Kristen

NN wrote:

“And this brings us back to the question: How can you tell? When Paul says “all christians should submit one to another” you say ‘that’s a transcendent truth of the christian faith” when he says to exactly the same group “wives submit to your husbands” you say ‘well, that’s just a result of the culture that he was speaking to.’”
I certainly never said that “wives submit to your husbands” was just a result of the culture. Wives should submit to their husbands in the same way all Christians submit to one another. Said submission does not convey authority. Complementarians so often seem to think egalitarians are against wifely submission. We aren’t. We’re against the concept of authority being read into a passage where the author wasn’t talking about authority at all.
I thought I made it clear how when you take the cultural understandings into account, it becomes clearer to see what the author actually meant. It’s puzzling to me that though you say you understand what I’m saying, your response shows that we still aren’t connecting. There is no need to ask “how do you tell?” Once you read each passage with a mind to finding the principle being conveyed, “how do you tell?” becomes a moot point, because once cultural understandings (in EVERY passage) are taken into consideration, the actual truth principles being conveyed can be seen, and those principles are what we’re supposed to be following in the first place.
As far as cultural bias is concerned– I think many of us as Christians need to understand that that we may have counter-cultural biases– that is, that we may not understand that certain aspects of modern culture are actually in tune with, and historically rooted in, Christian principles, and that in our rejection of “the world,” we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Full female equality is one of these areas, in my opinion.