I encourage you to read this great post by my friend Sarah Flashing @ CT’s Gifted For Leadership blog. I think Sarah’s really onto something and she’s tapped into a life issue I’ve considered as well.
Sarah talks about the apparent acceptance of a “dualism that God never intended” between gifts and roles, based in part on confusing self-denial with selflessness. The selflessness of submission is not the same as the self-denial which often is equated with submission, selflessness being a “giving to,” rather than a “giving up.” There is no reason that a woman should have to choose between her gifts and her roles as wife or mother, though she may not be able to exercise all of her gifts at any one time. But she needn’t suppress them; she can simply give herself to whatever needs her most at the time.
Sarah and I have discussed the implications of this for the way Christians handle abuse. Submitting to abuse is self-denial, not selflessness. Victims often cope via a “false asceticism,” imagining that, in “giving up” the pleasure of being treated well, they are gaining spiritually, and serving the abuser spiritually as well. But it is not selfish to want your husband (or wife, or whoever) to love you and treat you well. And it is not an act of selflessness to abandon responsibility to help him toward godliness by simply “spiritualizing” your wants. Turning your desires “over to God” in a self-denying way doesn’t truly turn them over (or make them go away), but rather seeks to make God a substitute for the unloving person, which He is not and cannot ever be.
Selflessness dictates that, in the face of poor treatment (un-love), one gives one’s desire to be loved, not up, but to God. And, for love of God, gives oneself to the hard and likely unpleasant work of taking godly action against the abuse.
And, for love of God, gives oneself to the hard and likely unpleasant work of taking godly action against the abuse.
That makes so much more sense than teaching to simply accept abuse as a sign of spirituality. Thanks for this post, Bonnie.
Painful read, as it is my life story. My husband told me today that he realized that his perception of me as “unsubmissive” is wrong, He realizes I have a very submissive spirit. (((((((sigh))))))))) Long and very sad and painful story.
Bonnie, I recall your insistence that “the husband IS the head of the wife” not as a “role” or something he does, but as something he IS (whether for good or for evil)
I was reading a dictionary definition and had a lightbulb moment along the same lines regarding “submission”
From “head of the wife” this observation about Eph 5:24 “but even as the assembly is subject to Christ, so also [are] the wives to their own husbands in everything”
Being “subject to their husbands in all matters as the church is subject to Christ” is not something she DOES but something she IS!
Do you hear the difference? She can’t help it! She is controlled by however her “head” is being.
(which makes me personally lean even more toward verse 5:32 being the real truth about this passage. Paul is not speaking of flesh and blood marriage here. He is speaking of how Jesus needs to be my husband and my head so that I am controlled by Jesus, not by a fallible man.)
I don’t know, Charis. If hupotasssetai in 5:24 were an adjective or a stative verb or a perfect participle, that might be plausible. And since 5:25 follows with the subjects of both clauses having finite verbs with direct objects:
a) husbands (subject) love (imperative) their wives (object)
b) Christ (subject) loved (indicative verb) the church (object)
- i.e., 5:25 isn’t about states or conditions, but acts/actions – I think that somewhat weakens the case that 5:24 is about being, not doing.
A Greek writer doesn’t need to write every word in order to write a proper sentence. In English, the writer would be faulted for omitting required parts of speech, but Greek doesn’t have to work that way. Thus, to see what’s left out of an interlinear “translation” and then to suggest that the interlinear “translation” is the proper and complete meaning of the Greek, not allowing for implied words to be inserted, can be to mistranslate/misunderstand the Greek.
The reason the husband can be said to be (i.e., “is”) the head of the wife is because the sentence construction uses nouns and verbs of being. And though estin = “is” isn’t repeated in “the head of a/the woman/wife [is] the man/husband” and “the head of Christ [is] God,” it’s implied by the first estin (“of every man the head is Christ”) – an example of where Greek omits words because they are unnecessary, though in English translation they must be inserted.
Bonnie,
Here’s some more resources on kephale:
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2003/07/What-Paul-Really-Said-About-Women.aspx
Therefore, if Paul had believed as Aristotle taught, that husbands should command their wives and rule over them, then Paul could have made a pun out of the word arche. He could have written that the husband is the arche (head) of the wife, and in that one sentence he would have meant that the husband is to rule over the wife and at the same time have reminded his readers how man (Adam) was the source of woman (Eve, who was formed of Adam’s rib). Both senses of arche (ruler, and point of origin) would have been invoked………….
It was never used to mean “leader” or “boss” or “chief” or “ruler.” Kephale is also a military term. It means “one who leads,” but not in the sense of “director.” Kephale did not denote “general,” or “captain,” or someone who orders the troops from a safe distance; quite the opposite. A kephale was one who went before the troops, the leader in the sense of being in the lead, the first one into battle……
Now, in Hebrew, just as in English, one word means both “physical head” and “ruler.” The word is rosh. If arche and kephale were more or less synonymous and could be used interchangeably, then when the seventy scholars who wrote the Septuagint came to the Hebrew word roth, they could have used either Greek word as they wished, or instead just used one of the two all the time. However, they were very careful to note how the word rosh was used, whether it meant “physical head” or “ruler of a group.” Whenever rosh meant “physical head,” they translated it kephale; or whenever rosh referred to the first soldier leading others into battle with him, they also translated it kephale. But when rosh meant “chief” or “ruler,” they translated it arche or some form of that word. Every time, this distinction was carefully preserved.
And the same thing I wrote above wrt 1 Cor 11:3 re: the implied estin could be said about Ephesians 5:23 where estin (“is”), which occurs in “because a man/husband is head of his wife,” is implied in the next clause “as also Christ [is] head of the church”; i.e., it’s not necessary to add a second estin in the Greek. And, like 1 Cor 11:3, we’re again talking about nouns and verbs of being, which is not the same thing as using verbs like hupotassô.
Eric,
I’m certainly no greek expert, but the verb in 24 is in a
Tense: Present
Voice: Passive
Mood: Indicative
“but even as the assembly is subject to Christ, so also [are] the wives to their own husbands in everything”
I would maintain that “the assembly is subject to Christ” even if they are not a particularly godly nor cooperative assembly. They really have no choice if HE decides its time to “remove the lampstand” (see Rev 2-3)
similarly with a wife, though her earthly husband is human and may make fleshly motivated choices to which she “is subject” whether she likes it or not, whether she wants to be or not.
Charis:
It seems to me that “is subject to” makes it sound like one is translating a copulative verb and an adjective, but that is not the Greek.
When the blueletterbible parses hupotassetai as present passive indicative, it’s only telling half the story, because the form is technically present middle/passive indicative (3rd-person singular), because the present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect tenses have the same form in both the middle and the passive voice; only the aorist and the future have middle voice forms that are distinct from the passive voice form.
Also, the lexicons say that the passive form of hupotassô can be middle in meaning, so the same form that if regarded as a passive would be “is made subject to Christ” can, if the intended meaning is in fact middle, be something like “subjects him/her/itself to Christ.”
Your over my head on the greek. I spose I’ll have to take your word for it… So, the ones where the lampstands are removed in Revelation are not “the church” then because they are certainly not active in any way in “subjecting themselves”. I could go with that too…..
I’ll let Eric handle the Greek
, but will respond on Charis’ point that a wife’s “earthly husband is human and may make fleshly motivated choices to which she ‘is subject’ whether she likes it or not, whether she wants to be or not.”
Yes, this may be true, but I don’t think this ontological sense (for the wife) is what’s being discussed in Eph. 5. It’s not saying a wife is subject as the church is, but that she “ought to” subject herself as the church is subject. She seems to have a choice in the matter. As a husband has a choice in whether or not he loves his wife as himself, as Christ gave Himself for His church.
A wife is charged to submit as a husband is charged to sacrificially love, both because the husband is her head, and she his body (in the oneness of marriage).
The selflessness of submission is not the same as the self-denial which often is equated with submission, selflessness being a “giving to,” rather than a “giving up.”
Exactly. Self-denial focuses on the self. Selflessness focuses on the other.
For example, perhaps a trivial one – and without wishing to appear to be buffing my own halo too briskly, maybe ten years ago I encouraged my husband to take out a membership in the local golf club because I know he loves the game, the exercise is good for him and we had got to the point where we could afford it. He decided that I’m pretty wonderful because I encouraged him to join the club but I didn’t do it so he would think I’m pretty wonderful. I also didn’t do it so that I could let everyone know that, poor me, I’m a golf widow and hardly ever see my husband of a Saturday morning. I did it because I love him and want the best for him in this life as well as in the next.
In the early years of our marriage I fought my husband over quite a few things. Certainly many of the things we fought over were related to my life being made more difficult than I wanted it to be. But, all things put together, if we hadn’t fought and he hadn’t been given any reason to think it necessary and reasonable to make changes, his life would have been made more difficult too – particularly with an unhappy wife added to the mix. I fought him for his sake and our childrens’ sake as well as for my sake. If we had a row I refused to let him sleep until we’d sorted things out enough so that I could, at least, bear to be in the same bed with him.
If I’d denied my need to find some way to reconcile and, instead, had dutifully submitted to his desire that I should shut up and let him sleep, I doubt that he would ever have become the lovely, lovely man he is now. If he had got on some male supremacist high horse and refused to discuss what was bothering me because he wanted to sleep I’m quite sure we wouldn’t still be married. His life would be a mess, my life would be a mess, our children’s lives would be a mess.
We both had baggage that we brought to the marriage. He’s taught me. I’ve taught him. The Lord has taught us both. Thank God for the Lord!
As to the meaning of words, I think we can assume too much. We assume that people married in the 1st century AD for the same sort of reasons and under the same sorts of laws that people marry now. Therefore, advice to husbands and wives back then should be applicable now. That is too much of an assumption.
Here is a book titled, Marriage in the Western Church by P. L. Reynolds which, on pages 11-14, states,
Why do expositors on male/female relations in marriage assume that nothing has changed in the last 2,000 years? Why do they not interpret 1 Peter and Ephesians 5 according to the historico/cultural context of the texts? Peter was writing to Christian Jews in the Diaspora in Asia Minor in the first century AD. Paul was writing to the Ephesians during the same time period.
I have no idea whether or not these people were subject to Roman law in relation to marriage, or whether they could choose to be subjected to it or not. I really don’t want to hear any more from anyone about what submission or obedience might have meant for wives in those days and in those places until what that might have meant is presented in its full social/cultural/historical/legal context.
It’s one thing to tell women to obey their husbands if their husband has life or death authority over them. It’s another thing entirely to tell women they must obey their husbands, no matter what, when the our law says that any husband who abuses his wife is a criminal. Has the Holy Spirit been working all this time for nothing?
Why do expositors on male/female relations in marriage assume that nothing has changed in the last 2,000 years? Why do they not interpret 1 Peter and Ephesians 5 according to the historico/cultural context of the texts? Peter was writing to Christian Jews in the Diaspora in Asia Minor in the first century AD. Paul was writing to the Ephesians during the same time period.
Maybe because certain persons’ doctrines of inerrancy and inspiration don’t allow the Bible to be relativized or culturally-adapted or regarded as being not applicable in the same way for us today for fear that taking that step might leave an opening for putting everything on the table or up for grabs or subject to “personal opinion.”
As to the meaning of words, I think we can assume too much. We assume that people married in the 1st century AD for the same sort of reasons and under the same sorts of laws that people marry now. Therefore, advice to husbands and wives back then should be applicable now. That is too much of an assumption.”
I so agree. I think that word meanings are important, but…I get very nervous when word meanings are given more authority than the cultural backdrop. To me, the cultural backdrop provides the context within which to understand words, phrases, etc.
Maybe because certain persons’ doctrines of inerrancy and inspiration don’t allow the Bible to be relativized or culturally-adapted or regarded as being not applicable in the same way for us today for fear that taking that step might leave an opening for putting everything on the table or up for grabs or subject to “personal opinion.”
Yes, but that kind of ticks me off, because I see those same people having NO problem culturally-adapting many other parts of Scripture (such as the instructions to give holy kisses, etc). The double-standard really bothers me, because the truth is, they DO allow for a cultural backdrop where they decide it is fitting.
Molleth:
I am giving you a holy kiss! (*smack*)
Waaaaaynne…Eric is harrassing me…!!!!
Molly:
Watch Peter Pan (2003). Then you’ll understand what kind of a kiss I meant.
(sheesh!! what a crybaby!)
Waaaaaaayne… Eric is calling me names!!!!
Molleth:
Wayne just sent me an email and told us to take it outside.
Whatever. I’m not your best friend anymore. You can’t tell me what to do.
Molleth:
Since when was even your best friend ever able to tell you what to do?
Wayne,
Tell Eric I’m not talking to him anymore…and if he said anything, tell him I can’t hear it.
Thanks.
Molly
((((hugs))) to Eric.
(PS. When you get in the mood to apologize for this outrageous behavior that I have just forgiven you so graciously for, you have my address. I like gourmet chocolate. Just sayin.)
PS. Bonnie,
So sorry for high-jacking your wonderful post.
Apologize to you? You owe $3,000 in overdue book fines!
It’s okay, molleth, I needed the laugh