Dave

Thanks for finally responding to something I have said to you NN! I am delighted!

Your comment in full which includes my comment,

“To Dave (508)

“the concept of control is essentially anti love as a concept” (Dave)

I shall leave it to you to reconcile the following two verses (of very, very many that come to mind):

Matt 28:18 ~ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

and

Eph 3:19 ~ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

1 – I do not deny authority exists. It is often given by cultures.
2 – I am not denying that love cannot exist where authority exists.
3 – I am not denying that Jesus has authority and that he is loving.
4 – I am not denying that authority can be exercised with love in many cases.
5 – I AM denying that authority and love is the same thing. Nurture is love. Control is not. This has little to do with reconciling the two verses you have given me.

You are blurring what authority is to try and reconcile your theology. What you have not done is interact with ANY of my previous comments which suggest the need to look at Eph as a whole and look at why Paul is saying what he is saying.

If I viewed Acts 17:23-31 the way you view Ephesians 5, I would conclude that Paul is saying there is more than one God. BUT Paul is speaking (in Acts) to a culture where if he comes in on the premise that there is only one God he will not be heard. In Eph Paul is not starting with the premise that a man should submit to his wife explicitly because the culture would not listen to him.

BUT we see in Acts 17:29 a very subtle dig at the fact that the Athenian gods are not really Gods. We also see in Eph 5 that there is a subtle suggestion that we should submit to one another and that the “authority” (which society has dictated as Genesis 3 said it would) should in fact be replaced with love in Christ!

Note the passage never mentions authority. This is assumed within the culture. Love, however, is.

I cannot see how you reconcile your view of marriage in Ephesians 5 with what Paul says about slavery in Eph 6, unless of course you believe in slavery…as long as masters nurture their slaves!