Mark

Cheryl,

Thanks for the interaction. Let me put it this way. I won’t base my understanding of hypotasso, from a verb that is not the same. I will base my understanding from the lexicons, context and the rest of the Bible. You may wish to swap and fiddle with the verbs to come to the conclusion that you do, but i am not.

Yes i am saying that masters were NOT subject to their slaves. I am confident in this, becasue the Bible never saids that masters are hypotasso to their slaves. If this was the case they would no longer be masters. I think what you need to do is look beyond the verb ‘obey’ and look at all the other things Paul describes for the slaves. Then also look at what Paul qualifies for the masters after ‘do the same thing’, for example ‘stop threatening’. You can’t just take ‘obey’ and ‘do the same thing’ and ignore the rest of the text as if it doesn’t mean anything or rather gives meaning to the exhortation. I thought i had heard it all from you Cheryl, until you come up with this one.

Why will i waste my time explaining how my marriage works on this blog. It is quite clear that we are never going to agree since our ‘foundations’ are completely different. Practical implications flow from theology, if the theology is different, the practical issues will be different. I don’t expect anything i say about my marriage will help facilitate our biblical interpretation of Eph 5.

It seems like in an egalitarian context the book of Ephesians could stop at 5:21, since the husband/wife, Christ/church, slave/master, child/parent relationships all say the same thing right- in a nutshell ‘mutual submission’. It makes me wonder why Paul would go to all that effort to give these exhortations, if he said it all in 5:21. Wow, my relationship with my wife is no different to the slave and his master- that’s encouraging! (sorry for the sarcasm)

Finally, if my wife IS the body with me, how can she come from my body? How can i be the source of her? Puzzling questions! Also again, why are you interpolating Adam and Eve into Eph 5 when Paul does not. Why are you basing your meaning of ‘head’ from something not even in the context? More puzzling questions. I think the reality is, i am not the source of my wife’s body- her parents are (physically). There is no direct correlation between the first pair and me and my wife physically like that.
This is why it appears that ‘head’ has some new age hypothetical mumbo jumbo meaning that makes no actual sense of the word or the context in which it lies. Or maybe i am the source ‘spiritually’ like Christ is for the Church. Can we draw the conclusion that i am the one responsible for the salvation of my wife, like Christ is for the Church? Let’s face it- stick with the proper meaning of the word(s) and uphold biblical teaching.