I always find it interesting how we arrive at our conclusions. Do we take into account the differences of languages. When there is a question do we do some research on the original language. By research I do not mean checking Strong’s (the least accurate ‘dictionary’), but looking in as many Greek-English dictionaries we can and checking to see what various scholars think. Do we consider history and culture of the time? Do we check what the early churches were doing 300-600 years later? Are we on the alert for idioms? Do we consider the differences in Greek thinking and Hebrew thinking of the Biblical era? Or do we just believe our local leaders because they are leaders and should know. Are we open to the possibility that no one may know the answer to our questions for certain because it was 2000 years ago and some things have changed beyond comparison?
1 Tim. 3 starts off with pistos ho logos – faithful is the saying. And continues with ei tis – if anyone (anyone means ANYone, not just men) – episkopE oregO kalos ergon epithumeO – supervision is craving, of ideal work he is desiring.
OK, so the faithful saying (is that referring to a local well known saying, a slogan or colloquialism?) is that anyone who desires to minister in supervision is desiring a good thing. Its ideal work; it may even imply that it speaks well of the person who desires to serve thus. So, if someone wants to serve thus, we should be proud of him/her. They deserve a pat on the back for such servantmindedness. Yet, many today would say that if a woman desired to serve in her church in either supervision or ministry (diakonos = transliterated today as deacon), people assume and infer that she is seeking to grasp power. But Paul specifically said “anyone who desires”. So what do we make of that.
Then we have a list of qualifications for those who are desiring the good work of supervision.
Bruce C.E. Fleming in “Familiar Leadership Heresies Uncovered”, lists the furst 12 qualifications as such:
1. Above reproach – the overarching requirement
2. Faithful spouse – as applicable, some were single
3. Temperate – self-controlled (cf. Titus 2:2,5)
4. Sensible or sober – found here and in 2:9a, 15b.
5. Orderly – also used in 2:9a, 15b
6. Hospitable – a wordless ministry (1 Peter 4:9-11)
7. Apt at teaching – ministry of the word (2 Tim. 2:24)
8. Not excessive drinker – or not quarrelsome over wine
9. Not a striker or not pugnacious or a bully
10. Forbearing or gentle – (Phil. 4:5)
11. Uncontentious or not a brawler – (Titus 3:2)
12. Not-avaricious or no lover of money (Heb. 134:5)
Verses 4-7 are qualities showing spiritual maturity:
1. one who leads, manages, guides own household (proistemi – before standing, leading, presiding)
2. having own children in subjection with gravity
3. not a novice (lest he become puffed up with pride and fall into condemnation)
4. having a good testimony (reputation) among unbelievers (outsiders) so as not to fall into disgrace and a snare of the devil.
If we look at the qualities as a list we see they are a list of inner, spiritual characteristics that every believer should aim for. Even being an apt teacher is something every believer can achieve as they mature in their relationship with the Lord. Let the older brethren minister to the younger, let us look out for one another, etc. is a common theme in Scripture. It is not terribly difficult to look up the meanings of words, do the cross references and see this is a reasonable list we can likely all agree upon with the exception of one phrase in vs. 2.
Interpretively translated as ‘husband of one wife’ in most bibles, the Greek is simply “of one woman, man” – heis gunE anEr. Different church denominations and different nations have interpreted this differently. Some have said it meant one had to be a husband, but it seems to me to be a really circuitous route to say that, plus there is nothing anywhere in the Scriptures that requires one to be married in order to serve the Lord. Another meaning has been that a man must have only one wife versus two or more wives, yet while this is a reasonable requirement for ANY married man, it is not one addressed as such in Scripture elsewhere. Another interpretation is that a husband must have married only once, not divorced and then remarried. This I find very far fetched as there were specific requirements for divorce both before and after Christ and divorce was not considered a stigma against the divorcee. And then we have the interpretation that because it is mentioning a husband, then it must mean that one who wishes to be an overseer must be a man. However, taking that interpretation would also mean tagging all the other ideas of being married, and not twice, and having only one wife versus two or more, along with it. But the direct problem with that interpretation is that it would make Paul first words of “anyone who desires” of non effect. It is my opinion that we should read the Scriptures in such a way as to not “strike out” things in other parts of Scripture. If we understand Scripture correctly, it should not be a matter of striking out or nullifying other parts but of all fitting together in a reasonable manner.
”According to Lucien Deiss (notes to the French
Bible, the TOB, Edition Intégrale, p. 646, note a), this
Greek phrase was used in Asia Minor, on both Jewish
and pagan gravestone inscriptions, to designate a woman
or a man, who was faithful to his or her spouse in a way
characterized by “a particularly fervent conjugal love.”
When I read Deiss’ comment about how this phrase
was used on ancient grave inscriptions in Turkey, where
Paul and Timothy ministered, I confirmed it with him
myself, reaching him by telephone in Vaucresson, France.
Some might find this insight into 1 Timothy 3:2
surprising because modern versions of the Bible
translate this Greek phrase as – “husband of one wife” –
making this qualification appear to be restricted to men
only! Instead, rightly understood, this qualification is
about faithfulness in marriage by a Christian spouse. It is
not saying that oversight is “for men only.”
Pages 87-88
Think Again about Church Leaders by Bruce C. E. Fleming (Think Again Series)
or pg 128 in ‘Leadership Heresies” http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3FYPTYWIELEZD”
So, I’m only addressing one question of why some think women cannot be elders or deacons. I’ve shared a few of my reasons why I say that Biblically women can serve in any ministry. My question to you is how do you arrive at your conclusions for this section. How do you take into consideration chapter One and Two. How about chapter Four where Paul is admonishing Timothy not to neglect his gift (11-14). How about chapter Five where Paul speaks of elders (neither male or female) presiding well (proistEmi).
Perhaps, someone can look up proistEmi, episkopE, and presbuteros and tell us what they find.
Please share what you think.
If I were a man who lived in a country where polygamy is practiced, who had multiple wives and I desired to serve as an elder, I cannot see why I would be limited from SERving in such capacity my family also made of other men married to more than one woman.
That’s a tough one Kathy. There are other places that guide Christians toward one man and one woman in a marriage. But what does one do when they come to Christ already entrenched in that lifestyle because it is the accepted model in their culture. These are the kinds of things that missionaries have had to deal with.
‘That’s a tough one Kathy. There are other places that guide Christians toward one man and one woman in a marriage.’
True there are scriptures that show God’s ideal, but what about the circumstance of the polygamist, living in a culture where polygamy is acceptable? Is a polygamist to divorce all wives but one? And how do they choose which ones to divorce? Are polygamist to divorce all wives but the first, and where would economy play into all of this?
If I were a man in a culture where plogamy was acceptable am I to not love all my wives by divorcing all but one? Would that be love? If not, why would I be restricted from serving as an elder in my culture? Should I be restricted all because I practice love?
‘But what does one do when they come to Christ already entrenched in that lifestyle because it is the accepted model in their culture.’
They practice highest principles first, love being the highest.
A few points:
My take on the the pericope is that it is 1 Tim 2:8 – 3:13, that is it crosses the chapter boundary, as chapters can be somewhat arbitrary.
That is, the “anyone” in 1 Tim 3:1 is contextually mostly referring to those men and woman who were being corrected in the verses before.
Another is that I understand “pistos ho logos” to be a pun meaning in this case “Faithful [is] the Word” referring to Jesus being able to restore the un-named men and woman being corrected earlier.
“Pistos ho logos” is a pivot in the 3 times it is found in 1 Tim, the first is when Paul turns around, the 2nd when Paul is hoping for the corrected people to turn around, and the 3rd when Timothy is being charged to do some actions with hope for a turn around.
Believer333, this was excellent. Thank you.
Thank you Molly. Cyber hug to you!!
“”Pistos ho logos” is a pivot in the 3 times it is found in 1 Tim, the first is when Paul turns around, the 2nd when Paul is hoping for the corrected people to turn around, and the 3rd when Timothy is being charged to do some actions with hope for a turn around.”
I also consider it a Hebrew thinking word play in the first 2 verses of chapter 3. First Paul says, “this is a faithful saying”, and then in the first two points of good character, it can be read as “a bishop/overseer must be blameless, a faithful spouse…”. In that sense there is an emphasis on faithfulness in character.
My take is the first time pistos ho logos is used, it has the double meaning pun, but not the 2nd or 3rd time.
That is, I do not see a truthworthy saying the 2nd or 3rd time, the 1st time, yes. For me, a trustworthy saying would be something that others have said before, not something newly said by Paul.
Believer333,
I do not find your explanation of the text convincing, though I share your ultimate conclusions.
It really is a stretch on the basis of this passage to claim that Paul imagined that bishops might be male or female. So far as I know, there are few if any NT scholars who argue in the way that you do.
I realize that you work on the principle that ancient interpretation of NT passages can safely be ignored, but it is not a minor detail that no one interpreted the passage as you suggest in antiquity.
It is however possible that deaconesses are spoken of in 3:11. Indeed, deaconesses but not female bishops are attested in the ancient church.
It is only natural and proper that in his day, Paul did not envision female bishops. There are no historical reasons for thinking that in that day and age they would have been accepted, and no historical evidence that they actually were.
In our day and age, the situation has changed, at least in parts of the West. The question then is, is equality something to be grasped, something to press for on the basis of human rights?
That would denature what equality is in Scripture. Equality is a gift of God, not a right. It is given, when it is given, in virtue of the prophecy of Joel, and not otherwise. This is a point that Sarah Sumner makes well.
”I realize that you work on the principle that ancient interpretation of NT passages can safely be ignored,
LOL You know I never had that conversation with myself. And just now asking myself if you are correct, myself says nope! I don’t know who you’ve been talking to but it isn’t my self. ((smiles))
”It is only natural and proper that in his day, Paul did not envision female bishops.”
Well, I don’t know about natural, but as a Jew he would be well acquainted with Miriam, Esther, Deborah and Huldah. Since Paul praised Priscilla putting her name first several times which was unnatural respect and honor, and since Paul praised Phoebe giving her the honor and responsibility of carrying his most theological letter to Rome, also naming her as a leader in the church of Cenchrea, and also introducing Junia as an apostle, I don’t think Paul cared about what the Jews of his day considered ‘natural’. :^)
”The question then is, is equality something to be grasped, something to press for on the basis of human rights?”
When Paul says that ANYONE who desires the work of overseer, he desires a good thing, I don’t think Paul is worried about rights. You sometimes have a strange mind, John. :^)
I would just say, Believer333, that my strange way of thinking is typical of NT scholars. We read the texts against their historical background. We see how they were interpreted in the ancient church.
You say that you do not ignore these things, but in that case, you might want to support your interpretation by citing, for example, early interpreters who read the text as you do, and examples of female bishops in the ancient church. I think you are going to run into difficulty.
Here, in brief, is how a NT specialist would respond to your innovative exegesis.
(1) Paul did care about precedent, tradition, and the cultural expectations of Jewish and Gentile believers. Take a look at 1 Corinthians and see how Paul argues on more than one occasion (I realize that some egals interpret statements in 1 Corinthians as unmarked quotes from adversaries, but this approach has its limits, and remains a minority position).
(2) With the pastoral epistles, we breathe another atmosphere with respect to Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, and so on. Bishops and deacons are congregationally based ministers, and the guidelines that Paul lays down leave less room for gift-based authority outside of traditional expectations regarding gender, age, status and so on of called leadership. You care comparing apples and oranges when you bring up Priscilla and Phoebe.
I can give you references to top shelf egal scholarship on the Pastoral Epistles if you wish. You will discover that what I am saying is not unusual in the least.
”I would just say, Believer333, that my strange way of thinking is typical of NT scholars. We read the texts against their historical background. We see how they were interpreted in the ancient church.”
Only some of them John, only some. I’m not much into the “my scholars are better than your scholars” arguments, or making negative assumptions on how I read the texts. My main point of the poor scholarship of some is that they DON’T take into account the cultures in which epistles were written, or try to read them the way they might be heard when they were written.
We have no proof that there were only male overseer’s, only assumptions.
Believer333,
You imply that you want to take into account the cultures in which epistles were written, and try to read them the way they might be heard when they were written.
As far as I can see, you have yet to do this. The culture in which the epistles were written was patriarchal by our standards. If Paul meant, for example, to suggest that women as well as men were eligible to become episkopoi, he would have had to have said so very explicitly. Since he didn’t, that is an argument your interpretation.
You also suggest that it is merely an assumption that there were no female episkopoi in the ancient church. It is more than an assumption. We know the names of hundreds of episkopoi in the ancient church. So far as I know, not one of them suggests that its bearer was female.
Can you name one established NT scholar who has published a commentary on the Pastoral Epistles who subscribes to your theory? That would interest me.
Rev. Bruce Fleming discusses 1 Tim. 3 and this issue in “Familiar Leadership Heresies Uncovered”. There are some other good books on it, but I’ll have to search for them.
In certain eras of our Christian history women did the work of overseers but were not called such. However, it seems that earlier in our history, closer to the time of Paul and the apostles, some women were actually doing the work with the titles.
In the church of St. Praxedis in Rome there are some interesting mosaic portraits portraying pictures of women bishops/episcopa. One is of Bishop Theodora. Another of St. Praxidis, a woman bishop with her son pope Pascal I.
There is a floor moxaic covering the tomb of Guilia Runa (pronounced Julia). Giulia Runa presbiterissa was a presbyter, that is, a priest.
Some other women named as priests (found on their tombs in Rome) were “Veronica presbitera daughter of Jesetis”, and Faustina presbitera”.
In the catacombs of Priscilla, there is a fourth century fresco. The fresco shows a male bishop ordaining two women. This is seen by the garments worn by the bishop and the women. The same liturgical vestments the women were wearing are worn by Catholic priests today.
This information with pictures and more like it can be found in some of the calendars that CBE sells. The above is from the 2003 Calendar. I’ve also got the 2007 Calendar.
Let me add that the first time I heard that someone believed there were women Bishops in early Christian history, I thought it was a crazy idea. After all, women just weren’t leadership material. That was for men, because they were strong, protective and dominant in society. It just wasn’t heard of.
But after researching, and reading, I’ve changed my mind. If Deborah can be the primary religious leader of the nation, and Miriam with Aaron can be an associate leader, then I don’t see any reason for women to be restricted from any spiritual ministry that God might call and equip them for.
The calender distributed by CBE was edited by a Roman Catholic, so she uses Catholic terms like priest for presbyter/elder and bishop for episcopos/overseer.
In the NT these 2 terms seem to be synonyms.
Besides the picture evidence, there is also grave inscription evidence where women are given leadership terms.
Another aspect of this is to unspin some NT translations that use masculine language when the Greek is generic, the gender-accurate translations are a step to correct this.
Believer333 and Don,
You may want to do more research before you accept Fleming’s theses. He is not a specialist in New Testament or Early Church History.
Please reference an established New Testament scholar who has written a commentary on the Pastorals who supports your innovative exegesis. I will be happy to interact with his or her arguments in the context of ongoing scholarly discussion.
The standard reference books on my shelves, the Encyclopedia of the Early Church (1992) and Raymond Brown’s Introduction to the New Testament, know nothing of women presbyters or bishops. Brown states clearly that “in the NT … it is not indicated that there were women presbyters” (p. 645, n. 17).
Given this situation, it is not enough to point to a CBE calendar or to an isolated fresco based on, according to specialists in the field, legend rather than fact.
Beyond the particulars, I wonder how wise it is to build a case for egalism on the basis of theories that are not widely held among specialists. If you came to the conclusion that the consensus of scholarship is in fact correct, that in the NT we have evidence for women apostles, women prophets, and women deacons, but not women presbyters / bishops, would you then, as Scripturalists, not allow women to be presbyters today?
I find this approach to be anti-historical. The argument for or against the ordination of women has to be made not on the basis of whether Paul envisioned female presbyters in his day, but on the basis of clear theological and christological motivations.
(I realize that some egals interpret statements in 1 Corinthians as unmarked quotes from adversaries, but this approach has its limits, and remains a minority position).
Perhaps you would share with us the majority position on 1 Cor. 14:34-35. I was naively unaware that there was one. The NET Bible suggests that this material was in the margin and it is frankly complementarian.
Can you quote someone on a majority position, or shall we just admit that the Text crit folks produce 14 opinions every time 10 of them get together.
The question then is, is equality something to be grasped, something to press for on the basis of human rights?
That would denature what equality is in Scripture. Equality is a gift of God, not a right. It is given, when it is given, in virtue of the prophecy of Joel, and not otherwise. This is a point that Sarah Sumner makes well.
Paul, as someone who had been beaten, wrote about this.
But today we have an endless number of people who have equality telling those who do not, not to seek equality. Somehow this bothers me.
Kind of like a colleague of mine who wanted to know what right the Chinese had to refrigerators. I really do not feel sympathy for the “haves” telling the “have nots” not to seek equality. I do not think that was Paul’s message.
I don’t think gender was an issue for him, so I think it is pretty much irrelevant to worry too much about what he thought about women. He probably just thought that women did what women did. And he would never have told Lydia, Junia, Chole, Nypmha and Phoebe “get thee under male authority.” More likely he said “thank you very much.”
PS
If you came to the conclusion that the consensus of scholarship is in fact correct, that in the NT we have evidence for women apostles, women prophets, and women deacons, but not women presbyters / bishops, would you then, as Scripturalists, not allow women to be presbyters today?
I think this is an accurate assessment, John.
But, perhaps you are not aware that in Ev. Fem. and Biblical truth, the author does not agree that there is evidence for women apostles, prophets and deacons in the NT. That is really the issue for me. Why is this being suppressed?
PS
If you came to the conclusion that the consensus of scholarship is in fact correct, that in the NT we have evidence for women apostles, women prophets, and women deacons, but not women presbyters / bishops, would you then, as Scripturalists, not allow women to be presbyters today?
I think this is an accurate assessment, John.
But, perhaps you are not aware that in Ev. Fem. and Biblical truth, the author does not agree that there is evidence for women apostles, prophets and deacons in the NT. That is really the issue for me. Why is this being suppressed?
John asked: “Beyond the particulars, I wonder how wise it is to build a case for egalism on the basis of theories that are not widely held among specialists. If you came to the conclusion that the consensus of scholarship is in fact correct, that in the NT we have evidence for women apostles, women prophets, and women deacons, but not women presbyters / bishops, would you then, as Scripturalists, not allow women to be presbyters today?”
This is actually incredibly EASY to answer.
This is because apostle is the first in the list of 5-fold ministry gifts. And elders/overseers have one or more of the 5-fold ministry gifts. (Jesus had all 5.) So if Junia was an apostle (sent out by a church congregation) then she was also an elder/overseer at that church.
Raymond Brown is a Catholic and we know the Catholic stance on women in church leadership.
There are many scholars (OT and NT) who sign the CBE statement of beliefs. And there are others that teach women as church leaders, so many, I am surprised that you have not heard of them, let alone read some. I am more than glad to suggest some for you.
Kenneth Bailey is incredible, as is Richard Bauckham. Ben Witherinton also has some good insights.
Sue,
We have different readings of Grudem. I’m not convinced that his views are as strong as your summary indicates.
I see all of his analysis in Ev Fem as having the goal of supporting the following conclusion: the two restrictions the Bible places on women in the church are a) no teaching of the Bible to adult men; and b)no exercising authority over men.
I read him to argue that there is support for prophesying by women, disputed support for Junia as a female apostle, and support (but not complete agreement) for women being deacons.
I have a vague memory of once listening to oral remarks in which he mentioned that he attends a church where women serve as deacons. However, I was not able to quickly find a link to those remarks on the CBMW web site. (Much material was removed when the website was revamped.)
For anyone who is interested, the entire Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth book is available on the CBMW website as a free pdf download. I would provide a link, but I’m still a Luddite when it comes to blogging software! There’s a search function on the web site, so you should be ok without a link.
Don,
Agreeing with CBE’s conclusions as summarized in the signed statement is not the same as agreeing with the interpretation of Scripture offered here. How one reaches a conclusion matters very much.
Sue,
“But, perhaps you are not aware that in Ev. Fem. and Biblical truth, the author does not agree that there is evidence for women apostles, prophets and deacons in the NT. That is really the issue for me. Why is this being suppressed?”
I have Grudem’s book on this (and most everything else he has written), and that is my assessment also. I don’t find Grudem a credible author. IMO without the subject of speaking against equality and mutuality that CBE supports, he would likely hardly be read. I think he jumped on a bandwagon to get himself known. Piper OTOH who wrote with Grudem in RBMW is a credible author on his own, though on this subject we disagree.
It does seem that Grudem softened his stance on deacons though. But that may be because he also demeaned the ‘role’ of a deacon to accommodate allowing women.
I apologize to those who really like Grudem’s material. I just don’t.
Marilyn wrote: “Agreeing with CBE’s conclusions as summarized in the signed statement is not the same as agreeing with the interpretation of Scripture offered here. How one reaches a conclusion matters very much.”
I do not speak for CBE but there are MANY scholars who believe the NT teaches women church leaders. It does seem that John has heard of none of them, so I am glad to be able to help him out in this area.
Some others from a Hebrew Roots of Christianity perspective are Dwight Pryor and John Garr.
Grudem’s Systematic Theology is well known in conservative seminaries. I have not read it.
I have read his books on non-egalism. I find his arguments less than compelling.
Sue wrote: “But, perhaps you are not aware that in Ev. Fem. and Biblical truth, the author does not agree that there is evidence for women apostles, prophets and deacons in the NT. That is really the issue for me. Why is this being suppressed?”
Marilyn,
What Sue is referring to is that Grudem suppresses evidence that repudiates his position. Scholars are not supposed to do this. They can be right or wrong, but they are not supposed to suppress evidence.
Marilyn,
Click here for the CBMW webpage for downloading Biblical Truth and Evangelical Feminism.
Also the book has its own webpage, as part of the CBMW website.
I don’t know why I didn’t get this book into the margin of this blog. I’ll take care of that now.
Oh, I’ve had Ev. Truth and Bib. Feminism in the blog margin, in the Books section.
Don,
Your dismissal of Raymond Brown’s conclusions on the grounds that he is Roman Catholic is what is known as an ad hominem argument. It holds no water. It is no different than if someone were to say that, because you are an egal, when you read a NT author like Paul as an egal in the modern sense, your reading may be dismissed on the sole basis of the fact that you are egal.
Your argument is off-base anyway, since Brown was famous for arguing on behalf of exegetical conclusions that stand at odds with those of his own tradition. In the field, Brown was known as a scholar’s scholar, not “a company man.”
As far as I can see, the initial post by believer333 in this thread is an unsupported conjecture. Perhaps if you dig deep enough, you will find an established NT scholar who argues in favor of it. I repeat: please supply a reference.
As far as what the NT teaches about women leaders, it should have been clear that I concur with Brown’s statement. You misrepresent my position.
Your argument that since Junia was an apostle, surely there were women presbyters, is not convincing. The roles in questions are quite different.
Rigid logic is nice, but reality is not logical. For example, the Catholic Church allows women to stand at the head of entire orders and movements (Mother Theresa, Chiara Lubich, in the latter case, with male and female members, including bishops and priests, under her gift-based authority), but does not allow women to be presbyters or bishops. In this sense, the Catholic church is like what we find in the NT and the ancient church, not unlike it.
That comes as no surprise to historians. For all the talk of some egals about wanting to be conscious of history, it remains the case that some egals are only interested in history that anticipates their own positions.
It might not matter, I suppose, but I’ve found that a cherry-picking approach to history correlates with a cherry-picking approach in other areas. The result, I worry, is bound to be elitist.
The following is said with friendly smiles….
John, your complaint about my post is unconvincing. Your dismissal of Don’s conclusions on the grounds that he is egal is unconvincing at best. I don’t know what your argument IS, since you haven’t stated it. Just concurring with someone isn’t stating your case.
It is also the case that some comps are only interested in history that anticipates their own positions. Grudem comes to mind. I guess you can also call that cherry-picking. :^)
It would be more interesting if you were to quote exactly the points you disagree with and why. Nevertheless, when I get more free time, I’ll dig up some authors for you that also found what I did.
Blessings!
Thanks, Wayne! I really do need to learn some basic blogging tools!
Thanks, Wayne! I really do need to learn some basic blogging tools!
Maybe someday I can write a best-selling book titled, Everything I Know I Learned by Googling.
(an allusion to another book, of course)
And, you’ll write that book in your spare time, right?
Believer333,
We found something we agree on: Grudem is also a cherry-picker! But two wrongs do not make a right.
The arguments in favor of the view that Paul in 1 Tim 3:1-7 envisioned male episkopoi are:
(1) His choice of language which implies that;
(2) The necessity he would have in his cultural context to be explicit about the possibility of female episkopoi, should that have been his meaning;
(3) The lack of solid evidence for women episkopoi in the ancient church;
(4) The inconsistency of Don’s argument from logic, which I demonstrated by analogy;
(5) The baselessness of the claim that Paul did not care about tradition and precedent (note how he argues in 1 Cor).
(6) The zero relevancy of the remark that Raymond Brown was a Roman Catholic.
That’s just for starters. You are welcome to address my objections one by one. Yes, I will be interested in references to scholarly literature in support of your innovative exegesis.
John wrote: “Your dismissal of Raymond Brown’s conclusions on the grounds that he is Roman Catholic is what is known as an ad hominem argument.”
This is not the case as Raymond wrote as a Catholic theologian. When he does that, he goes thru the Catholic church to be sure nothing he says is against Catholic dogma or morals and Catholic dogma says only male leaders as Christ was male and the leaders represent Christ.
All prots I know reject this argument, perhaps John Hobbins accepts it? The prots I know do not think that a church leader represents Christ.
Note that I did not say that Brown was wrong in his arguments, just that I knew where there would end up, exactly because he was Catholic.
In my prot Sunday school we used Brown’s study on John as the 2nd study book. He has some great insights, no question about that, but as he is Catholic and I am prot, I knew ahead of time there will be some things we disagree about. But I did think he was worth studying.
John wrote: “Your argument that since Junia was an apostle, surely there were women presbyters, is not convincing. The roles in questions are quite different.”
This is too big a subject to teach on this kind of post, especially as there has been a large accretion of traditions in the various denoms in this area.
There are lots of good books that discuss NT church leadership.
One can figure out that there were a plurality of elders, that another name for them was overseer and that they each had a leadership ministry gift of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. Today an apostle is often called a missionary and a prophet is often called a preacher, but I have been to churches where the NT terms are used.
Don,
I agree with you that Brown has great insights and is worth studying.
But I think you misunderstand what the nihil obstat means in contemporary Catholicism. Brown often enough demonstrates in books with a nihil obstat that traditional proof texts for Catholic doctrines, including doctrines in common with Protestants – prove no such thing.
The nihil obstat is still granted unless he goes on to claim that the doctrine should be given up on the basis that the traditional proof texts are not probative.
He claims no such thing, and, in questions concerning Mariology, he goes out of his way to affirm his commitment to Catholic doctrine in the absence of prooftexts.
In short, if Brown thought that 1 Tim 3:1-7 envisioned female bishops, he would have said so, without fear of his statement not receiving a nihil obstat, unless he argued on that basis for female bishops in our day.
Note that he argues that there were diaconesses, even though they are not allowed today.
John,
It may come as no surprise but there are answers to all of your concerns. Some of your claims are simply false, my working assumption is that you have not studied this area.
Don,
I look forward to your responses to my listed concerns. The discussion, if we carry it out with care, will be of interest to many.
Ok, Don, but we need to hear those answers, as opposed to mere assertions that they exist.
I say this as somebody who isn’t conversant with the egal literature, but isn’t totally unfamiliar with it, either.
I’ve spent some time with both Discovering Biblical Equality and Slaves, Women and Homosexuality.
One thing that always surprises me is how infrequently people on this list refer to Webb. To me, it’s by far the stronger of the two defenses.
Marilyn,
Yes, the answers are important, I just did not want John’s claims to stand unresponded while they are being worked on.
I like Webb, but some do not. As in a lot of things his method can be misused and end up in space. So I use Spirit trajectory (with care) in my own understanding of the Bible, but try to avoid using it in teaching, since some really do not like it.
I see this restriction being what Jesus and Paul did, they used arguments their varied audience would accept or at least gave the greatest chance of acceptance. The goal is to advance the Kingdom, and that means meeting people where they are at.
There is no such thing as objective scholarship; even scholars, being human, have their biases. I am not writing scholarship off by any means, just saying that even the very best is not infallible. The smartest minds with the most exacting and thorough study habits still get things wrong.
Until recently, I was a bit naive as to just how unreliable even the most highly-regarded scholarship can be.
Bonnie,
That’s very true. Scholars are just people. They make mistakes, and sometimes make the data fit a pre-conceived pattern.
The important thing is not to write off scholarship because it does not provide ammunition for your positions.
It is far wiser to take scholarship seriously that challenges your assumptions. I would be happy to find out that there are strong arguments in favor of the notion that Paul envisioned female bishops, or deaconesses without gender-specific tasks.
After all, I am blessed to have many female presbyters and bishops in my denominational midst, and consider it a step forward that there are now, by church law in fact, female and not just male trustees (though I suspect the law, like affirmative action laws in general, will soon be unnecessary).
But I am not willing to read into the ancient texts things I think work well in 21st century America.
“I like Webb, but some do not. As in a lot of things his method can be misused and end up in space. So I use Spirit trajectory (with care) in my own understanding of the Bible, but try to avoid using it in teaching, since some really do not like it.”
Could you explain why some struggle with Webb, leading you to not rely much on his approach? Locally, I don’t know anyone who has read him, so I haven’t had an opportunity to talk about his ideas.
As I’ve said before, I find his book and Stackhouse’s to make a far more compelling case for the egal position than the verse-by-verse deconstructions that lead to the conclusion that the ancient church was egal and/or Paul was egal.
The basic concern with Webb’s Spirit trajectory is the slippery slope.
I try to do the 2-step hermeneutics of:
1. exegesis – trying to understand the original meaning.
2. application – trying to apply this original meaning 2000 or more years later in a different culture.
Spirit trajectory adds a 3rd step.
3. discerning the movement in Scripture (the progressive revelation) and continuing that movement into today beyond what Scripture itself says.
Another way of wording it is does the NT contain a “final morality” for believers or does it point to a final morality?
For example, Scripture says “honor the king” and how can one do that if there is no king? That is, when the NT mention king is it using king as (A) king and only king or (B) king as an example of government leader? Guess which interpretation kings had?
Just because today WE have no problem mapping this to any leader does not mean we are correct. Perhaps God wants us to have kings and we are being disobedient.
Backing away from Spirit trajectory too much results in what I call teleporting the text, reading the Bible AS IF it was written DIRECTLY to me in my culture. This is done all too often, and much of the time results in no harm, but sometimes it does.
Any time someone does not discuss what some NT text meant in 1st century, they MAY be teleporting the text. If they do this, it may make no difference or it may make a huge difference, so I think it best to never do it.
John wrote: “(5) The baselessness of the claim that Paul did not care about tradition and precedent (note how he argues in 1 Cor).”
I am not even sure what you mean by this. If you want to discuss 1 Cor, that is another subject but is very extensive.
Don,
I will clarify my fifth objection. It relates to an assertion made earlier on this thread:
“I don’t think Paul cared about what the Jews of his day considered ‘natural’.”
I think Paul is very clear that he is willing to adapt to the cultural expectations of the people he ministered to. See 1 Corinthians 9:20; 11:14, 16; 14:34.
Marilyn,
As I’ve said before, I find his book and Stackhouse’s to make a far more compelling case for the egal position than the verse-by-verse deconstructions that lead to the conclusion that the ancient church was egal and/or Paul was egal.
I like Stackhouse’s book very much. I would like to explain what I really think and have been trying to say.
I accept Stackhouse’s main thesis. Where I argue verse by verse, it is not to prove that Paul is egal. I never had any such intention.
I argue verse by verse for this one reason. I was asked by my former minister to read Grudem’s kephale study and Baldwin’s authentein study. He believed that these studies supported his comp view. I also read Wallace’s Junia study.
My position is this. These studies have drawn conclusions that are not justified by the evidence, in each case. So, the pain for me is this. Why have these men written these studies and used evidence in a way that is not honest.
I really am not that invested in what Paul wrote about women, because I don’t see how we can recapture what he was thinking.
However, I want to know what the men who wrote those articles are thinking. They actually know that the evidence does not support the conclusions drawn.
They know, for example, that there is no evidence that authentein means “to have authority.”
I have to tell you that knowing that men do this in order to restrict women and keep them in spiritual bondage causes me the most immense pain. I cannot fathom this kind of cruelty. Yes, of course, I can. This is the problem. It is all too vivid.
There is no evidence that kephale meant authority over, or that authentein meant to have authority. I don’t care how many “scholars” anyone quotes to me, no one has cited evidence and Andreas Kostenberger says authentein is only used once or twice at the time of the NT, and lets just move on to the contextual evidence and forget the lexical.
Why does he say that? Because there is no lexical evidence that authentein means “to have authority.” So, why would men do this? Who would want to be part of a Christian group where men treat women like that?
I understand the Catholics, they claim tradition, but these authentein studies are used to tell women when they are within and without the fold.
Okay, I am talking motives. So let’s just ask about whether the evidence supports the conclusions in these studies or not. I say not.
Sue, there are many women who are concerned about this also. It reminds me of what the original Suffregettes must have gone through in realizing that as a human being women were being restricted from enjoying the natural benefits of life by traditional patriarchal men, and why would they do that to women.
I would say that most women do not study the issues to the depth required to be concerned with these issues. However, more and more women than ever before ARE doing so.
‘There is no evidence that kephale meant authority over, or that authentein meant to have authority.’
So what would be the difference between the two being that it is believed that men have BOTH kinds of authority? What would that look like?
They say there’s one kind of authority in Eph 5 and another kind in 1 Tim 2, and men can exercies both, while women neither.
And if they are not different then why did Paul not just say in 1 Tim, ‘I do not allow a woman to teach as the head of a man?’
On the parchment and pen thread I saw that someone provided their novel translation:
I do not allow a woman to have the authority of a man. (If I’m recalling that correctly)
Would that be a man or a husband? How would their authority differ?
Where should I take this kind of questioning?
So there’s a male kind of authority and a married male kind of authority?
I’m trying to understand how these things can be explained by the comp position.
(Sorry if wrong place to do so)
Can you open up a thread on this kind of questioning, Wayne? Or Sue, could you? Equality Central Forum?
It seems to me that this kind of questioning is important to understanding and making sense of the comp position in relation to Paul.
Now I’m really lost:
1 Co 11, comes into play how?
Man is the head of the woman. (Or Husband of wife?) Do comps agree on which Paul had in mind?
How do all three 1 Co 11, 1 Tim 2, and Eph 5 comp interpretation of authority differ from eachother?
Here’s my simple version of trying to understand the comp position:
In 1 Tim 2 woman can’t have authority because Adam was created first, so only man can have this kind of authority. In 1 Co 11 man has authority (because he is head) because woman comes from man, and in Eph 5, husbands can have authority over because wives are called to submit to their husbands.
?
Kathy,
I don’t have the answers to any of this, and I don’t think there are clear answers.
I believe that there are human structures, and Paul used these paradigms and concepts, but he used vocabulary not used elsewhere. The structures were there but I do believe that he meant to have these structures undermined by love, or mutuality, that is treating your neighbour (your other) as yourself. I believe that holding power was antithetical to Jesus teaching, but, of course, humans need organization.
So, Paul used a new metaphor with head, but he clearly did not mean authority or governor. The reason we know this is because God is not the head of man, and man is not the head of his slaves. Nor is man the head of his dog. That is impossible. Whatever head meant, it had to do with organic unity, or sameness, IMO.
That does not mean that Paul either overturned or reinforced hierarchy with these words. I think Paul was consumed with issues of our relationship to God, and Christ’s relationship to God, in terms of nature and origin, and not authority.
The most important thing to remember about Paul was that he was not teaching against the egalitarian marriage because he did not have that category. So, in my view, any discussion of Paul and egalitarianism is moot. He did not preach against egalitarianism because he did not know it.
Paul taught that marriage was B and not A. But those who teach male authority today, teach B against C. They are not being faithful to Paul. Paul is silent on C, where C is the egalitarian marriage of today. So it is wrong to say that Paul is against C. We don’t know that.
Another issue is that I don’t think one can line up vocabulary and arguments between 1 Cor., Eph and 1 Tim all that easily. The vocabulary is diverse.
‘The reason we know this is because God is not the head of man, and man is not the head of his slaves. Nor is man the head of his dog. That is impossible. Whatever head meant, it had to do with organic unity, or sameness, IMO.’
Now thanks for pointing that out. The Father (God) is NOT the head of mankind. Christ (God/man) is the head of man (male or humankind?).
I do recall having realized that Paul never said such a thing, and that was important but I do need refreshers from time to time when exploring for answers and understanding.
‘The most important thing to remember about Paul was that he was not teaching against the egalitarian marriage because he did not have that category. So, in my view, any discussion of Paul and egalitarianism is moot. He did not preach against egalitarianism because he did not know it.’
Great point I need to remember!!
‘The most important thing to remember about Paul was that he was not teaching against the egalitarian marriage because he did not have that category. So, in my view, any discussion of Paul and egalitarianism is moot. He did not preach against egalitarianism because he did not know it.’
From what I understand, egal marriage is presented in Genesis.
But Paul did not have that category in his culture therefore he was not teaching against it and rather for it because of Genesis. He knew it in Genesis but not culture.
Okay, well that’s my two cents.
Sue wrote: “The most important thing to remember about Paul was that he was not teaching against the egalitarian marriage because he did not have that category.”
My take is he exactly had that category, altho he would not have called it that. The symmetry is 1 Cor 7 where he pairs 8 (eight!) ideas in a symmetrical way for both the husband and the wife shows me that he knew about symmetrical marriage.
John wrote: “I think Paul is very clear that he is willing to adapt to the cultural expectations of the people he ministered to. See 1 Corinthians 9:20; 11:14, 16; 14:34.”
We see these verses differently.
1Co 9:20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.
1Co 9:21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.
What Paul is saying to me is that he uses arguments they will accept or at least might accept. It does no good to use arguments with a group that does not accept your premises or method of argument.
ESV 1Co 11:14 Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him,
1Co 11:15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
1Co 11:16 If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.
In v.14 the ESV translates wrong, IMO. The Jews had nazirites, both male and female, who did not cut their hair for the length of the time of their vow. Obviously it could get long if the length of time was long, the length of hair acting as an indicator for how long they had been under the vow.
Greeks had philosophers that grew their hair long and they were NOT looked down on for having long hair.
So the spin the ESV and some other translations put on this is wrong, as if short hair was manly, which is a modern concept. Rather Paul is pointing out that hair is a covering for one’s head.
On v.16 Paul is saying that believers DO NOT have the custom of requiring headcoverings, this is hardly conforming to custom.
1Co 14:34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.
This is a quote from Judaizers at Corinth. There are many reasons for this, but one is that the written Torah or Tanakh does not say anything, rather it was written and then read by the scribes to the people; it is the Pharisees’ so-called oral Torah that “says” something which Paul then opposes in v. 36. That is, Paul is quoting some Corinthian legalists that are using the common way to refer to something in the Oral Torah of the Pharisees. It should be obvious that believers are not required to follow the oral Torah and are commanded NOT to follow it when it conflicts with Scripture.
My take is he exactly had that category, altho he would not have called it that. The symmetry is 1 Cor 7 where he pairs 8 (eight!) ideas in a symmetrical way for both the husband and the wife shows me that he knew about symmetrical marriage.
Your point is well taken. Thanks.
John,
A few places to find information specifically on women elders:
Discovering Biblical Equality – pgs 134n,266, 268 270 (specifically but other chapters touch on it). These include authors Aida B. Spencer and Craig Keener.
Familiar Leadership Heresies Uncovered by Fleming.
The Ordination of Women by Paul K Jewett
Bushnel in God’s Word to Women, addresses the issue from the basis of leadership not mentioning elders directly.
Judy Brown in Women Ministers addresses the issue from the basis of women as ministers.
Here is a good article by Kroeger
http://www.cbeinternational.org/new/E-Journal/2008/08spring/kroeger.pdf
There is a book titled Women Elders, but I’ve misplaced my copy.
However, the discussion of women elders/bishops, leaders, ministers, teachers, missionaries, etc. is not simply linked to the one disputable passage in 1 Timothy 3, but is covered in many other subjects and areas in the NT.
This Catholic website also has some interesting information.
http://www.womenpriests.org/index.asp
Women priests is NOT an official Catholic website, it is a website by the person who edited the calendars distributed by her and CBE. Yes, she is Catholic and promotes the idea of women as priests in the Roman Catholic church.
There have been some women who have gone thru an ordination ceremony, but the leaders of the Roman Catholic church excommunicate them when they find out.
Women priests is NOT an official Catholic website
Yes, true. However, there is still some interesting research available from their website. I’m not advocating that everything is without flaw. There isn’t a person or denomination that is without flaw. I don’t really know much about the woman. Far as I know she is fine, just not appreciated much by the Catholic church in general.
This brings up the subject that there are people who do some things well and are flawed to some degree in other things. That is the way I look at Grudem, Piper, Ware, Patterson, Calvin, Luther, Origin, Tertullian, etc. etc. They are near genius in some area and off their rocker in others. With that understanding I can deal with checking some very good research by someone who has problems in other areas. Wasn’t it Swaggert who confessed openly to sin and was removed from ministry. He isn’t the only one. But that doesn’t negate everything he has ever said or every message he preached.
It also reminds us that we are responsible to check what people say to us, and what we read online, in books, etc.
Yes, there is a lot on the women priests website that is useful. The pics are very informative.
However, the viewer should be aware that as she is a Catholic, she translates all the Greek terms into Catholic terms, not general terms. So presbyter becomes priest instead of elder. This can be a little confusing at first, it was for me. It is a little like changing the key to a piece of music.
Don wrote: “My take is he exactly had that category, altho he would not have called it that. The symmetry is 1 Cor 7 where he pairs 8 (eight!) ideas in a symmetrical way for both the husband and the wife shows me that he knew about symmetrical marriage.”
Sue replied: “Your point is well taken. Thanks.”
I take this as a great compliment coming from someone like you with your language acumen, so thank you!
When you couple Paul’s symmetry with Jesus correctly interpreting Torah in a symmetrical way in regards to divorce (which is the flip side of marriage in a sense), contra the Pharisees who gave the husband a HUGE advantage in this area, I see a consistent pattern of symmetry ala the Golden rule.
It is exactly because of these 2 symmetrical elucidations by Jesus and Paul that I see the other marriage advice as being done for emphasis and not to delineate asymmetrical roles, as some non-egals teach.
Sorry for the delayed response. As the saying goes, “life happens.” I’m currently in a busy season at home and at work.
Don, thank you very much for your reply. I had read the “slippery slope” critique of Webb in comp materials, but I wasn’t aware that it had also been expressed by some egals.
FWIW (and I don’t hear you saying this), I don’t think that “the Canon is closed,” is a sufficient argument to dismiss Webb. On the other hand, I don’t think that his trajectory argument – in and of itself – is sufficient to identify a stopping point. So, in that sense, it’s not clear it gives as much traction as is sometimes claimed.
Sue (and also in the FWIW category), when I looked at your examples several months ago, I didn’t find the evidence to be as clear-cut as you do.
The example I remember most clearly was the leader who was “pre-eminent.” You argued that at the gathering of rulers he did not have authority over the other rulers, who often governed larger (and obviously independent) kingdoms.
Because I saw an analogy to a modern-day corporate board of directors or industry trade association, I didn’t agree with your conclusion.
In such a business setting, the directors voluntarily defer to the CEO for the purpose of their board service. They advise and give freely of their experience and insight.
On any given topic facing the board, a particular director may have more knowledge or skill than the CEO. For example, the directors are often CEOs of their own companies. And, those companies are often larger and more prestigious than the company they advise in their roles as board directors.
But after offering advice, directors defer to the CEO because in the final analysis, it is the CEO who has responsibility for the company and its operations. In that sense, the CEO has authority over the board. I see an analogy to the gathering of rulers in the example you gave.
Sue (and also in the FWIW category), when I looked at your examples several months ago, I didn’t find the evidence to be as clear-cut as you do.
The example I remember most clearly was the leader who was “pre-eminent.” You argued that at the gathering of rulers he did not have authority over the other rulers, who often governed larger (and obviously independent) kingdoms.
No, this was not my argument, nor in any way similar. Once again, I need to be cited here. These were not my words.
I argued that Philadelphus had no authority over his father and sons when they became kings, although he was more illustrious (prominent) than his father or sons.
There was absolutely no correlation between “prominent” and authority whatsoever.
What I am saying is that, read in context, there is no association whatever between kephale and authority/power in the chief example which Grudem chose to illustrate his argument.
I think others like Cervin agree and basically many egalitarian authors believe Grudem to be so impervious to rational argument that discussion is useless.
Here is the quote,
“the whole family of the Ptolemies was exceedingly eminent and conspicuous above all other royal families, and among the Ptolemies, Philadelphus was the most illustrious; for all the rest put together scarcely did as many glorious and praiseworthy actions as this one king did by himself, being, as it were, the leader of the herd, and in a manner the head of all the kings.” Moses 2:30
He was the “head” of the other kings in his family, both preceding and following him. He was not the “head” of any other living king. There was no connection to authority. I should mention that the phrase here translated as “the leader of the herd,” is very obscure as to meaning. His father was the founder of the dynasty of Ptolemies, so Philadelphus was neither the founder, nor the authority over his own family of kings. He was talked about as doing glorious and praiseworthy actions – this is key.
(This does not necessarily give us the meaning of kephale in Paul. What this does is cause us to ask why this is Grudem’s most favoured quote on kephale as authority.)
What did Philo mean by kephale? Here is an other example,
“If, then, any one proves himself a man of such a character in the city he will appear superior to the whole city, and if a city show itself of such a character it will be the chief of all the country around; and if a nation do so it will be the lord of all the other nations, as the head is to the body occupying the pre-eminence of situation, not more for the sake of glory than for that of advancing the interests of those that see.
For continual appearances of good models stamp impressions closely resembling themselves on all souls which are not utterly obdurate and intractable; (115) and I say this with reference to those who wish to imitate models of excellent and admirable beauty,” On Rewards and Punishment 114
Please note carefully that Philo talks of how this is “not more for the sake of glory than for that of advancing the interests of those that SEE.”
Please note that although this appears to be about leadership as authority, it is not. It is about leadership as a model for those that SEE. Authority as in “decision-making power for others,” is not an issue here at all. This is a philosophical treatise about the role of excellence and morality.
When Philo says it will be the chief of all countries around, he does not mean that it will have authority or power over other countries, but will be an example of excellence.
The husband is clearly not a model of moral excellence. Some may be, but maleness is not more moral than femaleness. To transfer Philo’s meaning of kehpale as moral model or moral glory to the husband (ie the male) is not possible without downgrading the role of morality.
My sense is that Philo’s use of kephale absolutely does not promote the notion of kephale as authority. It promotes the notion of prominence derived from morality as a MODEL for others.
For me, Paul’s use of kephale for “man,” is IN NO WAY, related to Philo’s use.
Consider in English, the diverse uses of “head”
- head of class (Philo’s use)
- head of state (Latin and English use)
- head of the line
Which one most accords with Paul’s use? Possibly none. Why don’t we admit this?
This entire passage was not about the power and authority of Philadelphus, or about his influence or leadership over other nations. Far from it. It was about the excellence of his character, and his behaviour in an internal issue of polity and morality. Philo continues,
“He, then, being a sovereign of this character, and having conceived a great admiration for and love of the legislation of Moses, conceived the idea of having our laws translated into the Greek language; and immediately he sent out ambassadors to the high-priest and king of Judea, for they were the same person. And having explained his wishes, and having requested him to pick him out a number of men, of perfect fitness for the task, who should translate the law, the high-priest, as was natural, being greatly pleased, and thinking that the king had only felt the inclination to undertake a work of such a character from having been influenced by the providence of God, considered, and with great care selected the most respectable of the Hebrews whom he had about him, who in addition to their knowledge of their national scriptures, had also been well instructed in Grecian literature, and cheerfully sent them.”
And so kephale was used for Philadelphus to descibe his moral character and his personality as being under the influence of God, ie providence.
Can this be related to “man is the head of woman?” No, I do not think it can. It is a use of kephale which has no relation to “authority over others.”
Why does Grudem use such an ambiguous citation for his main quote? Because there is no example in Greek literature of kephale as leader in the sense of “authority over others” or CEO, or anything like it.
Once again, this passage is about the EXEMPLARY inner moral condition of Philadelphus as the king who assisted the Jews in having their scriptures translated into Greek. It has nothing to do with authority or leadership over other kings anywhere at all.
I seem to be unable to communicate my sense of what Philo was saying. What am I missing?
”Because I saw an analogy to a modern-day corporate board of directors or industry trade association, I didn’t agree with your conclusion.”
But I think that would be an inaccurate comparison, Marilyn. What I gathered from Sue’s research is that the comparision was of ruler’s of nations and comparing one ruler’s stature among them. Thus, it would NOT be that he ruled all the other rulers. And it would have nothing to do whatsoever with them yielding to his desires for them. He would have had NO influence in their regions whatsoever.
Perhaps, Sue can tell me if I am gathering correctly what she found on that. I’m not looking at it right now, just recollecting what I thought she said were the results of her research.
I am not sure where my previous comment went. It was a long response. It may turn up. Not to repeat myself –
Grudem wrote,
kephale is used for:
- Philadelphus as head of the nation
- David as head of the people
But the only examples are
1) Philadelphus as more illustrious than other kings in his own family because of his illustrious deeds.
2) David as head of the Gentiles in an obscure passage of overliteral Greek.
3) Jephthah
4) In Shepherd of Hermas 2nd century AD
These are the only examples. There is not one example of a person being the head of his own family of living relatives, his own tribe, his own people, or any other thing in Greek.
This is curious because there are hundreds of such examples in Hebrew and Latin.
So, why none in Greek? Why does Grudem alter the meaning of the few examples he cites? Because he knows that if he quoted them as they actually exist, they would not support his thesis.
As I’ve outlined on other threads, Paul develops the kephale – soma metaphor in two different ways in Ephesians 5:21 and following.
The first time around, the complex metaphor conveys a model of submission and authority based on Christology completed by the exhortation to the husband to show sacrificial love. In the second instance, it’s about nurture and intimacy and is completed by the exhortation to the wife to show reverential respect.
The comparative data with respect to kephale does not solve anything, nor does it need to. The above is clear enough, as one can see from the history of interpretation of the passage and the requirements of Greek grammar.
What I think actually may be happening is that Grudem sees what he wants to see, all of us have a filter that works this way. That is, Grudem is SO SURE he is correct about the “women” verses that when he examines relevant information, he sees it in ways that conform to his understanding. We all do this to some extent and we need to actively work against this tendency.
Marilyn,
I realize I have already produced too much verbiage on this. Forgive me. I am very frustrated with myself for not being able to be more concise and clear, and this shows.
You wrote,
You argued that at the gathering of rulers he did not have authority over the other rulers, who often governed larger (and obviously independent) kingdoms.
There is no “gathering of rulers” in the passage – it is about an internal matter – but in any case, I will continue.
Grudem argues that Philadephus as king of Egypt was the “head of the nation.”
It is key here, in Christian terms, that “head” kephale, if it applies to governing, must be over one’s own body, one’s own people or nation.
That is why Grudem took the two quotes, one that said Philadelphus was the head of all kings, and the other that David was the head of the Gentiles,
And he changed them to say,
Philadelphus “head of the nation”
David, “head of the people”
He tampered with the evidence in order to demonstrate to the wider audience that kephale means “authority over” in the sense of leader of one’s own people. This use does not exist in Greek. Just doesn’t happen.
I argue that kephale cannot mean authority over one’s own people, but refers to prominence without authority. I also argue that prominence was not the use in Paul’s episitles.
I am with those who say that all we know is
Christ – church
head – body
sacrifice – submit
husband – wife
We really don’t know any more about it than this. Two concepts that Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria wrote about were organic unity, and origin. That is Adam is the origin of Eve. I know Sumner rejects this but she does not discuss the either Chrysostom or Cyril that I could see. Correct me if I am wrong.
The church fathers chief concern was how God was the head of Christ. They did not have a fully developed doctrine of the subordination of Christ. They did believe that he was second in order after God. However, there is no indication, to my knowledge, in all of early church writing, that they believed that Christ was of a lesser authority than God.
Once again, anyone is welcome to offer a citation if I am wrong.
The first time around, the complex metaphor conveys a model of submission and authority based on Christology completed by the exhortation to the husband to show sacrificial love. In the second instance, it’s about nurture and intimacy and is completed by the exhortation to the wife to show reverential respect.
The comparative data with respect to kephale does not solve anything, nor does it need to. The above is clear enough, as one can see from the history of interpretation of the passage
I will not dispute that this is a common reading of the Ephesians passage. However, it is, as you clearly state, on the level of interpretation.
What I am trying to discuss is on the level of accuracy in representing the data. Why would a scholar like Grudem so vastly misrepresent the evidence if his altered evidence is not in the least necessary to argue the case?
This puzzles me, as evidence is presented in the Junia study, the authentein study, and aner article, that is clearly of dubious standing. If the subordination of women is so obvious, why manipulate evidence to shore it up?
and the requirements of Greek grammar.
You clearly hve me here! What requirements of Greek grammar do you refer to?
John wrote: “The first time around, the complex metaphor conveys a model of submission and authority based on Christology completed by the exhortation to the husband to show sacrificial love.”
To all those that do not want to work inside a gender authority paradigm in marriage, all you need to do is examine the verses and claim for yourself that authority is not even mentioned in Eph 5:21 and following as something the husband has. Yes, the husband is to serve his wife and to love his wife.
Of course, if you are non-egal, you can choose to agree with John’s claim or similar arguments.
I don’t find it hard to imagine why Grudem overplays his hand. My guess is that he has the best of intentions.
Let me put it in good paradoxical Augustinian fashion. Why do people do even bad things? Why do people kill? Why do they people commit adultery? Out of love, Augustine answered.
You can be sure that is why Moses and Saul killed. The zealous love they had for something and someone dear to them was perfect material for the redirected mission God gave them.
I would also note that people of all stripes tend to overplay their hand. I am writing from the national meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston. 6000 Bible scholars are in attendance. I have heard many papers. The majority of presenters overplay their hand. It is a human tendency.
The act of reading requires interpretation. There is right and wrong interpretation. Right interpretation allows the text to speak in its own voice, not the voice of the 21st century.
It has it backwards to ask, if I want to be egal (or comp), how can I interpret this passage to agree with my being egal (or comp).
Let the text challenge your presuppositions, whatever they may be.
It is not very convincing to claim that in submitting to someone in a relationship, I do not yield to a person and accept that person’s authority. Of course I do.
But authority exercised by anyone other than God has all kinds of limits from the point of view of the Christian faith. In particular, it is not the case that I am to accept the authority of anyone, even that of an angel, if I am being asked to do something that is contrary to God’s will.
The requirements of Greek grammar: I refer to the OTI at the beginning of 5:23. OTI introduced clauses ground antecedent commands. Thus, wives are to submit to their husbands BECAUSE a man is head of the woman.
The text states that a wife’s submission to her husband, and therefore her acceptance of his authority (indeed, that is exactly how the leading egal translation of the Bible, the NRSV, translates “submit to” in 1 Peter 3:1) is fitting because he is her head.
It is important to note that Paul goes on to develop the kephale-soma metaphor in terms of intimacy, nourishment, and so on. The development, however, is perfectly compatible with the point of departure outlined here.
The “both/and” of the text is what some egals have trouble accepting.
It is not very convincing to claim that in submitting to someone in a relationship, I do not yield to a person and accept that person’s authority.
But it is possible, because Clement talks about how the strong submit to the weak by taking care of them, NOT because the weak have authority.
In Macc. the king submitted to the Jews by sacrificing in the temple.
It is just possible that a mother submits to her child.
It is also possible that submission is mutual, and is to people who no special authority. It is possible that Paul really is saying that church members should submit to EACH OTHER. This is one possible interpretation of Eph.5:21 – that it matches the other EACH OTHER passages. This is possible.
And I find the rest of the discussion as troubling as if we were to revert to slavery all of a sudden. Authority over is evil. IMHO.
One might note the different paragraphing in the NRSV and the ESV.
In any case, it is not left up to intepretation. Have you seen the article in the ESVSB on the trinity.
At the beginning of the paragraph, it says that the Father plans, guides and sends, and the Son is subject to his authority, and obedient to his will.
Then as the end of the paragraph, after a discussion of equality of essence, it says that human relationships should follow this pattern.
What is one to make of a husband who plans, guides and sends his wife on a mission, but does not go himself?
Clearly this Bible teaches that women imitate Christ in his death on the cross, it is our privilege, and men imitate Christ in that he is the head/authority over the church, it is his right.
Where before in history have we ever seen the Imitation of Christ so divided and allotted unto humankind?
PS I can understand people overplaying the scipture for their own pet theories, but this does not mean that when men overplay the scriptures to restrict women, that they should not be corrected. It feels lousy to be a Christian woman, and know that this kind of thing is just shrugged off.
Men either have to believe that women are subject creatures and without rights by God’s will, or they ought to offer women equality and be willing to protect it.
It feels like a wishy washy affair if someone says they think women are equal but have no rights to be treated as equals. Not much comfort there.
John wrote: “It is not very convincing to claim that in submitting to someone in a relationship, I do not yield to a person and accept that person’s authority. Of course I do.”
This is because, in my view, you see submission as ALWAYS part of an authority paradigm. In my view, in some cases it may be in an authority paradigm, but in others it need not be. This is because one way to submit to another is to serve them.
To take an extreme example, when a baby cries for milk and her mother feeds her, in my way of understanding submission the mother is submitting to the baby’s request but the baby has no authority over (or even on behalf of) the mother. The baby just wants milk and the mother chooses to serve the baby.
To take another example, Jesus served the disciples (and therefore submitted to them) when he washed their feet when they needed washing. This upended the authority/hierarchy paradigm as this was the task given to the lowest servant in the house.
This is exactly why I see submission as not necessarily implying submission to authority, as John and non-egals apparently do.
John wrote: “The text states that a wife’s submission to her husband, and therefore her acceptance of his authority (indeed, that is exactly how the leading egal translation of the Bible, the NRSV, translates “submit to” in 1 Peter 3:1) is fitting because he is her head.”
Here is the NRSV: 1 Peter 3:1 Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands, so that, even if some of them do not obey the word, they may be won over without a word by their wives’ conduct, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.
It is not the case that the NRSV is “the leading egal translation of the Bible”. It was published in 1989 by the NCC. The ecumenical NRSV Bible Translation Committee consists of thirty men and women who are among the top scholars in America today. They come from Protestant denominations, the Roman Catholic church, and the Greek Orthodox Church. The committee also included a Jewish scholar.
The NRSV does try to be a more gender-accurate Bible, but this does not mean it is an “egal” Bible except in the sense that less gender accurate Bibles have been a source of non-egal interpretation over the years.
In any case, every reader should realize that EVERY translation involves interpretation as it at the least involves word choices in the range of meaning. The NRSV translators in 1989 decided to translate hupotassomenai/submitting as “acccept the authority”.
In some cases this IS what submitting can mean, however, it does not always mean that, it is not a synonym, it was a choice of the translators, and in my view a poor choice.
John wrote: “Thus, wives are to submit to their husbands BECAUSE a man is head of the woman.”
A man is NOT the head of the woman, perhaps you meant, a husband is the head of his wife.
The head/body metaphor in Eph 5 is one of unity. The wife submits to her husband exactly because she is in one-flesh union with him and similarly the husband is to submit to his wife exactly because he is in one-flesh union with her.
A head/body metaphor of union is not an authority metaphor, altho it might sound that way to 21st century ears. John is right when he says we need to let the text challenge our 21st century assumptions.
Clearly we see in Clement that the strong submit to the weak. This is a perfectly acceptable use of the verb upotasso. To say that the person must be “arranged under” authority is a purely root fallacy, and has nothing to do with the way it was used.
To say that Eph. 5:21 does not refer to mutuality is to call into question every statement of “one another” in the scriptures. Are we no longer to “love one another” but only are some people to love other people? Is there no such thing as mutual love, mutual esteem, mutual support, mutual respect, mutually putting other ahead of self.
If the notion of mutuality is removed from the scriptures as some attempt to do, there is really not much left at all.
The zealous love they had for something and someone dear to them…
John, this is otherwise known as idolatry. This is sin. “Overplaying one’s hand” is also known as exaggerating, or deceiving, or lying. This is also sin.
It is not very convincing to claim that in submitting to someone in a relationship, I do not yield to a person and accept that person’s authority. Of course I do.
Is the yielding necessarily to that person’s authority? Can it not be to Christ’s, or to truth? If someone is sick, and I tend to them, I am submitting to an assumption that they are right about being sick, and about what they may need to help them feel better. I may also submit to the authority of a doctor who tells me how to care for that person because he has knowledge about the illness.
Authority is knowledge and ability grounded in truth. That’s what Christ’s authority is. I have authority to teach music because I have a lot of knowledge in that area and have proven competency to play an instrument at a high level. This isn’t my own; it’s God-given (although I’ve also practiced and studied a lot!)
Is your egalitarianism, John, then actually not egal in the area of overall husband-wife relations? Or are you saying that Eph. 5:22-23 only applies to those areas in which you have domain-based authority over your wife? And if so, how can you square your wife’s domain-based authority over you with this passage; and if you do, are you really not then actually comp.?
I should also point out that Grudem sees a break, a shift, between Eph. 5:21 and 5:22; he sees :21 as belonging to the previous passage, and :22 as beginning a new passage. But in my view, Eph. 5:22+ begin an explication of 5:21, not the least of which reason is because :21 supplies the verb for :22.
In a previous comment I wrote,
It is also possible that submission is mutual, and is to people who no special authority.
I meant to write,
It is also possible that submission is mutual, and is to people who have no special authority.
I see authority has an obsession that some people have. But for Paul, authority was to build up. Clearly that is not the same thing as authority used to restrict and limit.
Don says:
“A head/body metaphor of union is not an authority metaphor, altho it might sound that way to 21st century ears.”
As far as I can see, you deny the obvious when you disassociate submission from authority in the context of a household code. It is my claim and that of many other Christian egals – read through Elliot’s ancient source citations in his 1 Peter commentary if you do not believe me – that if you read the text with 1st century ears, the head/body metaphor as Paul uses it the first time is built around the analogy of the church’s submission, not union with, Christ. The second time around, Paul uses the metaphor more in terms of union.
I encourage you to verify this by taking a look at the exegesis of the ancient church. See what the text sounded like to people of the same language and same culture. You will discover that no one read the text as do so-called biblical egals since the rise of modern feminism.
Don, we’ve gone through this before. It seems that you find it hard to fathom that there are many Christian egal NT scholars, including evangelicals, who are convinced that upotassein means what it was universally thought to mean in this context until recently, rather than the standard “biblical egal” line.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. Your suggestion that anyone who does not agree with the standard “biblical egal” interpretation of this passage is not egal does not stand up to scrutiny.
Suzanne,
Exegesis does not stop at the point of determining what is possible, but moves on to what is probable.
Given the sense upotassein has in Hellenistic Jewish writings referring to marriage and in Hellenistic sources generally, the sense traditionally given to the verb here in the ancient church appears also to be the correct one.
“But for Paul, authority was to build up.”
I think this is very true. In Paul’s day, a lot of marriages one imagines were filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit though there was no equality between husband and wife any more than there was equality between parent and child and master and slave.
More precisely, equality of worth was affirmed, with very unequal roles to play.
This remains the case in most marriages today. But there is far greater freedom, among comps and egals, to work out the details than was the case in more traditional periods.
The problem with so many choices is that many marriages struggle and even fail under the pressure of having to make things up from scratch or through mimicry of what is seen in People magazine or on TV. Christian complementarianism and egalism so long as 1 Cor 13 is central to the marriage ethos is, objectively speaking, a great improvement on popular culture.
Bonnie,
You say that overplaying one’s hand is sin. Fair enough. My point is that biblical egals also overplay their hand, and sin therefore in precisely the same way.
I might be wrong about that, but then, we might both be wrong that Grudem overplays his hand. Whenever biblical egals point their finger at their ideological opponents of dishonesty and sin, three fingers point back.
“Is the yielding necessarily to that person’s authority? Can it not be to Christ’s, or to truth?”
When I follow the lead of my wife in the domains over which she takes the lead, I yield to her authority. It is also possible to speak of that as ALSO yielding to Christ’s authority, but I would be careful of making a direct equation.
You also say,
“How can you square your wife’s domain-based authority over you with this passage?”
The authority of which Paul’s speaks is positive authority, which leads by nature to delegation of authority, to relationships built on trust, not control.
This understanding of authority is the reason why in other passages, a wife is entrusted with the household domain. Take a look at Proverbs 31. There is no contradiction.
My marriage is egal because delegation flows both ways with tie-breaking authority granted to no one on principle.
Love-obey marriages and comp marriages are often characterized by the same degree of delegation flowing both ways, because the virtue of love predisposes toward mutual consent (without making it a law.)
John,
Given the sense upotassein has in Hellenistic Jewish writings referring to marriage and in Hellenistic sources generally, the sense traditionally given to the verb here in the ancient church appears also to be the correct one.
We have visited this before. It is Plutarch’s Moralia about hupotasso in marriage and Clement to the Corinthians on hupotasso each to your neighbour.
I read Plutarch’s Moralia when you cited it. Did you read Clement’s letter.
Certainly, in the ancient church wives had to be generally subordinate. Women always have to be subordinate. This is not news. The question is whether this is necessary according to the scriptures and justified given what was written. I say not.
Are you actually arguing here for the subordination of women? Or just wives?
The way I see Paul is not monolithic. Other egals may disagree with me here. He proposes in 1 Cor. 7 a detailed symmetry. His main interaction with women was as free agents, widows and not wives.
In Paul’s day, a lot of marriages one imagines were filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit though there was no equality between husband and wife any more than there was equality between parent and child and master and slave.
nd perhaps we should seriously think about this. If wives have to be subordinate, why not Africa?
Have you heard Grudem’s sermon on Why poor nations remain poor?
Once inequality is accepted and promoted within marriage, then people move on to posit inequaltiy on a world scale as justifiable. This is a very dangerous trend. The inequality of nations is proposed as an acceptable outcome.
Poverty is the way things are, and we richer nations must accept the poverty of the poor, as the way it is.
But Please read what Clement had to say about this. Please try to at least open the box a crack and let in some light.
Listen to WHy Poor Nations are poor – google it, and then read Clement.
My answer to most of this inequality rhetoric is simple.
“Just say no.”
John,
You write,
“Given the sense upotassein has in Hellenistic Jewish writings referring to marriage and in Hellenistic sources generally,”
Can you cite another source besides Plutarch?
You write,
“In Paul’s day, a lot of marriages one imagines were filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit”
I would not be so sure. The churches clearly had many problems.
You write,
“I can give you references to top shelf egal scholarship on the Pastoral Epistles if you wish. You will discover that what I am saying is not unusual in the least.”
Let me point out that you are careful here to write about the “Pastoral Epistles,” since you know that “top shelf egal scholars” do not consider that Paul wrote the pastoral epistles. They are not concerned with what “Paul” wrote.
It may also be a misnomer to call them “egal” as they do not hold to the same beliefs about the Bible as Groothuis and Fee, for example. The scholars you reference may not be “biblical” egals, for the purpose of this blog.
I would also mention that when I did read one of the scholars you reference, I found a clearly inaccurate statement regarding the word kephale.
I am of the opinion that submit to each other, means just that. I believe that a counter cultural doctrine was described, which would affect relationships into the future.
Submission has different contexts. First, to God. Then to one another. Then to earthly powers.
The emperor was an earthly power, the slave owner, and the husband. A Christian should never be in the position of overlord – emperor, slave owner or authoritarian husband as overlord.
Christian society has altered these other relations. While earthly monarchs are not necessarily evil, a monarch who declares that his/her power is obligatory because of the text of scripture is an evil monarch. He/She posits the divine right of kings, and, eventually this kind of monarch had to be eliminated.
A slave owner much the same.
A traditional husband who has his position because of tradition has an earthly power over his wife. But the moment a man teaches that his authority is mandated by God it becomes evil. He believes that his gender gives him authority from God, and authority, which by rights, must be attached to morality is not. If God has given the husband this power, then who is the wife to challenge it?
This is why the new mandate of God prescribed male authority over the female is an evil. It is derived from the notion that women is derivative and is only in the image of God, as she submits to male headship.
I found the Jewish Hellenistic reference. Josephus writes,
“The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed, for the authority has been given by God to the man.” Against Apion II: 201
This simply raises more questions. Is it possible to separate authority from natural superiority. For Greeks, no, it is not. It is humiliating to subordinate someone who is not inferior. An equal does not benefit from being directed in all things by an equal.
If woman is equal then she does not benefit from subordination, or from being under authority. The only benefit she reaps is the benefit of suffering injustice for a just cause, as we see in 1 Peter.
Franky, I hear male authority being taught as a way to resolve household arguments, by simply saying that God has ordained that the man gets his way. This was explicitly taught in my former church, that God has solved all household disagreements by ordaining that the man has the final decision in all arguments.
Personally, I do not believe that history is full of witnesses to the happy love-obey marriage. I do believe that women today experience the authority-submission relationship as a form of humiliation, as it was then. Clearly, someone had gotten across to Josephus that for a woman to be under authority was humiliating. But he argued that because women were inferior, it was not humiliating, but beneficial.
I would like to see men today be at least as sensitive as Josephus, and engage in the notion that subordination is humiliating.
John wrote: “Don, we’ve gone through this before. It seems that you find it hard to fathom that there are many Christian egal NT scholars, including evangelicals, who are convinced that upotassein means what it was universally thought to mean in this context until recently, rather than the standard “biblical egal” line.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. Your suggestion that anyone who does not agree with the standard “biblical egal” interpretation of this passage is not egal does not stand up to scrutiny.”
I think Sue’s comments show what ideas do not stand up to scrutiny.
If YOU want to read these verses like some ECF did who just assumed women were inferior, go ahead, I cannot stop you. But I can deny that I need to do this and hope that others will deny it also.
Yes, the ECF are evidence, but they are not infallible evidence and some were incredibly sexist in some things they wrote.
If you wish to deny the plain meaning of Paul in Eph 5:21 about mutual submission, go ahead, I cannot stop you. I want to let this verse infuse all my interactions with other believers.
Yes, I think there are two possible ways to use hupotassein. I don’t claim to understand Eph. 5 clearly. I have more questions than answers.
However, I do not like the way it can be used to reinforce all human submission as if these relationships were from God. I believe that the extension of this is the justification of slaverly and global inequality. We need to do better than this. We need to recognize the roots of mutuality in Eph. 5:21 or we will simply support the status quo, rather than challenge it.
John, you said,
…you deny the obvious when you disassociate submission from authority in the context of a household code…
I know you were speaking to Don, but I’d like to respond: the submission of both the church to Christ and the wife to the husband is not stated in the passage as being to authority, but to the head.
My point in pointing out that overplaying one’s hand, et al, is sin was simply to say that we should not euphemize sin. I’m not taking any sides here except to say that we can’t hope to reach truth if we allow barriers of sin to remain in place. An “overstated case” cannot represent truth, because it is an untruth!
When I follow the lead of my wife in the domains over which she takes the lead, I yield to her authority. It is also possible to speak of that as ALSO yielding to Christ’s authority, but I would be careful of making a direct equation.
Thanks for your response. My question had to do with the fact that you are under no obligation to yield to your wife’s authority if it is not right before God in Christ to do so — you (and I, and everyone) must first be yielding to Christ to know whether or not any particular authority ought be yielded to. It must first pass muster in Christ.
And, forgive me, but I’m not clear on what you are saying in your response on Paul’s “positive authority” — are you saying that you have authority to delegate authority to your wife? Or simply authority to delegate? And if the former, does she have her own authority to delegate to you (or elsewhere) that is not first granted her by you?
If she does, then from where does she get it? Because it can’t be found in Eph. 5 in the manner in which you are interpreting it. This is why I’ve asked you about it, and want to understand how you see your marriage in light of these passages. Thanks for indulging me
Suzanne,
It is good to see you considering other relevant examples of hupotassein in Hellenistic Greek. A fuller list is available in Eliot’s Anchor Bible commentary on 1 Peter.
Of course every passage Eliot cites (there are still more) raises all kinds of questions. But the point is that the use of hupotassein by Josephus, Plutarch, and others in terms of a specific and restricted application to marriage is far more relevant to the word’s contextual usage in Ephesians than is Clement’s letter. An exegete who seeks to read the Ephesians, Colossians, and 1 Peter passages historically will naturally do so in light of contextually comparable passages like those of Josephus and Plutarch, rather than that of Clement.
It is well-known that Greco-Roman ethical counsel in the domestic sphere concentrated on three sets of relationships: husband-wife, parents-children, and master-slave. The sense one must give to hupotassein in Ephesians 5:21 has to fit the whole pericope the verse introduces, Ephesians 5:21-6:9, in all three of these paradigmatic relationships.
In all three kinds of relationships, Paul does not undo the lines of authority typical of his day, but qualifies them according to analogies from our walk with God in Christ.
Don,
It is not just the early Christian Fathers who understood the passage as outlined above. Everyone did, until the rise of modern feminism.
For this reason, the traditional marriage framework across all branches of Christianity was “love-obey” until recently. To be sure, it is also true that Christians and everyone else, both then and now, have often been incredibly sexist, in both overt and covert ways.
But for Bible-believing Christians, it is not about being sexist or not. It is about being faithful to scripture, to the point of offering gender-specific advice to husband and wife, even if that is something you don’t feel comfortable doing and even if that means by so doing that one is vulnerable to the charge of sexism. So be it.
If the meaning of passages like Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 is not what biblical egalism says it is, but the meaning antiquity without exception gave it, and the meaning many Christian egals give it – NRSV 1 Peter 3:1 is only one example of Christian egalism, but a very important one – is it still possible to be a Bible-believing egal?
I so affirm. Molly gave an analogy with respect to holy kissing. That is not something I do now (though I did while a pastor in Sicily: that’s because the culture allows it). Am I therefore currently unfaithful to Scripture?
No. The important thing is that I take the time to warmly greet fellow Christians with a sense of holiness and gratitude. BTW, many congregations languish because this is not the norm.
As I see it, the egal marriage model, even though Paul and Peter did not envision it, is compatible with their teaching so long as:
(1) Marriage and the experience of authority and intimacy in that context are grounded in the experience of Christ’s exercise of authority on our behalf, the supreme example of which is his laying down his life on our behalf; in the unity we have in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit; and in the reverence we have for Christ in that context.
(2) The experience of authority, intimacy, and reverence flow in both directions, at least as much as it must in a biblically faithful traditional or neo-traditional framework. That is, a healthy marriage is founded on the willingness to create and live within domain-based hierarchies in which servant leadership is practiced and accepted by the parts.
BTW, many marriages (egal and comp) languish because the above is not the norm.
I have explained on previous occasions that positive authority sometimes involves making a decision that no one else among those affected is happy with. More often, it involves a wide application of the principle of mutual consent. The effective exercise of positive authority in healthy egal no less than healthy complementarian marriages is complementarian according to a suitable understanding of the analogy of the relationship of Christ and his church.
Put another way, a marriage is not healthy, regardless of framework, is one member is domineering over against the other (note how Jesus never domineers, nor does the church).
It is unhealthy if it lacks hierarchy on a domain by domain basis (note how Jesus emphasizes in parable after parable how much authority the one who has all authority delegates to his servants; the Parable of the Talents is just one example).
It is unhealthy if it runs on the principle of consensus at all costs (Jesus didn’t operate on the principle of consensus either, though he allowed himself to directed by the Syro-Phoenician woman precisely because she was exercising authority on behalf of another, her daughter).
A marriage is unhealthy if it is not outward-centered rather than self-centered (the example of Christ is absolutely lucid).
It has to have a goal behind itself. “Seek ye first” applies precisely to marriage. This last fact, if it is a fact, is the saving grace of all marriages.
Marriage makes sense from the Christian point of view only if it is a vehicle for love of God and love of neighbor. The love of spouses for each other and for their children cannot be a closed circle but an open one.
Thanksgiving is upon us in the US. Please read Deuteronomy 26:1-11. Each unit of production in ancient Israel (typically, but not universally, headed up by a male) is addressed. But the act of thanksgiving and the rendering of the first fruits must include, according to this passage and others, both Levites (pastors and other church staff) and aliens (resident aliens without citizenship). The list is not exhaustive but paradigmatic. Elsewhere the poor are specifically mentioned.
If a family arranges its life around such principles, it is biblical. If it doesn’t, it hardly matters whether father and mother self-identify as comp or egal. The family remains unfaithful to the Word of God.
A Happy Thanksgiving to all. My congregation is gearing up for a community Thanksgiving dinner (last year we shared the holiday with many of the poorest and most isolated in the area). An hour or two later, Paola will serve turkey to 24 family members. I will be taking orders from her in that context, as will all our children.
Sue wrote: “Yes, I think there are two possible ways to use hupotassein. I don’t claim to understand Eph. 5 clearly. I have more questions than answers.”
My take is that Paul did a radical refinement of the word by clearly making it mutual in Eph 5:21. As you have shown repeatedly, there is no necessary implication of authority when this term is used, there MIGHT be authority involved or there might not, it depends on more details. So I hope that everyone will join other egals like me and make the “no necessary authority” choice for the husband and wife case. That way, the couple is free to structure their marriage in whatever way they deem best as guided by God and Scripture.
John wrote: “The sense one must give to hupotassein in Ephesians 5:21 has to fit the whole pericope the verse introduces, Ephesians 5:21-6:9, in all three of these paradigmatic relationships.
In all three kinds of relationships, Paul does not undo the lines of authority typical of his day, but qualifies them according to analogies from our walk with God in Christ.”
If you refuse to see that Paul changes the verbs for both husband and wife in this pericope when compared to the Greco-Roman teaching of the time, then I can at least point this out to others and hope they will choose to decline the authority implications you make as they are not necessary.
Each can make their own choice in this matter, it is clear to me you want to make the husband-authority choice, but it is not clear why you do.
Suzanne,
You say,
“We need to recognize the roots of mutuality in Eph. 5:21 or we will simply support the status quo, rather than challenge it.”
I understand, but I disagree. I don’t think mutuality in the sense you mean is implied by Eph 5:21.
However, mutuality is a central teaching of scripture. It appears frequently, most prominently in the love your neighbor as yourself teaching – to which Paul appeals in Eph 5:28 within the very same context in which he allows patriarchy to stand in a qualified sense.
Furthermore, the teaching of mutuality is on a trajectory in scripture. I know that many people don’t like trajectories, but if they are Bible-believing, the problem is theirs, not mine. Since they are in the Bible, I will teach them.
Mutuality is on a trajectory in scripture because, whereas love of peers inclusive of enemies is not widely taught in the Old Testament, it is raised to a first principle by Christ.
It is on a trajectory because of the prophecy of Joel cited by Peter on Pentecost.
I could go on. Note that trajectories cannot be coerced. If they are coerced, if people impose them on others, they are denatured.
In England, slavery was abolished by consent of the elected representatives of the slaveholding class. That was the way to do it.
Sure, you can impose it in the aftermath of a war with millions of dead and wounded on both sides. But that was a terrible divine judgment on the American people.
The Obama presidency is in some sense a sign that the curse of antebellum slavery in the South has finally come to an end.
Bonnie,
You say,
“My question had to do with the fact that you are under no obligation to yield to your wife’s authority if it is not right before God in Christ to do so — you (and I, and everyone) must first be yielding to Christ to know whether or not any particular authority ought be yielded to. It must first pass muster in Christ.”
I agree. But I would be a sad husband if my wife prepared a great meal of liver and cauliflower – neither of which are favorites of mine – and I had the gall to suggest that I can criticize her for it because she cannot prove her choices pass muster in Christ.
Similarly, she would be a sad wife if she suggested that she can criticize me for the choices I’m making in guiding our oldest through the college selection process because I cannot prove my choices pass muster in Christ.
The domain-based hierarchies I note are not of course iron-clad and in any case, exist by a mix of default, cultural givens, and active mutual consent. Within those hierarchies, servant leadership is delegated to one or the other.
In short, your principle does not change the fact that deference is a necessary feature of a healthy dynamic of receiving and giving of authority. Deference implies obligation, though not in an absolute sense and not apart from the will of God revealed in Christ.
As far as your disassociation of “head” from “authority” in Eph 5:21- 24, I have already given my reasons for why I find the disassociation unconvincing.
Remember that head is a metaphor here. You have to unpack it in terms of the context. The husband is the head to whom the wife is called on to submit. The obvious sense is that submission involves yielding to his initiative which, as Eph 5:25 clarifies, must be the initiative of a husband who loves his wife and Christ loved the church. In a patriarchal culture, Paul I believe was entirely right to teach along these lines.
If we live in a different culture such that holy kissing, wearing kerchiefs, and less than mutual submission in marriage seem out of the question (not in the absolute sense, but in the sense that changing those things appears to miss the true point of the passages themselves), then our task has to be apply the teaching of the passages as best we can within the changed cultural situation.
For the rest, I do not see my marriage in light of Ephesians 5 alone, but in light of the entire biblical witness, and according to a sense of a hierarchy of truth reflected in the historic creeds.
For this reason, to be clear, I could not be a Baptist if that means regarding Christians who do not baptize adults only by immersion as unfaithful to a fundamental truth of Scripture and as grounds for separating from them in terms of worship and fellowship.
In the case of marriage and slavery, Paul and Peter do not envision non-patriarchal forms of marriage nor the end of slavery.
Nonetheless, I do not consider an end to slavery as in contradiction with Scripture. Nor do I consider an egalitarian marriage like my own, in which delegation of authority is bilateral by definition, to be in contradiction with scripture, so long as conditions met in my immediately preceding comment are met.
How does a Christ-filled traditional or neo-traditional marriage differ from of an egal marriage in terms of delegation of authority? Little to not at all, because 1 Cor 13 and Rom 12 will be the touchstones of the husband’s delegation of authority across domains according to a mix of default, cultural givens, and mutual consent.
When I say this, by the way, I have very specific traditional and complementarian marriages among my friends and extended family in mind. My “little or not at all” statement is based on observation.
John,
One of the things we differ on is that I see Paul and Peter envisioning egal marriage, perhaps not using that word, but the concept is there, the symmetry is there.
I decline to use the term “gender specific advice” as a euphemism to justify a male on top hierarchy. Yes, there is specific emphases, but take away the male hierarchy component and it is ONLY emphases of this good thing or that that are left.
Don,
Are you suggesting that Eggerichs, Thomas, Sumner, and other non-egals are engaging in euphemisms when they give out gender-specific advice?
I know you refrain from following their lead, but I’m not sure how, exactly, they can be said to support a “male on top hierarchy.’
Eggerichs teaches 2 non-egals items, hierarchy and authority, out of 12, as a general statement. He teaches them in the context of gender-specific advice, but does not call it that. The other 10 items he teaches are not egal or non-egal for the most part, they are good things to do for another.
Sumner agrees she is not egal, but I have not read her latest book. Thomas I have not read. But if they are not egal, then at some point they teach a male on top hierarchy.
Eggerichs in the 10 “general” items has some great insights; it is useful for anyone to read those. But the packaging of the items includes the 2 non-egal items, that is, they are “embedded” in a lot of other stuff.
CBMW when it discusses womanhood mentions many general things that no one has concerns about; it is the specific male on top hierarchy that is a concern but this gets “embedded” in a lot of other stuff.
It is the “embedding” of a male on top hierarchy in any discussion of gender specific advice that is my concern.
Don,
Thank you for clarifying. If I am not mistaken, your concern is with authority and hierarchy in general.
You are well aware of the abuses to which authority and hierarchy are subject. Perhaps, then, you cannot imagine that the exercise of authority and hierarchical arrangements can be positives in marriage just as they are in the workplace and in the family.
Your terminology, “male on top hierarchy,” decides the question in advance. It is a polemical characterization. It is not the terminology that Eggerichs, Thomas, and Sumner use, ever, in developing their non-egal marriage advice.
But there are such things as life-enhancing hierarchy and beautiful authority. If a woman is “on top” in those situations, I suppose you could call it “woman on top hierarchy.” That is how many people look at the prospect of having a female presbyter or bishop.
It is my view that your view and that of those who object to female presbyters have a key element in common: a definition of authority as “authority over,” authority as equivalent to domination, not authority “on behalf of.”
John,
I wasn’t suggesting that anyone prove that what they do passes muster in Christ; I suggested that each of us have no Lord but Christ. We have no obligation to accept (or submit to) anything from anyone that does not, in our honest estimation before Christ, pass muster in Him. (We are accountable to Him whether our estimation is wrong or not, and if we hand off our own responsibility in this onto someone else, then we’re accountable/responsible for that too!)
Deference must be awarded with prudence
As to “head” and “authority,” my statement does not disassociate the two, but rather makes a distinction between them. “Head” in Eph. 5 cannot be interchanged with “authority.” There is an authority in headship but that authority is neither owned nor wielded by the head. There is also a very great authority in proper submission.
There is no call of initiative given in the passage to which wives submit; they submit to their husbands as their head. (Eph. 5:22-23) A husband is head of his wife simply by fact of being a husband, and whether he loves her properly or not. He is her head in any culture; he is charged to love her as Christ loved the church in any culture. Christ is the head of His body, the church; the husband is head of his wife, his body, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones — Eph. 5:28-31
“Within those hierarchies, servant leadership is delegated to one or the other.”
By whom? And from where do you believe your wife gets her authority — directly from God, or as delegated by you?