submission to him. There are many times when my husband defers to my wishes. But, in doing this, he is not acknowledging that I have authority over him. Rather, he is sacrificing for me.
Is that at all close to where you are?
Where I see both comps and egals struggling the most is the notion of what ezer means in the contemporary economic context. I believe that I am to be oriented to my husband in a way that he is not oriented to me. Yet, I also acknowledge the strength implied by the word ezer.
In the contemporary economic context, egal marriage often works itself out as: He uses his gifts, and she uses hers. The egal marriage acknowledges the strength of the ezer, but not the orientation of the wife towards her husband. Rather than one-flesh unity, there is parallel play.
In contrast, traditional comp marriage too often works itself out as the wife becoming little more than her husband’s personal assistant. The comp marriage acknowledges the wife’s orientation toward her husband, but at the expense of the strength of the ezer. Rather than one-flesh unity, she becomes a part of him.
These dilemmas are why the L&R application has so much appeal to me. The focus is on neither the traditional egal question (i.e., is he accepting of her use of her gifts) nor, the traditional comp question (i.e., is she working outside the home). Rather, one-flesh unity grows as the couple learns to communicate with love and respect.
Is any of the above at all close to what you mean?
John,
I see you have misunderstood me. I was not trying to be confusing. There is a HUGE difference, as Wayne points out, between something being Biblical, being in the Bible, and something being God’s design.
For example, polygamy is Biblical; furthermore some of the Biblical polygamists are in the Hebrews Hall of Faith, as examples to be emulated. This does NOT mean we are to emulate them in their polygamy today!
I have not waffled on my egalism since becoming one; altho I am far from perfect in implementing it.
To clarify, altho non-egalism is clearly in the Bible, I see egalism as God’s design. God works with people and with peoples plural where they are to move them further into the Kingdom, step by step. This is why I can rejoice when someone moves from hard comp to soft comp or from soft comp to ultrasoft comp.
Abraham had a slave wife, yet is our model for faith. By Qol Valhomer, if Abraham did THAT, something less than that (namely various forms of non-egalism) does not automatically disqualify one from being considered faithful by God.
Per Gen 3:16, my claim is that gender hierarchy was introduced after the Fall, as I do not find gender hierarchy earlier in Gen.
Rather than make claims such as “egalism is precluded by Scripture” let us all discuss some text.
John wrote: “Jesus as well, in his spats with the Pharisees, who indeed were in a position to relax or tighten up binding regulation on the basis of the law of Moses, developed an alternative and far stricter regimen with respect to the possibility of divorce. But he did not develop an alternative in terms of the rights of women in general, which were as we know quite limited in his day.”
These are both entirely false claims by John, altho I agree that some believers teach them today.
See the works of David Instone-Brewer who puts the easily misunderstood words of Jesus and Paul, etc. into their 1st century cultural context. Jesus did declare that the Hillelite “Any Matter” divorce supposedly only allowed by the husband was not taught in Torah, so in this sense Jesus did restrict the teachings of the Pharisee Hillel. However, Jesus could not have contradicted Torah without discarding his claim to be Messiah, so the Torah reasons for divorce of adultery, neglect and abuse were never denied by Jesus.
Paul and Peter REFERRED to the existing structures of husband/wife, parent/child, and master/slave and most certainly DID overturn the cultural norms, but from the inside out, by altering the relationship of the one on top is all 3 cases and also including the wife in the marriage case.
Bonnie wrote: “By “entirely egal” I meant a view that minimizes true gender differences, or doesn’t accord any special meaning to a husband’s being head, or woman being made from man for man and not vice-versa.”
Here are my takes, see if you agree, disagree, or modify.
1. On true gender diffs, obviously a woman can bear, birth, and nurse a child and a man cannot; and a man can impregnate a woman and a woman cannot. Also, it seems that the brains are different, the man’s having severed connections when testosterone hits in the womb. Also, a man is often larger and stronger, again due to testosterone. All of these are physical differences and they also can influence behavior, a mother often “nests” and a father often “hunts”, but these are generalities.
2. On husband being head, I see the metaphor as being a head/body unity, a one flesh living organism. I think it is faithful to stretch in a ultrasoft non-egal way to say the husband as head has some symbolic prominence, altho I do not do that myself. As head turns into meaning boss, I have concerns and the bossier the claim, the more concern I have.
3. Woman being made from man I understand to mean that they are made of the same stuff. Woman is a help equal to the man, in other words, a partner.
Wow, thanks, everyone, for the great dialogue. I will respond as best I can, as I can.
Marilyn,
I agree that all married persons are tempted to idolatry in their marriages. Regarding your concerns related to that, I think these matters are complex, having spiritual health aspects as well as elements that simply must be negotiated between the persons involved. If a woman is desiring more time with her husband, it may be that she is desiring too much time or certain type of attention, or that her husband is not providing enough (nor doing his part in the relationship), or both! A couple ought best discuss these matters in agape love, and together perhaps determine where each one’s desire is reasonable, and where it is faulty. If this isn’t possible, then other help can be sought.
I do think that, regardless of one’s marriage model, there is no shortcut to a good relationship and the intimacy which I believe is part and parcel of two-become-one. I wonder whether, in some ways, the comp model seeks to try and avoid some of the inevitable hard work and time that *any* close relationship requires in order to be solid.
You said,
I do not believe that hierarchy and intimacy are incompatible. Paul tells us that the husband/wife relationship is to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church…
I believe we must separate those aspects in which Christ is analogous to the husband from those in which He is not. Christ is our Savior; our husbands are not (although, in some earthly ways, they can be!) Husbands do not reign over their wives as Christ does the church. Christ did not wash the feet of his disciples in a hierarchical way – he simply served them, modeling the manner in which we all are to serve one another. I do believe that ruling hierarchy and intimacy are incompatible (see this post).
Marilyn,
To respond to your second comment, thanks for asking about my thoughts. Honestly, I feel inadequate to answer, as I haven’t really worked everything out, nor taken the time to organize all my thoughts in one place. That said, I guess I’d summarize by saying that I see the husband as being head in the functions of supplying/providing (not necessarily in a material sense only, though including that) as per Eph. 1:22-23, 4:15-16, and 5:29, and as man having “supplied” the material from which woman was made.
I see wifely submission in terms of honoring the husband as this type of supplier/provider and as being created for him as a help. If he should lack in this regard, she still honors him as a creature of God to whom she has been given as provision. In this I see him as being as much in need of her as she of him, in all areas of his personhood.
I suppose I do see the husband as something of a titular head, but mostly in a position of honor. For example (though this isn’t a marital example), my husband, as the firstborn son, had the honor of putting his mother’s ashes in the ground at her funeral, since his father was not physically able. This doesn’t mean he is superior to his brothers, but it seemed right and proper that he would have that honor over his brothers as “next in line,” and even his sisters (one of whom was born before him). It was a beautiful, moving, symbolic, and fitting thing. We were all honored to witness it.
Another example: My father-in-law is considered the patriarch of the family, but again, in a position of deference and honor, since he is the living origin of what is now quite a large extended family. This doesn’t mean that, if one of us disagrees with him on an important matter regarding the family, we do not broach it with him, with respect (and sometimes heated discussion!) But we do defer to his wishes in things not egregious, even if we disagree with him, out of respect for him as “father.” My mother-in-law got the same respect while she was alive. But also, if enough of us differ with him ardently enough over a particular matter, he respects us enough to defer to us. This is, I think, a good and healthy thing. There is love and respect all around.
Regarding the quote from Sumner, in some ways it’s close to what I believe but I’d have to ponder it more, especially the “experience of sacrificing/submitting” part and the authority-over part. I don’t think that when I defer to my husband, I am submitting to him rather than sacrificing; I’m probably doing both. Nor do I think of it as acknowledging his authority over me, but God’s authority, which requires that I honor him as my husband.
As regards the rest of your comment, I’d have to ponder more the “orientation” language…I do think that a wife ought to be oriented toward her husband, but it seems right to me that he also be oriented toward her. She is, after all, his help, someone quite necessary to him in helping him live his life, including his work (using his gifts) and raising his children. She is also part of his body, his flesh, his very person, in the unity of marriage. A good husband and father is quite oriented to taking care of his family, as his flesh (his wife being part of his flesh) and blood. Part of this orientation, I think, has to do with honoring both his wife and children as the creatures God made them, with all their attendant characteristics and gifts.
(Don’t know if this has helped or not…but thanks for asking!)
Hopefully it’s not too late to continue:
John, I have not read all of your comments in this thread but here is piecemeal response to some of them:
No, I don’t mean in one direction only, but I don’t mean to exclude that direction either.
Still, it is the tendency to exclude the traditionally complementarian direction of obedience from operating at all which actually puts egal marriages at considerable risk.
I think the issue is not with excluding that direction completely, but with including it to the exclusion of the other direction (i.e., husbands to wives).
An egal marriage if not tempered by positive concepts of authority and hierarchy runs the risks of becoming a mini-Parliament in which however there is no one who, after endless negotiation, can use what you call the trump card. That is, there is no one in principle who can cast the deciding vote.
I question whether a “deciding vote” is even necessary. I would say that, in case of a deadlock, both spouses must then suffer the consequences of their hardheadedness, whether the wife’s, the husband’s, or both. Proper authority, then, is Christ’s, as coming through the voice of either the husband or wife (or both); if one or the other (or both) are *not* espousing proper authority, then the other spouse is under no obligation to follow it. They must, however, continue to love (as one would an enemy). But no one, comp or egal, can force hardheadedness out of their spouse, and are responsible for their own.
Also, I would like your help so that I can understand how you see your marriage: you say that you have objections to egal-ism, yet your marriage is egal. What characteristics does your marriage have that you call it “egal,” and how are they distinguished from your objections to egal-ism?
You also said, regarding Eph. 5:22-24,
In this case, being the head entails that the body follow the head’s lead.
I am wondering how you find this in the text – why must submission to a head entail following the head’s lead?
And again, I’m wondering how this applies to your marriage, if it is egal.
This is the hard work I think egals have yet to do: speak in favor of positive, Christlike authority of the kind Paul expects the husband to have in Eph 5:22-24.
I don’t see an expectation of husbands in that text; Paul simply says that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church, and, as the Church is subject to Christ, so must wives be to husbands. The expectation is of wives, not of husbands.
Don,
I really appreciate your heart as expressed in your comments; you seem to be truly striving for godly humility in your marriage, and I admire that very much.
1. I think I agree in terms of gender differences. I think there are a host of gender *tendencies* as well as differences, in terms of relating to others and approaches to different things, etc. The differences are hard and fast, but I question how many of the tendencies are. There always seem to be exceptions (that ought not be considered abnormal).
2. I definitely do not read “head” as “boss.” See my comments to Marilyn for a little more on my view of what “head” means.
3. I also read that woman and man are made of the same stuff, but I do think there is a significance to the woman being made for man, from man. I agree with you that the one-flesh unity of marriage is a partnership, although I think there is gender significance in that the partnership is not 100% egalitarian…a husband cannot, for example, hug his wife the way she hugs him. They both need the hugs, but there is a difference in the hugs, both physically and symbolically. But this does not put either one over the other. They’re just different, though in many ways the same…complementary yet affirming at the same time, and both completely necessary to the one-flesh union.
(Does that make any sense?!)
Bonnie,
I am not sure what you mean by different hugs, except if you are hinting at more than a hug. Certainly there are differences in coupling for each gender.
Don,
Ha
. Actually, I was only thinking of a basic hug. (Not the best example, but all I could think of at the time.) I have to work on trying to articulate what I mean by #3…maybe I can’t!
Don wrote here: complegalitarian.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/sacred-marriage-and-love-respect-a-conversation-by-john-hobbins-and-marilyn-johnson-part-3/#comment-5424″
Sorry for the delay. My friend had given her copy to her married daughter, but I just discovered the book is on googlebooks and I think this is the section where she discerns such coddling of a husband’s propensity toward lustful eyes:
books.google.com/books?id=h8IgM7GFL04C&pg=PA96&dq=embrace+anger&ei=5BPaSdu3DJbcMfHBse4C#PPA257,M1
If you scroll up a page or two, also noticed that he appears to blame wives for their husband’s having an affair, as if husbands do that because they are “sexually deprived” at home.
I also recall being upset near the beginning of the book at this section “Conflict Makes Most Men Feel Disrespected”. How true it is: He feeeeeeeeeeeeeels disrespected. Tough. Conflict avoidance is a marriage killer.
Gottman says “I suggest the bottom line.. was that, for most marriages, the best advice one can give husbands who want to preserve their marriages is ‘Embrace her anger,’ and the best advice one can give wives is not to be overly compliant, but to persist in getting her husband to face areas of continuing disagreement” (source)
[...] 6, 2009 by Charis Don wrote here: gem wrote: “A girlfriend is near the end (which I never read)in her Sunday School and apparently [...]