Dear VCOC,
As you know, we are currently in a time of great caution in our world regarding COVID-19 (commonly known as the coronavirus). As leadership, we want you to know that we are carefully monitoring the local situation and are making informed decisions in order to keep our church family safe during this time. We would like to share some thoughts about this and how it affects our community:
First, in 1 Peter 5:7 , we’re reminded to “ Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” We encourage every disciple who is experiencing anxiety, fear, or concern to cast those upon our heavenly Father, for he loves us.
Second, the greatest need of the hour is prayer. Please join us in praying for those affected, their families, our elected officials, and health professionals. And please pray for our church, that we can be a light during this uncertain time for many.
With that said, after prayer and upon the recommendation of many medical professionals within our congregation, the direction of the Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonney Henry, and our VCOC leadership team, we have decided to meet virtually every Sunday for the foreseeable future.
We will use the ZOOM app each Sunday, with the upcoming Sunday's meeting being posted here. We look forward to interacting with you all online and worshiping our heavenly Father together.
We see these measures as the best way forward for the time being. We are committed to prayer, to staying informed, and to thorough communication with each of you as the situation unfolds.
Thank you for your prayer, your partnership, and your patience.
With love,
Matt, Jen, and the VCOC Leadership Team
Today, we’re going to look at the Top Ten Frequently Asked Questions from the VCOC regarding women’s roles and gender equality within the church.
Undoubtedly, you’ll look at this list and find it incomplete. Anytime I refer to a FAQ section and it doesn’t answer my particular, specific, and convoluted questions, I commence with eye rolling and heavy sighing, lamenting the foolishness of the average question-asker. If my question isn’t answered, this must be a list of “softball” questions the author compiled to avoid the actual hard questions that people like me in all my brilliance would ask.
I get it. But if that’s you, today is not your day. These are largely broader questions.
Without further adieu, here are the Top 10 FAQs:
1. Matt, through this teaching, what exactly are you hoping to see happen within our church?
At the end of the January series called “Half the Church”, Jen and I wrote a note to the VCOC. I understand that relatively few people read my lovingly, painstakingly written emails (I want you to hear as much bitterness in that last sentence as possible, thank you very much). I answer that question in the note, and I’ll repeat the relevant portion here:
Jen and I believe that God’s original vision (described in Gen. 2 and 3) are of men and women co-ruling creation as equal partners, and that this is a vision we should work to restore. We believe 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 are culturally bound (and not consistently practiced by Paul himself). And, given the gender-neutral nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we believe both men and women should be free to pursue every aspect of ministry to which they are called. We believe it is time for the church to unequivocally affirm Christian women whether God calls them to minister through giving, encouraging, teaching, preaching, shepherding, or any other divine giftset.
So if that’s not quite clear enough – yes, I believe women should be able to lead in a public role. Yes, I believe women should be able to preach. Yes, I believe women should be able to be an elder (along with her husband).
Our ultimate goal (speaking for Jen and Matt) is that the church become a place where people are able to serve in a way that is consistent with their calling, character, and giftset. We believe that when people are using their unique gifts in service to God, God is most glorified. And when God is most glorified, Christians have a better chance of thriving, and the church has a better chance of growing.
I have to say though that this does not mean, as some have asked, that women would be the only ones active in any particular role. How silly to leap to that conclusion! As I said in the third “Half the Church” sermon, “equality for equality’s sake” is not the aim. The aim is that divine gifting determines fitness for service, regardless of gender. Men and women are in this together , and that ought to be reflected in all areas of the church.
2. Why did you feel it’s necessary to talk about this? Was there some issue or crisis? Were women feeling oppressed?
I can’t speak for whether women feel oppressed. I’m not one. But let me frame my answer for you with a story. In January, during a teen class, the high schoolers of the VCOC remarked that it was “wack” (their word, not mine) that we even had to talk about this. To them, this is largely a bygone subject.
The truth is, they assume equality.
For those who hadn’t given it much thought, it was shocking to hear that girls did not, in fact, have the same opportunity as the guys did in regard to their future opportunity to serve in the church. In my personal discussions with teens, when they discover the traditional stance on women’s roles, the number one question they ask is, “Why does God say that?”
Now, you might disagree with my conclusions after reading and studying the Scripture, but I don’t see how anyone can disagree that this is a question that must be answered for the next generation. Avoiding difficult questions serves to push kids away rather than pull them in.
This question, especially for girls, touches on their self-worth, their value, God’s view of them, their contributions to the Kingdom, and ultimately their identity. If you do not provide a thorough answer to the Why question, you are kicking open the exit doors of the Christian faith for the next generation of disciples.
Not to sound too snarky, but I feel the more apt question is, why would you feel it’s not necessary to talk about this?
3. Where do other ICOC churches stand on this issue? If we saw a “gift-based leadership” approach rather than a gender-based one, would we be liberal/heretical?
It’s a good question that deserves an honest answer. The only ICOC church I know of that embraces an egalitarian approach in ministry is our sister church in Portland, Oregon. The subject itself is being discussed across a wide array of churches who will undoubtedly land in different places.
It’s my personal belief that within 10 years, we will be seeing more churches embrace egalitarianism. In 95% of my conversations with ministers from other congregations about this, I have not yet been labelled a heretic (liberal, yes).
I believe that as we mature as a fellowship, we will need to be better at encouraging diverse church practice. The gospel depends upon it. The churches of the New Testament were practically diverse because what was needed in one city (i.e., Jerusalem, full of Jews) to spread the news of Jesus or meet the needs of the church was different than what was needed in another (i.e., Rome, full of Gentiles). Today, our church practice and policy in Vancouver might look different from a church in Manila, or Mumbai, or Miami. This should be celebrated, not condemned, because our cultures are different. To effectively spread the gospel, Manila, Mumbai and Miami need a different approach.
I share
that simply to say that even if we were to look a bit different from other ICOC
churches, it’s OK. We’ll take it in stride with as much respect and dignity and
love for our fellowship as we can.
4. If the teaching of 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 regarding women is “cultural packaging” or “time-bound”, then what else is? Does this mean that all teaching on sin is relative? Is the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality culturally bound?
This is the big one. The train of thought goes something like this: “If you do not apply some ‘very clear’ statements about women’s submission, how can you possibly accept the Bible’s prohibitions about same-sex relationships?” In fact, someone recently guaranteed me that if we change our church’s stance on women’s roles, we’ll do the same with homosexuality within a few years.
The fear is that rejecting 1 Timothy 2:12-15and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35as necessary for the 21st century church puts us on the slippery slope of liberalism. By saying those are culturally bound, aren’t we just opening the door to a flood of subjectivity?
If you want the long answer to this, I highly recommend reading “ Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals ” by William Webb. You’ll have to buy it, but it is most definitely worth the price.
The short answer, though, is that each issue must be studied individually. Doing anything less is simply giving in to hermeneutical laziness. Many of the issues that we link so closely together (such as homosexuality and women’s roles, thanks to modern secular feminism) are in fact quite separate subjects biblically.
What lies behind this question, I think, is a desire for biblical interpretation to be easy. I’ve written about this in many of my recent articles (in parts 1, 2, 3and 4), and I want to reiterate: biblical interpretation is not easy. We’re dealing with a text written to people and places thousands of years ago. This necessitates a slow, methodical, legitimate wrestling match with Scripture. What is the heart of the gospel, and how do we apply it? What is God’s Written Word, and what is its human form? There are no easy answers here and settling for the “plain reading” or “face value” of a text often does more harm than good (i.e., defending slavery with the Bible). God demands our full engagement with the text.
To sum it up, no, not all teaching on sin is relativized by embracing gender equality. Opening the door to women in public ministry doesn’t open the door to the complete marginalization of God’s word. It calls us to a high standard of biblical interpretation that demands our full attention and gives a whole new meaning to loving God with our mind.
5. Will intentionally lifting up women belittle men?
I think if men are threatened by women in leadership to the point of feeling “belittled”, there is probably some insecurity within them that’s beyond the bounds of this conversation. However, I have to repeat that the point isn’t just to “lift up women” in the VCOC. The point is to build the church , and I believe that building the church can only be done when everyone is using their divine giftset to their max.
I believe that if our church were wholly committed in effort and desire to building itself up in love and glorifying God, this question wouldn’t be one that is frequently asked.
6. It seems like reading egalitarianism into the Bible is “scratching the itch in our ear”. Isn’t that just what we want it to say? We’re supposed to be counter-cultural. The Bible seems to emphasize the unique leadership of men.
I agree that to deny that the Bible is a patriarchal book would be a fool’s errand. But, as I’ve said elsewhere, I think patriarchalism is the background to the story, not the moral of it.
A helpful analogy that I once heard (via a book called Inspiration and Incarnation ) is that just as Jesus was incarnational, the Bible is too. Because Jesus was born into ancient Israel, he acted and spoke in ways that an ancient Israelite would understand. If he tried to speak like a 5th century Chinese woman, his audience would be clueless. If he tried to use analogies that a 14th century Frenchman would understand, his audience would be clueless. If he tried to act like a 21st century Canadian, his audience be clueless.
I think you get the point – Jesus lovingly spoke their language so that they could see God evidenced in him. That’s what “incarnational” means. And the Bible acts in the same way. It’s God’s “incarnational” word – spoken into real places and times to real people who needed to understand Him. It necessarily speaks their language and custom.
An abolitionist text (meaning one that frees slaves) would not make sense to its recipients. And so slavery is accommodated over and over in the Bible because it’s all they knew. But thankfully, we know this is not the totality of God’s will and we find that there are passages and ethics that, if applied consistently, point to the abolition of slavery.
An egalitarian text would not make sense to them. And so a patriarchal society is accommodated over and over in the Bible because it’s all they knew. And yet there are hints, themes, and passages that, if applied consistently, point to something beyond a patriarchal norm (at least, in my opinion).
Finally, the “counter-cultural” argument strikes me as altogether unhelpful. Is this really the issue that we want to define us as counter-cultural? What about embracing the poor and the refugees? What about the resistance of materialism? What about rejecting self as the centre of the universe? What about serving others over ourselves? What about the pursuit of humility, not pride? There is no shortage of “counter-cultural” material in the Bible that frankly we’d be better off pursuing as our rallying cry than the silence of women in church.
7. Why didn’t Jesus choose a woman to be an apostle?
I tried to shed some light on this in my last post. I’ll copy and paste it here (though reading the full article might be more helpful):
"Behind this question is a big assumption: that the choosing of the twelve is prescriptive for church leadership [or even a commentary about the inherent abilities of men and women].
It isn’t. Reading that into the text is missing the point.
One of the things that was crucial for Jesus and the New Testament authors was to help people see that God was building on and continuing the work he had started so long ago with his people. The kingdom of God that Jesus was ushering in wasn’t a departure from Judaism and the beginning of a brand new, separate faith; it was the fulfillment and continuation of the work God had started long ago to restore the world. The New Covenant, ushered in by Jesus, was being built on top of the Old Covenant.
So, Jesus symbolically chose twelve free Jewish men to serve as his apostles in the New Covenant era. These twelve Jewish men represent the twelve tribes of Israel, and even more specifically, they represent the twelve patriarchs of Israel. Because they were representing the twelve patriarchs, the Twelve couldn’t be anything other than free Jewish men.
When we look at the Twelve and leap to the conclusion that Jesus is declaring that women can’t lead, we’re setting ourselves up for a pretty limited church leadership pool.
Here’s what I mean:
It would be inconsistent and unfair to restrict only women based on Jesus’ choosing here, because Jesus’s criteria were threefold: male, Jewish, and free. To see the choosing of the Twelve as prescriptive for church practice would mean we have to restrict Gentiles and slaves from church leadership, too, since these demographics weren’t represented in the Twelve.
The “slave” part might not be such a limiting factor today (in the West, anyway), but to our brethren over the centuries it most certainly would be. The Gentile part would be absolutely crushing for church leadership in the 21st century. 99.9% of my fellow evangelists and church leaders, myself included, would need to step down from our position.
Reading the choosing of the Twelve prescriptively for church leadership is disastrous."
8. Are you saying that there are no “household roles”? Do wives not need to submit to their husbands to maintain harmony? Do men need to make the final decision in a marriage?
I answered this to a greater extent here. In short, I think the running of the household and the public arena of the church are two separate matters that need to be addressed in their own right.
However, I think questions such as “who submits to who”, and “who’s responsible for maintaining harmony”, and “who makes the final decisions”, are indicative of something more troubling going on below the surface of a marriage. Nowhere does Jesus say leadership is authoritative; in fact, he says quite the opposite. If a husband is creating an atmosphere in a marriage that requires a wife to submit to experience “harmony,” he needs to sit down and reread Ephesians 5:21-32. If a husband is loving his wife as Christ loved the church, these aren’t questions that arise.
9. What if not every current member of the VCOC agrees with this teaching? What will you do?
To start, I would once again encourage every one of our members to study this out for themselves. To be honest, if someone who has spent no time investigating this issue were to voice their opinion in dissent or support, I would not take it very seriously.
Still, this is a difficult question. People talk about harmed consciences and stumbling blocks and offending one another when it comes to the subject of women’s roles. I get it. I really do. I want to reiterate that people filled with the Holy Spirit and who dearly love God and his word have looked at the same evidence I have and said, “I don’t agree.” And if that’s you, I love you and embrace you!
That said, it would grieve us (Jen and I) deeply for anybody to physically leave the church or nurse suspicions of heresy toward us or the VCOC if, indeed, we ended up going down the road of egalitarianism.
If it turns out that a good section of the church is absolutely, positively, conscientiously opposed to a gifts-based leadership approach at any point, we’d pause and re-evaluate what our next steps should be (both as a church and perhaps on a more personal level). We wouldn’t want to serve as a stumbling block for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We certainly wouldn’t push a change through that has no support.
If, though, most of the reservation is uncertainty or fear rather than moral objection, we would humbly and boldly ask that the church be willing to take a “step in faith” with us. Maybe the experiment would fail miserably. Who knows? But that’s the pattern of a life of faith – taking small (sometimes big) steps of faith and seeing God come through along the way.
10. Where are we going from here?
The word I want the VCOC to hear is process. I will come back with a more fully fleshed out “roadmap” in April, as promised at the end of the series “Half the Church.” For now, there is more Learning, Discerning and Yearning to be done for our church (remember that cheesy rhyme?).
In the coming couple of months, there will be an in-person Q&A with myself and Jen. There will be a couple more Conversation Café- type meetings. We will have a time of prayer and fasting. And if change is what the church wants, it will likely go in slow increments.
It’s really important for you to know that you (yes, you) are part of this process. You know what Jen and I think. We don’t yet know what all of you think. And it would be unhelpful for us to push such a significant change through without being a part of a conversation.
Process is critical in moving at the speed of unity. But moving is exceedingly difficult if we do not know the terrain that lies ahead – such as what you think, and your opinions, and your fears. We want to provide as much opportunity as possible for the church to be heard, but you must make use of such opportunities.
Please love us and the church enough to engage in the conversation and the process – whatever your convictions may be. It is our promise to be as open and honest with you as we can about this issue, and we hope that you can do the same with us.
Well, that’s all, folks. I can’t say I’ll miss writing every week, but I’m glad to have done it. Jen and I love this church very much and are so thankful for the trust you show us by allowing us to lead.
Disclaimer : This began as an internal conversation in the VCOC, but has since reached a larger audience. If you’re reading this from afar, I want you to know that spiritual, godly people have approached the Scriptures on this issue and land in different places. And that’s OK. You might not agree with me or the reasoning in these articles. This does not make you wrong, “stuck in the past”, or anything like that.
A friend recently shared a prayer he’s been praying that might serve as great guidance as we talk about this together:
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
O God of truth, deliver us. [Mishkan T’Filah – A Reform Siddur, p.43]
_________________________________________________________
If you’ve stuck with me four weeks in a row, you deserve a medal.
We’re now in the second half of six articles on women’s roles in the church. You can click on any of these to read the previous installments:
This is a slight detour from our original question (can women serve in public ministry?), but it’s nonetheless important. Inevitably when we start talking about women’s roles in the church, the discussion at least touches on male/female relationships in the home.
Here’s an example of a question I had to field recently:
“If women can teach at church, are you saying women should wear The Pants at home?”
Well, yes, my wife does wear pants at home. And I quite like her pants. Of course, what this question’s really about is “who has the authority” in a relationship.
Questions like these are pretty revealing and indicate that the discussion about gender equality is, indeed, a question that goes well beyond the public sphere and hits on a more central, personal question: are we equally valuing our Christian sisters as partners in the gospel?
Before I get cracking with this, let’s look again at the quick, basic hermeneutical (approach I take as I read the Bible, including the “Household Codes” of the New Testament (which we’ll read today).
1. The Bible is God’s word in human form . No, I didn’t coin that phrase. But it’s great because it indicates that there is eternal truth (God’s word) that is wrapped in cultural packaging (human form). In other words, God didn’t just plop a book down in front of us. It was written to real people in real places in real times.
2. Because it’s in human form, we’ve got some work to do to understand it. As it’s written to real people in real places in real times, BY real people in real places in real times, it’s worth it to figure out who those people were and what made them tick during the time they existed.
3. Because we’ve got work to do to understand it, we also have to work out how to apply it . I think all of us do the best we can, but this Bible is anything but straightforward. There’s some funky stuff in there that we just don’t know what to do with. So, some of that funky stuff we leave on the table. We don’t follow parts of it. This completely normal, and we do it every time we read the Bible.
4. Because we’re constantly working out how to apply it, we’ve got to remain humble . We hope we've got it right, but that's the best we can do. Humility in interpretation is critical in our journey of faith.
Similar to getting in the passenger’s seat with a new teenage driver, this hermeneutical approach gives some of us a lot of us anxiety. If we really are “working out” how to apply it, what’s to protect us from going off the rails? Why can’t we just have a Bible that simply tells us what to do and makes it easy?!
Here’s the thing, though: this is really all God’s fault . He chose to give us the Bible this way. Through all kinds of stories, genres, and people, writing from their own limited view of how the world worked, God locked in the ambiguity for us. This is why you can have devout, highly intelligent people look at the same texts and land in different places (such as the discussion at hand on women’s roles in the church, and a thousand other debatable issues in Christianity). They’re wrestling with what the eternal truth of God’s word is and what the cultural packaging of human form is .
Before you despair, there’s good news. At the end of the day God, who loves us and wants what’s best for us, knows what’s best for us. There must be something about giving us the Bible this way that allows us to better honour and follow him than by giving it to us some other way – even ways that we think we’d want.
OK, that was a bit of a long of a recap. By way of an example, let’s look at some of the Human Form of the first century in regards to male and female roles in marriage and in the home.
For us Westerners, love is almost always part of the marriage equation. As the old song says: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby to wreck everything . Is that how it goes? You know the one.
Anyways, whether or not that’s your marriage story, it’s probably vaguely reminiscent. I saw my wife, fell in love (those two steps aren’t unrelated), asked her to marry me, said the vows, and the rest is history. Now she’s stuck.
The thing that makes this love thing so great and so scary is that Jen (my wife) at any moment could’ve said no. She had a choice in marrying me, and she chose “yes”. And she’s still choosing yes!
In the first-century world, though, marriage was a different affair. A typical marriage was established by contract, regardless of the wife-to-be’s wishes, and was usually (but not always) between a man of about thirty and a teenage girl who went straight from her father’s household to her new husband’s. Her new husband would teach her how to help manage his household, and she'd exist primarily to provide him with a legitimate heir. She never had the option to say “no” to this whole process.
To make it worse, the husband was expected to rule his new wife. Women were seen as inferior to men (at least by guys like Plutarch, Plato, Aristotle, and Josephus). To put it in Josephus’s own words, “A woman is inferior to her husband in all things. Let her, therefore, be obedient to him; not so that he should abuse her, but that she may acknowledge her duty to her husband; for God has given the authority to the husband.” Thanks Joe!
In other words, men rule, women drool (well, obey is probably a better word).
So with all that in mind, let’s read two of the Household Codes of the New Testament:
Ephesians 5:19 – 6:9:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Colossians 3:19 – 4:1:
Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.
Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
If you didn’t notice, both in Colossians and Ephesians the same “class” of people are addressed: wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, and masters (in that specific order). Lists like this were nothing unique to Christianity - in fact, they’re relatively common in the ancient world. But something different is going on in God’s Word in Human Form, so let’s take a look.
First, while ancient household codes are common, they are almost always addressed specifically to the socially superior party – which, you guessed it, were men and slave owners. But in both of these passages, Paul calls all parties (including children and slaves, the bottom of the social rung) to moral responsibility. This is, believe it or not, quite humanizing.
Second , it’s helpful to think in terms of what’s missing from these passages. I searched as hard as I could, and Paul never does command someone to wear the pants in the family. Sorry, folks – he must be a hopeless liberal. Further, there’s no directive for men to “exercise authority over” their wives, or “provide leadership for” their wives, or “be responsible for” their wives.
Third , look at what’s said to the husband. In a situation that’s just begging for abuse where the husbands had all the rights and privileges in the household, Paul calls husbands to pour themselves out for their wives and love them (and love had very little to do with marriage back then). So crucial is this ethic that he repeats it three times in Ephesians alone and then caps off the whole argument by pointing to Jesus’ death on a cross as the true paradigm of loving your wife. Phew!
Paul is smuggling a kingdom ethic into the existing marital framework of his day. The kingdom ethic is that women are members of Christ’s body alongside the men, that they are deserving of love and sacrifice, and that they are fully human people who are responsible to God. This is a far cry from "the inferiority of women in all things"!
So far so good. But to get to what this means for us today, we’ve got to look closer . These two biblical household codes don’t even cover all Christians in Paul’s own day.
These codes are written to the minority elite – the privileged few who actually had large households. It’s worth asking how this passage would be heard in households that don’t look this way (with husbands, wives, children, slaves, and masters).
For instance, in Colossians 4:15, Paul greets Nympha from Laodicea and the church that lives in her house. By the way, Nympha, being the householder, almost certainly gave leadership to the church that met in her house (especially since no husband is named). It’s extremely difficult to imagine that it could have been otherwise in the Greco-Roman world. Anyways, In the absence of a husband to submit to, how would Nympha follow Paul’s mandates for the running of a proper Christian household? Does she assume the man’s position? Does she submit to other men to whom she is not married? Does she ignore it and blaze her own trail? It’s hard to say.
Further, Paul’s instructions for wives are written particularly to the wives of the householder. What about the wife of a slave couple? Obedience for her would be first to her master, not her husband. How would she live out this ethic?
What about women who aren't married to a Christian? (1 Peter might be more helpful here.)
As you can see, these codes while radical don’t cover all necessary ground. Because they're written to a specific situation, we’ve got to do some hermeneutical work to discover the God’s Word bit and the Human Form bit.
What you find in these codes is that Paul doesn't overthrow the common societal/marital structures; rather, he transforms them by pointing people to imitate the work Jesus has done for them in their relationships with each other.
The husband, sitting comfortably at the top of Privilege Pyramid, is called to pour himself out for and submit to his wife (Eph. 5:19). The wife, viewed by her contemporaries as a possession and servant to her husband’s whims, is now a joint heir of grace as a full person of God, and submits herself to her loving husband.
The transformative nature of this whole shebang is that when the husband actually follows what Paul tells him, one-sided submission (by the wife) becomes impossible. In Paul’s mind, Christian marriage ought to be characterized by each side submitting to the other.
So should wives submit to their husbands? Yes, they should. And husbands should submit to their wives in an equal way.
The reality of these texts is that if you apply them unilaterally across the board and actually follow them, they point beyond a man-wearing-the-pants ethic. You find an ethic that abolishes hierarchy in marriage.
It’s really, really difficult to imagine a scenario in a marriage defined by the type of love Paul mandates where a loving husband would insist on getting his way over the will of his wife.
I’d even go so far as to propose that today in the West, complementarians in theory are egalitarians in practice . One of the first pieces of advice I got when I was married was to never use Ephesians 5:22 (“wives, submit to your husbands) in an argument. Can you imagine how that'd go in a fight? No thanks. I have to say, I’m glad I followed their advice.
Again, God’s Word in Human Form meets the patriarchal structure of the day in which it was spoken and transforms it from the inside out.
Far from prescribing patriarchy in marriage, God’s Word in Human Form frees us from it . Paul’s words point toward something greater, something better, and something vastly more intimate than “woman, submit to me.”
To get down to brass tacks, here’s the conclusion of the matter in my mind:
God’s Word: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ , who made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.
Human Form : Women, uniquely submit to men.
In our place with our people in our time , I think that reading these Household Codes in such a way that emphasize the unique submission of women to men actually fights against the gospel. Rather than transforming institutions of the world with a kingdom-shaped ethic (like Paul does), it transforms the kingdom of God with a world-shaped ethic.
There’s no doubt about it: the modern-day home is radically different from Paul’s original audience. When he was writing, he was attempting to encourage Christian lifestyles in existing (patriarchal) contexts. I do not believe these instructions are meant to set boundaries for all eternity, everywhere.
Obsessing about “who wears the pants,” or “who has the final say in a decision”, or “in what areas should wives submit”, strike me as a complete whiff when it comes to the kingdom ethic Paul sets forth.
A better set of questions we should be asking in our marriage is “How do I serve my wife? How do I serve my husband? How can we use our gifts together to serve the people around us?”
These questions look beyond gender and into the greater background of kingdom thinking, which is exactly what the church needs to promote the gospel of Jesus in the 21st century.
Next Monday, we're going to bring Jesus in to the conversation. Don't miss out.
____________________
Interested in learning more? Here's a link to a list of resources I've leaned on in my study of women's roles.
