Craig

Thanks TL.
What I was trying to think of was an example where Mark himself would agree that the church was generally wrong for “x” number of years and so the argument he is using is not valid. Just because something has been generally believed by the church for “x” number of years doesn’t make it right.
I have heard it said that comps like Mark really aren’t that traditional themselves because even his view of women is different (and better) than the church has traditionally believed. They say how new the egal view is but there are aspects to the traditional view that even they can’t swallow and have therefore changed.
Of course, throughout history, as you say, I am sure that the Holy Spirit has been doing amazing things through remnants that aren’t bound by the traditions of men.

Hi TL,
@165

“To say that the whole church got it wrong for two thousand years about something so ethically important is a big claim.”
This is not really a valid concern.

I agree that this argument carries little weight. Many individuals, groups, denominations, if not all Christians for varying amounts of time throughout history have got some pretty important issues wrong.
Am I correct in thinking that it is only fairly recently (in terms of 2000 years) that Christians have generally been willing to at least say that women are not inferior to men- that they are equal in value? Haven’t they generally been thought of as more easily deceived? Yet I don’t think Mark would say that women are inferior and that they are more easily deceived.
I think there would be things taught at Moore Theological College (where I think Mark studied) that have only been really accepted within the last few centuries if not less.

Thanks Kristen and TL for reading and thinking about all of this material. I really appreciate any thoughts you or others have, whether they be on just one small point, or on all that Mark has written.

I just got an email from Mark B. I will put material from my email to him in quotation marks, and Mark’s thoughts and reflections in normal font. Sorry again for the length.

Hi Craig,

Sorry this has taken a bit longer to get around to – we had a bit more illness towards the end of last week.  
I think the best way for me to interact with what’s here, is to add my own thoughts and reflections after sections I want to comment on.

Hi Mark,
Thanks for your reply.
I passed on the meat of your emails (not the personal stuff) to a spot where Kristen hangs out. Kristen gave quite a thoughtful response so I asked her if I could share it with you. She was fine with that.

Heh, if I’d known this was what you meant by sharing it further I probably would have written something quite different. It wasn’t meant to be an argument why anyone else (certainly not an egal) should do this. It was a reflection on why I do. And I’m not an idealist about these things – people hold the views they do for good, bad and indifferent reasons, not simply because they have tight logical arguments. So if you ask me why I think something you’ll often get a different answer than if you ask me why I think something is right – those two aren’t quite the same thing. But that’s fine, spilt milk and all that.

Following Kristen’s comments to me regarding your emails, I have written some of my own comments.

From Kristen
Ok, I’m going to try to throw out a few thoughts here, off the top of my head. I’m not sure how clear they will be.?I think Mark’s view of the historical context oversimplifies. He says patriarchy is a “philosophy” (I assume he means a “system”) and patriarchal marriage, slavery and the parent-child relationship were all patriarchal in nature. Then he says that egalitarians believe Paul’s purpose was to subvert the practices of patriarchal marriage and slavery from within– but that in saying this, we ignore the parent-child relationship, which is also authority-based.?In order to say this, Mark appears to be defining “patriarchal” as meaning “based on the authority of one person over another.” But that’s not what “patriarchy” means– particularly as it was expressed in the 1st-century Roman Empire. “Patriarchy” in the Roman Empire meant a system of “households” which were different from our modern nuclear families. A “household” was an economic unit ruled by a patriarch– the “pater familias” who was the ruler of his wife, grown children, their children, and his slaves. It is a modern misconception to think that the only “children” who were being addressed in Ephesians 5 were minors.??Mark appears, then to be switching the real meaning of patriarchy with “relationships containing authority.” As you already pointed out, Craig, he starts with an apples-and-oranges comparison of “marriage” with “slavery,” where the true comparison would either be “marriage” with “economic relationships where one person works for another” OR “patriarchal rule in marriage” with “master-rule in slavery.” He then wants to say that the Bible’s approach to patriarchal marriage and patriarchal slavery was different– that there is evidence that slavery was not meant to be a permanent thing, while marriage (and therefore patriarchal marriage) was intended to be permanent. And the reason he appears to want to give for this is that parental authority over children is naturally a permanent thing. But he’s slipping in “marriage equals patriarchal marriage” as an unchallenged assumption.

I think Kristen is right in that I don’t find this clear – not surprising as I doubt I am being clear either. My point is that both the Jewish (missed by Kristen when she classifies my position as a simplification) and the Roman societies had fathers in charge of children (certainly including adult dependents as she says), husbands in charge of wives, and owners (predominantly but not exclusively male) in charge of slaves. And they didn’t see one of those as patriarchy and the other two as not patriarchy.  All three were fairly naturally paired together – Paul’s household codes aren’t all that revolutionary by putting those three relationships side by side.

And I’m not sure I’m slipping in ‘marriage equals patriarchal marriage’ as an unchallenged assumption.  My point was, I thought, that that is what marriage was for both Paul’s Jewish and Gentile readers. They didn’t have an abstract view of marriage and then go, ‘and of the ways marriage could be structured, we opt for patriarchal’ – they had one view of marriage: patriarchal. My statement has to do with what is being understood by the society and so what the words Paul writes are going to mean to that audience.

But let’s do an apples-to-apples comparison instead of an apples-to-oranges.?Paul is talking about three basic relationships: the relationship where two humans unite to produce children, the relationship where two or more humans unite to accomplish an economic goal, and the relationship where one or two adults and one or more children unite to accomplish the goal of bringing the child to adulthood. Patriarchy approached each of these relationships with the idea that all the power was to be concentrated in the hands of one central human male, with other human males (his adult sons) given some delegated power, and everyone else (women, slaves and minor children) having no power at all.?Given that idea, one can say without any inconsistency at all that Paul’s goal was to teach a new way of approaching ALL THREE of these relationships such that power was shared. The human males in whose hands the power was concentrated, were told to act like Christ in laying down their lives for their wives, treating their slaves with humility, and not exasperating their children. The ones without power were told to respond by yielding (for wives) and obeying (for slaves and children). By making this differentiation, Paul is acknowledging the economic nature of the slave relationship (that in an economic production unit, someone has to be in charge), and also the economic nature of the father-child relationship where the children are adult males working for the “company” (which was the household). But the nature of the wife relationship is not economic, but one of intimacy and oneness– and Paul seeks to restore the oneness God intended in marriage, partly through the use of that word “submit” (”yield”) instead of “obey.
For the relationship of parent to minor child, Paul also exhorts obedience– in this case because the child is not ready for adult responsibilities. But the fathers are to lay down power in that relationship as well.

I think the ‘lay down power’ here is pretty tendentious. Almost any complementarian would say something like all this, but would say that what is going on is the reshaping of authority to be used as an exercise of service to those under authority rather than as a lording over them. My question here is – does Jesus model the kind of way of using authority that Kristen is speaking about here? Does he use it with humility? does he lay down his life, does he not exasperate us? And would she (and you) be happy with describing that as Jesus ‘laying down power’ in his relationship with us?

I certainly wouldn’t be happy to use such language about the one I call Lord. And yet he is the model, and I don’t see it as a model of laying down power, but of using it in a servant way.

And again, this is the kind of ‘this but that’ reading that is just so hard to pin down. Is Paul writing in such a way that indicates that these relationships have authority or not? Kristen seems to be suggesting ‘yes’ – but in such a way that over time we’d move beyond the letter of what Paul has said to the spirit of it and move to more egalitarian relationships.  You seem to be saying ‘no’ – there’s nothing in these texts, we need to look elsewhere.

?

What Paul is NOT doing is saying that any and all authority in relationships is bad. But he IS saying that in authority relationships, those in power are to look on those under their power as of full, equal value and dignity. This would tend, over time, to subvert patriarchy– where power was concentrated in the hands of a male– in favor of more balanced-power relationships, such as our current employer-employee relationships, or modern parent-child relationships where the state views the children as having fundamental rights which the parents cannot violate with impunity.

Agree with the first two sentences. Partly agree with the rest, but not so sure it is as simple as Kristen thinks. If we lost the wealth that modern society can produce and went back to the kind of society where it is big grind to produce enough food to feed people and there is little discretionary capacity in society for people not to be involved in food production (and so not much of a police force or bureacracy, let alone any social welfare or universal education) then I think we’d return to more authoratarian society strucutres fairly quickly, even with a view of universal human dignity. I think we have little grasp how much what we take for granted is actually the conditions of a society where everyone is rich. Even our poor people have a kind of wealth unimaginable in earlier eras.

?

Given this context, then, the egalitarian can easily agree with Mark that the Bible– including this Eph. 5 passage– treats marriage differently than the other two relationships. But “marriage” does not have to mean “marriage in which patriarchy remains intact” any more than “an economic relationship where one person works for another” has to mean “slavery.” Marriage is an intimate relationship between two people, in which (in Paul’s time) all the power was concentrated in the hands of the male. Take power out of the hands of the male and share half of it with the female– and you have not changed the fundamental nature of marriage itself; you have only changed its patriarchal structure. It is MARRIAGE, not PATRIARCHAL marriage, which the Bible treats as a special, God-given relationship from the beginning of the creation of humanity. It is not inconsistent for Paul to seek to remove the male-power structure from this relationship at the same time he seeks to remove the male-power structure from slavery and parenthood (which I think he does), while at the same time treating marriage as something unique among all other relationships.

I think this might be begging the question – no insult intended there, it’s Kristen’s off the top of the head thoughts to my off the top of the head thoughts.

My argument isn’t that Paul can’t change the relationships. It’s that I find the egaltarian case implausible as a description of how it would be received in the patriarchal society of the day. The NT leaves slavery and children in place (but does that while somehow also saying that slavery is unequivocally wrong), but Ephesians 5 is radically redrawing the readers’ view of the nature of marriage – a shift as big for its day as the idea of Same Sex Marriage is for the modern era, and it does this while putting the three relationships next to each other and heading them up with ‘submit to one another’. All three are patriarchal, two are kept, one is transformed head-on, but all three are ‘submit to one another in Christ’. I can see how a modern can read it that way. But put yourself into the shoes of someone who does not even have the concept of egalitarianism in their head and the only way they think is patriarchal.  Is it plausible that they’d ‘hear’ it this way? They don’t have a view of ‘marriage’, they only have a view of ‘patriarchal marriage’ – will they hear this text this way?

So, given the above– what is it about the parent-child relationship that makes it still necessary for minor children to obey their parents? The fact is that in this relationship, the necessity for obedience still exists, due to the nature of minor children. It is not inconsistent for egalitarians to acknowledge this as a fact, while also acknowledging that the partriarchal system in which adult children were still supposed to obey the pater familias, was unnecessary, has now passed away and there is no need to go back to it. Similarly, the need still exists in an economic relationship for the worker to obey the business owner– but the old structure that gave the owner absolute power over the life and personhood of the worker, was unnecessary, has now passed away, and there is no need to go back to it. In marriage, the power structure that gave the male the power over the female is unnecessary, has passed away– and yet the church still clings to it and tries in every way to restore it. That is what the egalitarian objects to– not legitimate use of authority in necessary ways acknowledged by society, but illegitimate use of ancient forms of power that are now viewed as unjust by society– the perpetuation of which ends up damaging the gospel of Christ, in Whom we are supposed to be set free.

From Craig
Thanks for helping me think through the issues. I don’t find it easy but I think it is beneficial. My name may be “Swift” but it does take me a fair while to process the information 🙂
Just some thoughts and questions as I am thinking about what you have written. Sorry if some of them seem a bit jumbled.
1.The apples to apples comparison that I would see is
Patriarchal rule in marriage with Patriarchal rule in slavery or
Patriarchal rule over wives with Patriarchal rule over slaves. 
Sorry to harp on this one but I am just checking that this is the comparison in your mind, so that when you say things like “Marriage….  explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2,”  and “Putting it together, marriage is basically seen as something given in creation, that is the pattern for the New Creation relationship with Christ, and that is fundamentally good.” I think to myself “Yes, but what has that got to do with the question?” Everyone agrees with these things. The question is not about how foundational marriage is, but rather how foundational is patriarchal authority in marriage. That is quite different in my mind and a much more difficult thing to establish. So I am wondering if your main argument is really things like “Patriarchal authority in marriage…… explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2,”  and “Putting it together, Patriarchal authority in marriage is basically seen as something given in creation, that is the pattern for the New Creation relationship with Christ, and that is fundamentally good.”

Well, there’s a bunch of things going on:
1. The Bible indicates that marriage is built into Creation and New Creation, and is good.
2. The Bible doesn’t do that for slavery.
3. The society of the day had a unanimous strong view about both marriage and slavery that was patriarchal, and Jewish exegesis of the Bible understood the texts patriarchally.
4. The Bible does teach a structure of marriage, either patriarchal or egalitarian.

My argument was that the Bible does treat marriage and slavery as different – one is built in and fundamentally good, one is not built in and is not an unequivocal good.  That’s one argument.

The second argument is that the audience doesn’t have a view of marriage (big abstract category) and then has opted for a specific version – patriarchal.  They hold to ‘marriage’ which simply is what we call ‘patriarchal marriage’. Many of them wouldn’t even recognise an egalitarian marriage as marriage at all (in much the same way that many of us wouldn’t recognise same sex marriage as marriage at all), while others might but see it as very wrong (likewise us for same sex marriage).  For Paul to attack patriarchal marriage and reform its structure to bring out the biblical vision of an egalitarian marriage is, for the readers, to attack ‘marriage’ altogether and to put forward something new that is called ‘marriage’.  What is on view is a radical, truly radical, restructuring of the institution from the point of view of the original readers.

That is, on the egalitarian view, Paul is trying to address three problematic relationships his readers are faced with in a patriarchal society – slavery, marriage, children. What he’s doing is addressing those institutions, he’s not offering ethical teaching in a vaccuum. And those institutions, as they actually were in reality, were patriarchal, and the people wouldn’t have had a view like ‘there’s the true essence of marriage and then there’s the way you structure it, and we go for patriarchal’ so that Paul could easily drop the patriarchal structure and bring out the true egalitarian essence of the institution any more than people a generation ago would have found same sex marriage at all plausible – a bringing out of the essential nature of marriage and dropping the heterosexual structure for it. And in doing that addressing the actual patriarchal institutions he’s faced with, Paul’s responses are quite different even though he offers the same basic reasons for all three. That works for a modern reader, but the more I try and put myself back into the original context the less plausible it becomes. The argument only works if you already have a concept of egalitarianism in your head as a live option and then read the texts to work out whether they teach egal or comp. It doesn’t work if Paul is trying to create the concept of egalitarianism in a culture (even Jewish culture that has the Scriptures) that has no concept at all of such things. Hopefully that’ll go some way to your 2a and 2b below.

2.Regarding your problems with the egal approach.
a.I am not sure myself that the household codes are written to rescue or reform institutions (or to endorse them either). They seem to me to be more about encouraging godly living and relationships amongst the members of the household within the culture and situations people find themselves in. If you are a slave this is how you are to live. If you are a master, this is how you are to live.  Paul is encouraging mutual submission, mutual yielding to the needs of others, mutual love and servanthood. 
b.You said Mark,
 “ If the household codes are attacking authority and authority bound institutions, and sees treatment of women and slaves as two examples of the same category of sin, then its treatment of marriage must have the same goal as its treatment of slavery – to do away with it.  If that is not the case, then egals, just like comps see a huge difference between the two institutions – they too see one as fundamentally good, and the other as fundamentally problematic.”
 I agree that there is a huge difference between marriage and slavery. One is  fundamentally good, and the other is fundamentally problematic. But as I said above in 1. , the real comparison is between Patriarchal authority in marriage and Patriarchal authority in slavery. So if the real comparison is valid, marriage itself, doesn’t have to end up the same as slavery. The question is whether the patriarchal authority is a good thing in both, a bad thing in both, or a good thing in one and not the other. If it is decided that patriarchal authority is similar in both, and bad in both, it doesn’t necessarily mean that marriage and slavery need to end up the same way. If you remove patriarchal authority from marriage you end up with marriage. Marriage can exist perfectly well without patriarchal authority (1 Cor 7:1-5, Gen 1 :26-28, Gen 2:23,24.). Can slavery? 
c.With regard to parents and children, you said,
“In Ephesians 5 wives are to submit to their husbands as the Church does to Christ in everything. But this is seen to not have any authority implications because husbands aren’t called on to command their wives.  This either misses the fact that the same issue is there with slaves and masters in chapter 6 – slaves are to obey masters, but masters aren’t told to command slaves or, if it is argued that here too masters and slaves are being put on the same footing without any authority, it misses the fact that the same thing is true of children and parents.  Children are to obey parents, but fathers are not told to exercise authority or command them. The three relationships are clearly some kind of analogy of each other – three relationships where (at least traditionally in society at large) one party had some kind of authority over another.  Egalitarianism either extracts marriage out as the relationship that doesn’t fit, extracts marriage and slavery out, or is consistent to the end and puts children and parents on an ‘equal’ footing where there is no authority in that relationship either.”
Are the three relationships really an analogy of each other? Aren’t they just the three relationships that existed in the household with the Patriarch? Do they all have to end up the same after the principles of mutual submission and Christian love are applied? If there are good reasons for some authority to be exercised by parents over children I don’t see why this has to be the same for the other relationships.
The patriarch is not told to exercise authority in these passages in any of his relationships so I certainly don’t think that it can be drawn from these passages that he must do this, or that we must do this today. We must look at the rest of the scriptures to determine if this is so. I think we find from other scriptures and practical wisdom that there are good reasons for parents to exercise authority over children.

My point here has to do with the argument that Paul has no authority in view because it is not mentioned explicitly. And I think the argument is sound – if that’s a good principle of Biblical interpretation, then it must apply to all three relationships. It can’t just apply to one. I agree with you that we need to look more widely than just the words to the husband in the passage.
 For me, 5:22 and 5:24 can’t be reconciled to an egalitarian understanding.  Wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, and as the church submits to Christ in everything so wives are to their husbands. Are there two kinds of submission that we offer to the Lord? One where he does not have authority, and one where he does? And if so, how do we distinguish between them? And if not, how can we submit to someone as to the Lord, and yet that not indicate authority? How would such words have been understood by an overwhelming patriarchal society with no pre-existent concept of egalitarianism?
Similarly the Petrine household code seems incompatible with an egalitarian reading of Eph 5 (as even Suzanne seemed to acknowledge on the threads, which I found interesting). In 1 Peter 2:13 Peter calls on Christians to submit to every human institution (and, interestingly in v16 this is part of what it means to be act as free men – the submission we offer is not slavish, but that of those who are free). He then tells slaves to submit to masters in v18. The same language, with a ‘in the same way’ is given to wives. He doesn’t tell them to only do this to unbelieving husbands (which one might expect if it really was just unbelieving husbands that was in view as many egalitarian readings suggest) and his invoking of Sarah calling Abraham lord and obeying him, as well as the holy women of former times who hoped in God, really cuts against that grain as Abraham and Sarah are OT paradigms of faith. In 1 Peter 2 and 3 husbands aren’t told to exercise authority either, but if Sarah and the holy women submitting to their husbands is the example, and it’s ‘in the same way’ as slaves to their masters, then it’s hard to see how it is not being assumed. 

d.All these things seem very different to the egal arguments I hear with regard to comparing patriarchal authority over women and slaves.
The argument I hear seems to be more along these lines:
“Historically, up until a couple of hundred years ago, the church read the passages about masters/slaves as universal and normative. A big change occurred when Christians debated the slavery issue. Some Christians argued that a plain reading of some very clear bible texts showed that slavery is approved by God. Others disagreed by examining some of the big themes in scripture and the culture in which it was written. They argued that these passages didn’t teach what had been thought for hundreds of years.
As Christians today have looked at the gender debate, many have seen a parallel between the arguments used for maintaining slavery and the arguments used for maintaing the authority of men over women in marriage and in the church.”
The argument I hear is not “slavery is in the household codes, and everything in the household codes must be the same as each other, so marriage must be the same”.
It is “slavery is in the household codes. It was always assumed to be normative. Perhaps we can’t just assume Patriarchal authority in marriage (and over children) is normative. We have to study the whole sweep of the scriptures to determine if what is said is normative, not just assume it is. We need to have some good reasons for what we believe.This was the error made by those who opposed the abolition of slavery. Patriarchal authority in marriage has to be studied throughout the bible to determine if it is normative, not just assume it is or isn’t because it is in the household codes”.

Well, the first bit of the argument is wrong, I think. Calvin and Luther don’t try and reintroduce slavery into the 16th Century, for example, which one would expect them to do if Christians have always considered slavery to be normative. The early church did not campaign to keep slavery going, or hold it up as something universally and unqualifiedly good. So it’s a misperception about how the Church understood slavery – similar to the argument that all Christians believed that the Bible taught a flat world before Galileo.  There are a number of early church fathers who believed (like many philosophers at that time) in a round world.

So the issues aren’t parallel. The mainstream tradition did not think that slavery was obligatory (i.e. normative) – that God wanted slaves in all times and places. Usually people argued (at most) that it was possible under certain conditions. And there had been different views on the shape of the world. But no-one believed that the passages in question taught an egalitarian view of marriage. The people arguing for slavery didn’t just peg their case on the household codes either – they drew on a wide range of texts as well for their position, so that part of the argument is wrong as well.

Further, there is a disanalogy in that those contesting slavery and arguing for a round world were going against the grain of the society of the day, while those supporting the received position were reflecting the consensus of their society. In the current debate that shoe is on the other foot – egalitarianism is the view that seems reasonable and obvious to our unbelieving contemporaries.

I agree with the basic point – have to show from the Bible as a whole, and not just assume. But I think the other side has to be in play as well. To say that the whole church got it wrong for two thousand years about something so ethically important is a big claim. To say that at a time when the view in question simply reflects the moral intuition of our own society is an orange light. The teaching of scripture has to be really, really, really clear for that to be the case. And egal reasoning on these things is hardly ‘clear’, even if it is true, it is more like ‘torturous’ or ‘subtle’ as a description. That can’t decide matters, but it needs to be given some significant weight.

Thanks for considering these things Mark, from your Christian brother,
Craig.

You’re welcome Craig, glad you’re putting so much thought into things. Sorry I’m a bit distracted at the moment.

in Christ,
Mark

Hi Kristen and others who may be interested in a response from Mark B to #150.
Mark just sent me an email to apologize for not replying earlier. He has been busy with other priorities but he hopes to get on to it this week.

Thanks Kristen for this information.

egalitarians were all “liberals” who had abandoned a high view of Scripture because we just didn’t want to obey the plain sense of the Bible with regards to women’s roles

One of speakers at the conference, Martin Pakula, contributed on the Sola Panel just after this conference and seemed to be advocating this view in the discussion.
Some from my church have spoken highly of the talks from this conference. Thanks for the link to Kevin Giles’ comments.
Thanks also for the links and your comments about slavery.

No word from Mark yet.

Same for me, and I am sure for all of us. I do hope she has been able to get some much needed rest and refreshment from the Lord.

Hi Retha,
If you are wanting to read any of Cheryl’s posts, they are available on the home page http://strivetoenter.com/wim/
Just scroll down until you find the one you are after.
If you are wanting
Authority vs submission – a biblical view of Ephesians 5:22
May 23rd, 2010 by Cheryl Schatz
then the post is available to read, but unfortunately the comments are not. I also would like to read them but I think they may be lost in cyberspace.
Hope that helps.
I think Cheryl must still be very busy with her other commitments at the moment. I know how she loves to participate on her blog when she can. I hope she is ok.

Thanks for your encouragement, Kristen. I’ll let you know when Mark responds.

Hi everyone,
I sent Kristen’s comments @136-140 (amended as requested) to Mark yesterday. I also sent some comments of my own to Mark, which I have posted below. If you see anything where you feel my thinking needs to be a bit refined, or I haven’t understood something as well as I could, please feel free to provide your own thoughts.
So these thoughts are my reply that I sent yesterday to Mark’s comments @135.

Just some thoughts and questions as I am thinking about what you have written. Sorry if some of them seem a bit jumbled.

1.The apples to apples comparison that I would see is
Patriarchal rule in marriage with Patriarchal rule in slavery or
Patriarchal rule over wives with Patriarchal rule over slaves.

Sorry to harp on this one but I am just checking that this is the comparison in your mind, so that when you say things like “Marriage…. explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2,” and “Putting it together, marriage is basically seen as something given in creation, that is the pattern for the New Creation relationship with Christ, and that is fundamentally good.” I think to myself “Yes, but what has that got to do with the question?” Everyone agrees with these things. The question is not about how foundational marriage is, but rather how foundational is patriarchal authority in marriage. That is quite different in my mind and a much more difficult thing to establish. So I am wondering if your main argument is really things like “Patriarchal authority in marriage…… explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2,” and “Putting it together, Patriarchal authority in marriage is basically seen as something given in creation, that is the pattern for the New Creation relationship with Christ, and that is fundamentally good.”

2.Regarding your problems with the egal approach.

a.I am not sure myself that the household codes are written to rescue or reform institutions (or to endorse them either). They seem to me to be more about encouraging godly living and relationships amongst the members of the household within the culture and situations people find themselves in. If you are a slave this is how you are to live. If you are a master, this is how you are to live. Paul is encouraging mutual submission, mutual yielding to the needs of others, mutual love and servanthood.

b.You said Mark,

“ If the household codes are attacking authority and authority bound institutions, and sees treatment of women and slaves as two examples of the same category of sin, then its treatment of marriage must have the same goal as its treatment of slavery – to do away with it. If that is not the case, then egals, just like comps see a huge difference between the two institutions – they too see one as fundamentally good, and the other as fundamentally problematic.”

I agree that there is a huge difference between marriage and slavery. One is fundamentally good, and the other is fundamentally problematic. But as I said above in 1. , the real comparison is between Patriarchal authority in marriage and Patriarchal authority in slavery. So if the real comparison is valid, marriage itself, doesn’t have to end up the same as slavery. The question is whether the patriarchal authority is a good thing in both, a bad thing in both, or a good thing in one and not the other. If it is decided that patriarchal authority is similar in both, and bad in both, it doesn’t necessarily mean that marriage and slavery need to end up the same way. If you remove patriarchal authority from marriage you end up with marriage. Marriage can exist perfectly well without patriarchal authority (1 Cor 7:1-5, Gen 1 :26-28, Gen 2:23,24.). Can slavery?

c.With regard to parents and children, you said,

“In Ephesians 5 wives are to submit to their husbands as the Church does to Christ in everything. But this is seen to not have any authority implications because husbands aren’t called on to command their wives. This either misses the fact that the same issue is there with slaves and masters in chapter 6 – slaves are to obey masters, but masters aren’t told to command slaves or, if it is argued that here too masters and slaves are being put on the same footing without any authority, it misses the fact that the same thing is true of children and parents. Children are to obey parents, but fathers are not told to exercise authority or command them. The three relationships are clearly some kind of analogy of each other – three relationships where (at least traditionally in society at large) one party had some kind of authority over another. Egalitarianism either extracts marriage out as the relationship that doesn’t fit, extracts marriage and slavery out, or is consistent to the end and puts children and parents on an ‘equal’ footing where there is no authority in that relationship either.”

Are the three relationships really an analogy of each other? Aren’t they just the three relationships that existed in the household with the Patriarch? Do they all have to end up the same after the principles of mutual submission and Christian love are applied? If there are good reasons for some authority to be exercised by parents over children I don’t see why this has to be the same for the other relationships.

The patriarch is not told to exercise authority in these passages in any of his relationships so I certainly don’t think that it can be drawn from these passages that he must do this, or that we must do this today. We must look at the rest of the scriptures to determine if this is so. I think we find from other scriptures and practical wisdom that there are good reasons for parents to exercise authority over children.

d.All these things seem very different to the egal arguments I hear with regard to comparing patriarchal authority over women and slaves.
The argument I hear seems to be more along these lines:
“Historically, up until a couple of hundred years ago, the church read the passages about masters/slaves as universal and normative. A big change occurred when Christians debated the slavery issue. Some Christians argued that a plain reading of some very clear bible texts showed that slavery is approved by God. Others disagreed by examining some of the big themes in scripture and the culture in which it was written. They argued that these passages didn’t teach what had been thought for hundreds of years.

As Christians today have looked at the gender debate, many have seen a parallel between the arguments used for maintaining slavery and the arguments used for maintaing the authority of men over women in marriage and in the church.”

The argument I hear is not “slavery is in the household codes, and everything in the household codes must be the same as each other, so marriage must be the same”.

It is “slavery is in the household codes. It was always assumed to be normative. Perhaps we can’t just assume Patriarchal authority in marriage (and over children) is normative. We have to study the whole sweep of the scriptures to determine if what is said is normative, not just assume it is. We need to have some good reasons for what we believe.This was the error made by those who opposed the abolition of slavery. Patriarchal authority in marriage has to be studied throughout the bible to determine if it is normative, not just assume it is or isn’t because it is in the household codes”.

Thanks for considering these things Mark, from your Christian brother,

Craig.

Just to clarify. I will let him know its from you. I wouldn’t claim it as my own- I’m sure he would know I was cheating 🙂

Hi Kristen,
Do you mind if I send your response to Mark? I will just add a few of my own thoughts and send it to him on Saturday if that’s ok. I will let you know his response.

Thanks so much again Kristen for so many helpful thoughts. #140 seems a great summary. I have been very busy today, but I hope by the weekend to have some time to process properly what Mark is trying to say and the thoughts you have given in response, and then I will write back to him.
Anyone else who has any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Sorry to dump the truck on everyone, but I thought some of you may be interested that I received an email from Mark (from Sola Panel) today. Elaine specifically asked if I could post it here. Sorry for the length of it. Mark is the first to admit that he gets a bit wordy.
I said to Mark

Some people have asked me following the closure of the Sola Panel discussion,
“If Mark does email you about the slavery and patriarchy issue could we please see his response?”
I said I would check with you first, so is it ok?

Mark replied

Yes, I think that’s fine to pass it on – as long as people see it as some initial thoughts.

So here are Mark’s initial thoughts

Here’s a few thoughts I had on the spot trying to reflect on why I personally approach the slavery and gender issues somewhat differently.  I haven’t tried to argue for anything here, you’ll note, merely identify and state as efficiently as possible – feel free to come back on any bits that you want to talk over, or give your thoughts on to me.

Why I differentiate between household code on slavery and on wives/husbands (and men and women more generally).

The basic reason is that I see more differentiation between the two themes in Scripture than egals tend to see.

In 1 Cor 11 Paul grounds some of his concrete applications on appeals to the structure of creation, to nature, and to a series of relationships involving ‘kephale’.  In 1 Tim 2 the order of creation, and the fall, is invoked.  In Ephesians 5 marriage is held up as a mystery of Christ and the Church (and again is tracked back to creation in v31). Further, marriage has the situation where it explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2 (in a very rare editorial commentary), something that Jesus appeals to in Mat 19 and Mark 10 to indicate that Moses’ regulation on divorce is in no way an approval of it.
Putting it together, marriage is basically seen as something given in creation, that is the pattern for the New Creation relationship with Christ, and that is fundamentally good.

Slavery is a far more mixed theme. I see no such theological heavyweights attached to it in the household codes.  People are to submit to and honour their masters out of reverence to Christ, but nothing substantial theologically is said about the institution of slavery itself in those contexts – nothing in the creation accounts, or the order of creation, or the nature of the new creation, or the fall is ever invoked to ground the institution the way that is done for marriage.  More broadly, slavery is used in both positive and negative senses.  We are slaves of Christ, and slaves of God, and slaves of righteousness.  Christ is spoken of as the doulos of God IIRC.  Those all give it a fundamentally positive orientation.  But on the other hand, salvation is often spoken of as a redemption from slavery, of a setting people free or giving them their freedom. When Samuel warned Israel about taking a king, the appeal focused on how he would make the people into his slaves. Slavery does not seem to appear (even by inference) in the creation accounts, and when it is regulated, there is no appeal to something more primordial than the concession to indicate what the true purpose of the institution is (something quite unlike marriage and divorce). Finally, in 1 Cor 7:21 Paul (and this is controverted) probably encourages slaves to get their freedom if they can, and in v23 (and this is not controverted) calls on people to not become slaves of men as they were bought with a price.  This suggests a stance towards slavery that is fairly clear in the textthat does not see it as an unalloyed good.  Paul does not say for people not to get married because they were bought with a price – he indicates that singleness is better given the current crisis, but his take on marriage seems more inherently positive. Similarly Philemon seems to suggest that Paul sees the freeing of Onesimus as a kind of moral imperative – an unusual one, but something of nature.

Taking that together, I see slavery as like most non-marriage forms of human institutions – it is given by God, it is not built into the fabric of either creation or redemption.  It is given no inherent dignity or theological weight, but both positive and negative connotations attach to it from how it is used in various contexts.  Given that Paul seems to promote freedom from the institution when it is possible, it does suggest a stance that can live with the institution, but that does not see it as an ideal – somewhat like how I think the Bible views divorce.

One of my difficulties with “the” egalitarian approach on this is that the analogy between the two (men-women and slavery) is not taken through properly.  The ‘usual’ argument offered is that the Bible was facing a problematically hierarchical culture that couldn’t be taken head-on.  And this had three big manifestations – women needing to be subject to men, the existence of slavery, and social institutions being run on the basis of power and authority and submission to that authority.  So in the household codes we have a subversion of these institutions – where slavery is being completely reframed (indeed, done away with).  But if that’s the case with slavery, then it must also be the case with marriage as well on this argument, if the two are so closely parallel.  If the household codes are attacking authority and authority bound institutions, and sees treatment of women and slaves as two examples of the same category of sin, then its treatment of marriage must have the same goal as its treatment of slavery – to do away with it.  If that is not the case, then egals, just like comps see a huge difference between the two institutions – they too see one as fundamentally good, and the other as fundamentally problematic.  So their argument that they applying the principles of the slavery debate to gender is simply wrong.  They aren’t.  They’re being fairly highly selective about it – unless they want to start talking about the fundamental goodness of a properly reframed vision of one person owning another.

This is similar to my problem with how the argument cashes out with parents and children.  In Ephesians 5 wives are to submit to their husbands as the Church does to Christ in everything.  But this is seen to not have any authority implications because husbands aren’t called on to command their wives.  This either misses the fact that the same issue is there with slaves and masters in chapter 6 – slaves are to obey masters, but masters aren’t told to command slaves or, if it is argued that here too masters and slaves are being put on the same footing without any authority, it misses the fact that the same thing is true of children and parents.  Children are to obey parents, but fathers are not told to exercise authority or command them. The three relationships are clearly some kind of analogy of each other – three relationships where (at least traditionally in society at large) one party had some kind of authority over another.  Egalitarianism either extracts marriage out as the relationship that doesn’t fit, extracts marriage and slavery out, or is consistent to the end and puts children and parents on an ‘equal’ footing where there is no authority in that relationship either.

There’s some basic thoughts – both about how I read the texts, and about my problems with the plausibility of egalitarian readings of the texts – on the diffrence and similarity between the two issues, hope that helps.

I replied

I will think a lot more about the content of your email, but my first reaction is the same as when I recently read one of Wayne Grudem’s answers to this question. My question is not dealing with a comparison between “slavery” and “marriage”. It is dealing with the authority aspect. So the comparison is between “slavery” and “patriarchy”.
It is the authority or patriarchal aspect of marriage that is in question, not marriage itself.

Mark replied

Interesting that Grudem and I thought in parallel lines here. 

I agree with you that the comparison is slavery and patriarchy, not slavery and marriage.  My point is that patriarchy has two main social instititutional structures (at least that we chew around) – marriage, and public roles in church, and then slavery.  Marriage was a patriarchal institution in the ancient world slavery was another patriarchal institution.  We can’t make a direct comparison from slavery to patriarchy because they are eggs and apples – one is a philosophy (for want of a better word) the other is an institution that (according to egals) probably exists as a result of that philosophy.  There is no ‘patriarchy’ as such – there are specific beliefs, and there are specific institutions.

I think my point is trying to be with that – do egalitarians then read the household codes differently when they come to husbands and wives (marriage), masters and slaves (slavery), and fathers and children (children)? “The” argument is that the NT is rescuing marriage from patriarchy in places like Ephesians and trying to deal with a bad situation in places like 1 Peter. Well, if egalitarianism is being consistent, is that how it sees what the NT is doing with slavery – is it trying to rescue that institution? In both cases it is facing a contemporary patriarchal institution on an egalitarian reading – does it respond the same in both cases? Egalitarianism sees marriage of the day, and slavery, as both patriarchal, and seems to just ignore children – doing there what it accuses complementarianism of doing with patriarchy and taking those passages as establishing authority relationships as a good thing. 

So I get the pointy end of your concern, I’m not trying to muddy the waters. My point is germane nonetheless, I think.  Egalitarianism reads Ephesians 5 and 6 as a word to a patriarchal society to reform patriarchal institutions – marriage, slavery (and, I’ll keep putting out there, children).  The argument is that complementarians treat slavery and patriarchical marriage differently, and that their argument that marriage is different from slavery – is built into creation, has big theological themes and the like attached to it – is special pleading, as the same is true of slavery. My point is that if that really is the case, then why don’t egalitarians treat all three relationships in the household codes the same.  Their own practice indicates that there is something different about slavery and marriage and children.

There’s two different arguments on view.  In one I’m rejecting the egalitarian claim that slavery has as much theological support as the Bible seems to give to marriage (and gender roles in church) and its particular structure.  In the other, I’m saying that egals are doing what they accuse comps of doing – they see ancient marriage as patriarchal, and read Ephesians as a godly response to that, yet still see what is happening in those chapters differently somewhere on the marriage-slavery-children spectrum. Their own practice is a sign that comps either aren’t being inconsistent here – to see that the Bible’s response to patriarchal marriage and patriarchal slavery is different, or if it is inconsistent it’s common ground in the debate. Having invoked the idea that Eph 5 needs to be read as response to a prevailing patriarchy, egalitarianism then sees that response as quite different as it moves from marriage, to slavery, to children – and yet all three were patriarchal institutions.  There seems to be a very big inconsistency there, as it is doing what it criticises comp for doing, and yet seems to be unaware of it.

The point is subtle, I’ll admit, and I’m probably not doing a good job of explaining it – it crystalised as I wrote the first thing to you yesterday, and I usually explain things better when they’ve sat with me for a bit.  Come back again if it still seems like I’m culpably reframing the question away from the one you think is the real one.

Any thoughts before I reply would be appreciated. Thanks.

So am I correct here do you think:
Comp position 1 (eg Mark):
Women leading men is ok, but only under the authority of men.
Comp position 2 (eg Jereth):
Women shouldn’t lead or exercise authority over men.
I’m just thinking aloud (possibly not very clearly!) how they would see different scriptures for their positions and some possible problems for them.
In comp position 1, do they still see the “role reversal” thing, or “going against the created order” as the “secondary sin”? Or would Eve be off the hook because she led but didn’t go against Adam’s authority- ie he was ok with it. Am I making sense or do I need to put my brain back in properly? 🙂

“and I can’t practice law” – I reckon you’d make a pretty sharp lawyer Kristen. I wouldn’t want to be on the opposing side 🙂

Hi TL,
I like your hiking illustration.

Just a couple of quotes from Mark on the Sola Panel (not Mark from Cheryl’s blog) to fill you in:

First, I don’t collapse the authority of a public office into the ability to lead all kinds of people to God. People can do that very well without holding those offices.
Second, and related to that, I don’t go with the idea that maleness involves leading and femaleness submission.

Do I think women can have leadership in the church and it would benefit?  Yes.  But ‘leadership’ is not the same as ‘authority’ for me.  And you can look at Kristen’s distinction between the Father having primacy and him having authority to see something analogous on that.  Often the influential leaders in a group aren’t the ones with the authority.  The Jensen brothers senior arguably were the two most influential leaders in the Sydney Diocese when they were a rector of a parish church and the principal of Moore – of which neither position had much direct authority over how the Diocese was run. That distinction needs more attention in this debate, in my view as well.

I think that Mark said on Sola Panel that he didn’t however have the trump card view of authority. I think he sees authority as more like having the overall responsibility.
Some comps seem very reluctant to say that women are “leading” men, even when this in fact is what they are doing. They emphasize how men are to lead and women are to submit and follow and support etc.
Mark seemed quite happy to say that women could lead men in lots of ways, but just they are not responsible – my wife said that sounds like a pretty good deal 🙂

Hi Gengwall,
Different Mark. Sorry for the confusion.
Certainly I agree with you that many comps are actually egals in practice when it comes to marriage. The more comp they become in practice, the worse their marriages will be. Many hide the comp part in a very small locked cupboard under the house just in case it is necessary, but in practice, if they have learned to live in marriage the way God has designed, they never have to open the cupboard. If they do have to use it, it is very dusty and smells quite bad.

Hi Kristen,
While you are there, I don’t mean to interrupt, but while I think of it, I wouldn’t mind discussing with you at some stage (and anyone else who is interested) a bit more about authority and leadership. No hurry.
In our recent discussion on the Sola Panel Jereth seemed to have a view that authority, responsibility and leadership were similar. This I think is a fairly normal comp view.
Mark seemed to have a different view that authority and responsibility were quite different to leadership. This I think is a fairly normal egal view, and yet he is a comp. So Mark seemed to be hinting that he was quite happy for women to be doing all sorts of leadership things in church and family, as long as they weren’t the ones in “authority” and “responsible” for the results.
Mark said he would be posting later on to expand on this issue, but it could be a long time away now.
Is this the way you understood Mark to be thinking? Do you (or others) have any comments on Mark’s view (if I have it correct)?
Sorry to interrupt your enjoyment of the Princess Bride, I enjoyed that movie to. It was a big hit out in Australia as well. I had never thought how good it was for illustrations!

Hi Kristen,

the comp position is that Eve’s sin was, at it’s heart, NOT about believing the serpent rather than God. It was about acting FIRST, without looking to Adam for guidance or permission.

@115 Yes that’s the one. Quite common amongst Sydney Anglicans whom I mingle with all the time. It saves them from the problems of the traditional “easily deceived” view, but as you say, suffers from the problem of not being in Genesis at all without some very fancy footwork. Some admit that this sin of Eve’s is secondary but can’t see that it is really not there at all.
The ones I know also say that Adam was deceived, but Eve was deceived FIRST. Trouble is, Paul says Adam was NOT deceived. It would seem a better explanation that Adam sinned rebelliously, with knowledge (Hos 6:7) rather than being deceived like Eve.
@116,117 Thanks for helping to clarify things.

Hi Gengwall,
I think the sort of things you are saying @112 and @113 is why I don’t find very many evangelical Christians holding to the truly traditional “more easily deceived” position. As I understand it, the truly traditional interpretation is that women as a gender, beginning with Eve, have always been and will always be more easily deceived by Satan and false teaching than men. This doesn’t make sense biblically or experientially. Do you find many people who really believe this now?
Most comps I strike don’t believe this, and CBMW as I understand them don’t believe this. They have worked out some more palatable views of 1 Tim 2:13,14.
I am not sure that I understand your point about Webb’s view. I don’t think Webb sees Paul as refuting or promoting women’s deceptiveness. Webb sees Paul as just giving appropriate instructions for a situation that existed at the time. He believes that at that point in time in that particular place the women were more easily deceived and so shouldn’t be teaching. He is not refuting or promoting their deceptiveness, but saying they shouldn’t teach while they are in that condition. This view certainly has its problems, but I am not sure that I understand the problem you are seeing.
I think you would agree that Eve was “more easily deceived” than Adam in the Garden. She did not have the same knowledge and experience at that point in time as what Adam had. Webb is just saying the same sort of thing about women in Ephesus at that time. Cheryl is saying the same sort of thing about a particular Ephesian woman. I think Cheryl’s view makes the most sense, and will be widely accepted if it can be positively demonstrated and accepted that Paul could have and would have used these Greek words to discuss the problems concerning a particular woman.
I certainly didn’t raise the subject of Webb’s book to promote his understanding of 1 Tim 2. I raised it to discuss the method of using hermeneutics to show the deficiencies in the comp view of not just 1 Tim 2, but patriarchy in general.

Thanks Kristen. I see from the time you commented that you were up late again. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Unfortunately, all I have is what I quoted for you.
I haven’t actually used this line of reasoning yet, so I don’t know if they will argue this way or not. Gengwall encouraged me to be prepared as much as possible for how they might reply, rather than my usual ready, fire, aim approach 🙂
You have given some good food for thought.
I think the comps I fellowship with could see it more as you have indicated (if I understand you correctly). This would be
1 Cor 11
a)Adam first, then Eve b) Men have authority over women c) head covering
1 Tim 2
a)Adam first, then Eve b) Men have authority over women c)women shouldn’t teach from an authoritative position.
This would make head covering on a par with women not teaching. Both are indirect and so it must be considered whether both could be cultural.
This could help with the “women not teaching” part.
Of course, your other points are also helpful. Thanks

Hi Gengwall

“Everything is singular in this section of the chapter. A group is not in view.”

I remember your discussion with Cheryl last year on this. I have one comp friend at theological college who is giving some proper thought to this view, but generally I have found it gets dismissed too quickly, despite references to 1 Cor 5, 2 Cor 12, Jn 4 etc. To me, it makes the most sense of the context and the rest of scripture, but I am eagerly awaiting any further support from Greek experts and other prominent egals. One staff member at church read Cheryl’s post on the “anaphoric reference” and said he would give it a very poor mark if it was presented in an exam. Others have asked, “if it is such a good view, why is it that we have never heard it before, and that other prominent egals who know Greek well have not adopted it? At this stage I don’t have really good answers to these questions. Cheryl said that in the future, she might do a post on this issue and try and get some comments from well known egals who support her position. This would be helpful.

Thanks for your reply Gengwall @106. Your approach could well be the best way forward and is a very good summary of how we might argue with the method:
“This is what I believe, that is what you believe. I am right and you are wrong for these reasons.”
I am just thinking about the other method of argument for a moment (using the sort of arguments Elaine used @41 and Kristen @100):
“This is what you believe (about 1 Tim 2 and 1 Cor 11). It is not consistent with itself. Therefore you have to consider the possibility that you may be wrong.”
Comp: 1 Tim 2 is a universal command not a command to a specific cultural situation.
Egal: Why?
Comp: Because Paul argues from Adam and Eve.
Egal: Paul argues from Adam and Eve in 1 Cor 11 and applies it to a specific cultural situation.
Comp: Ah, but 1 Cor 11 and 1 Tim 2 are different. The principle of male authority flows directly from Adam being first created, and that is a timeless principle in both passages. The application to head coverings is a specific cultural practice that may change. Merkle wrote a good article answering this supposed inconsistency.
Egal:???
At this point do I abandon this line of reasoning, saying “ok I can see how in your mind, this could explain the inconsistency and enable you to be settled in your own mind with regards to these two passages”. I would then embark on a different approach – possibly like the one you have put forward.
Or can someone see a hole in Merkle’s explanation of the apparent inconsistency? Thanks.

Sorry I forgot the “a)” before the “Adam first” bits.

why did Paul speak of it just once, in a private letter to his “deputy,” rather than in a letter to the whole church? And why didn’t he say anything about it to the church at Rome, where women had a much greater chance of being educated and ready to preach? Why did he spend so much time at the end of Romans praising what women were doing rather than telling them what they weren’t supposed to be doing?

It doesn’t make sense.

I agree Kristen. It doesn’t make sense.

I just found this from CBMW

Merkle, Benjamin L. “Paul’s Arguments from Creation in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 and 1 Timothy 2:13-14: An Apparent Inconsistency Answered.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 3 (2006): 527-48.
Merkle analyzes 1 Cor 11:8-9 and 1 Tim 2:13-14, in which Paul grounds his arguments in the order of creation, and shows that it is not inconsistent to reject the need for women to wear head coverings while still affirming that women are not to teach or have authority over men. The reason for this, Merkle argues, is that in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul only indirectly uses the argument from creation to affirm head coverings for women in order to demonstrate that creation affirms gender and role distinctions between men and women. The result is that in the Corinthian context this distinction was to be upheld through head coverings. In 1 Timothy 2, however, Paul directly uses the argument from creation to demonstrate that women cannot teach or have authority over men, thus making this command transcultural.

I have only seen this summary. I haven’t seen the whole article, but I guess Merkle argues that
1 Cor 11 goes
Adam first, then Eve b) Men have authority over women c) head covering
1 Tim 2 goes
Adam first, then Eve, and Eve deceived b) Men have authority over women, and women shouldn’t teach.
He may argue that b) results directly from a) and so is transcultural, whereas c) is indirect and only a specific application for the time.

Any thoughts?

It seems like 1 Cor 11 is a good passage to illustrate how Adam and Eve can be used to discuss a specific situational subject (head covering). So it leaves the door open to believe that Paul could be using Adam and Eve in 1 Tim 2 for a specific situation occurring in Ephesus. Thanks Kristen for mentioning this and also Elaine (back @41).
2 Cor 11:3 is also a helpful reference. Thanks.
About a month ago, one of the staff at church, when I asked him what sort of situation did he envisage taking place at Ephesus that might have moved Paul to write 1 Tim 2:11-15, he replied that there needn’t have been any situation at all. He thought Paul could have just been sprouting forth general universal principles for all churches for all time.
Thanks everyone for all your comments.