Cheryl Schatz

Tiffany #566,
You said:

re 550

First of all, I don’t think that it is clear that you don’t believe husbands have 100% authority over wives.

It should be. Not only have I stated it numerous times, but I gave the very specific explanation of the nature of universal truth which comes from God and the implications for that in the marriage relationship.

You are speaking about universal truth and we are speaking about authority. This doesn’t help to make this clear but to cause confusion. But I will try to decipher what I think you are saying. I believe you are saying that in the areas of God’s domain, God has authority. One of the areas that God has all the authority is in the area of truth. No man can take authority over his wife and make her believe something that is not true as universal truth is not something that he can change and enforce upon her. Universal truth is God’s authority over her.

But in the area of all other things outside of God’s direct authority you believe that the husband has 100% authority to set the direction of the home and the marriage. The woman will be in complete submission to his authority by setting her mind to learn and accept his desires so that she is in complete agreement with him and his authority to lead the home and the marriage.

Does this come close to how you believe the husband to be the authority of the home and marriage?

Tiffany, does this somewhat accurately convey what you are saying?

Somewhat. The problem with the example, while I think it accurately portrays in one aspect what I have been wanting to get across, it gives the impression the the unique things that make the wife *her* disappear. Which isn’t accurate. The wife as she submits to her husband isn’t going to disapeer. I suspect you would like to go further in this particular part of the discussion, but this really must be my last comment and I need to be coming to a close.

So you believe that if a wife sets aside her desires for the home and the marriage and she lifts up her husband’s desires so that they are the things that she strives for instead of her own desires, that she will not disappear and no longer be a person of her own? Then can you tell me what circumstances would happen that would make her disappear?

I am going to make one last statement re:authority. going back and reading some of my explanations I can understand your confussion. My intent was never to discuss authority to begin with, but only submission and I should have stuck to that. In saying a little rather than none or a lot, it has made things less clear rather than more.

After working through your statements, I think that I am understanding where you are coming from. There seems to be a unique definition given for authority that no one else uses but you have been convinced that your understanding of authority is the Biblical one. You also seem to have a very unique definition of submission which involves becoming so involved with your husband’s desires that you now become the same way. Yet you say that this doesn’t make you disappear. Yet the fact that you brought up a disappearing makes me believe that you do understand the trap that this kind of thinking can lead to. I know of no one else that has ever expressed to me that submission was a wife absorbing or taking on the desires of her husband. While I don’t doubt that there are women who are very much like their husbands in a lot of areas so that there have common desires, the meaning of submission does not mean to take on another person’s desires. God didn’t make a mistake when he made you the way he did with unique desires and likes and dislikes. God doesn’t expect us to become a mini version of our husband’s and their desires. We are serve our husbands and allow them to serve us without becoming just like them.

Self-sacrificing, nourishing, cherishing – these are the characteristics of Christ’s application of authority. Just as with any other natural gift of God it can be abused

Self-sacrificing, nourishing and cherishing are not connected to authority. In fact a question I asked you before which you didn’t answer shows the problem of claiming that these things are an application of authority, for how would one now claim that a wife does not have authority when she applies these very same characteristics? You can’t have it both ways. If these are signs of authority, then they have to be signs of authority in all who have these signs. Or they aren’t the signs of authority. Which is it?

Either way authority exists – the question in our lives is how it is used.

It hasn’t been proven that a husband has authority over his wife. One cannot just claim that this authority exists without showing where God gave such an authority.

Let’s stick with that as what my working understand of authority is.

That would be problematic because you would then have to show how these characteristics are a sign of authority for men but not authority for women who have the same characteristics.

However I still maintain that in a marriage where both are seeking Christ it is basically a non issue.

I understand that you are meaning that the woman seeking Christ will submit to her husband’s leading in every area and since she submits herself to take on his desires, they are no longer in a place of ever having a disagreement on an area that he has full authority over.

It has been maintained on here that authority is much more keeping in line with the likes of Hitler, stalin,etc and that it has no place with fellowship of believers or even of Christ over His people.

No, I don’t think anyone has said such a thing. What has been said is that God’s authority is a good thing. Therefore if God Himself gives an authority to the man and the woman (like he gave us the rule over the earth) this authority is also a good thing. But to assume that God gave an authority to the man over his joint-heir wife when God did not say a word about giving such an authority to him, then this kind of assumed authority is wrong and it can cause a great deal of trouble in the hands of sinners.

I will continue on the next comment…