Sue

Mark,

If a woman is “under authority” then she does not relate to the moral guidelines contained in God’s word in the same way as a man does. There is always a man to tell her what the morals taught in the Bible are.

I am simply saying that a woman has the same responsibility and authority to follow morality as taught in God’s word as a man does. A man must care for his family, so must a woman, and so on. A woman can never ever compromise what is best for her family because her husband has some kind of authority over her on the basis of his gender. That is wrong.

Since men are not more moral than women, sometimes the wife does see a situation in a different moral light than her husband and she needs to follow that. It may relate to the health and safety of the children, to their well being, it may relate to obligations to others. A woman has exactly the same moral responsibility before God that a man does.

If you simply mean that in situations that have no moral component, a man should have his way, I do not see any justification for this. It seems a rather selfish way for men to organise life, but less harmful that having a man supersede moral decisions.

Regarding lexicons, when you read BDAG, you see the words “of the father as head of the family” Hs 7, 3 and you trust that. But I have read Shepherd of Hermas (Hs) in Greek, so I have to think about whether this is an example which informs us as to Paul’s intent. In my opinion, it is not. As I said on my blog, “it is not a slam dunk.”

Regarding those who duck and twist, complementarian scholars equal in every way all other interpreters. As you know, Dr. Grudem has made the claim that God is subordinate to man in the moment in which he helps man. This is in the interest of proving that woman as the ezer kenegdo, the “help meet” is subordinate to man. That is a duck with a quack!

If you would like a list of complementarian inconsistencies, I would very much like to tell you when it will be published but it would be a book of 600 pages at least! I can’t really say that egals are much better.

I do not regard history as much help. It was not until the 1980’s that the law regarded marital rape as a crime. Does that mean that the weight of history demonstrates a greater morality? Hardly!

However, I definitely believe that in the law of Christ we have a firm foundation. It is the most repeated commandment in the scripture, to love the Lord your God, and treat fellow humans as you would be treated. It seems so simple to me, so straightforward.

I remember crying when I realized that a “neighbour” could refer to a woman also. I was 50 years old before that concept had ever occurred to me. I had never had that thought before, that I as a woman, should be treated as a fellow human being by a man.