Craig

Sorry to dump the truck on everyone, but I thought some of you may be interested that I received an email from Mark (from Sola Panel) today. Elaine specifically asked if I could post it here. Sorry for the length of it. Mark is the first to admit that he gets a bit wordy.
I said to Mark

Some people have asked me following the closure of the Sola Panel discussion,
“If Mark does email you about the slavery and patriarchy issue could we please see his response?”
I said I would check with you first, so is it ok?

Mark replied

Yes, I think that’s fine to pass it on – as long as people see it as some initial thoughts.

So here are Mark’s initial thoughts

Here’s a few thoughts I had on the spot trying to reflect on why I personally approach the slavery and gender issues somewhat differently.  I haven’t tried to argue for anything here, you’ll note, merely identify and state as efficiently as possible – feel free to come back on any bits that you want to talk over, or give your thoughts on to me.

Why I differentiate between household code on slavery and on wives/husbands (and men and women more generally).

The basic reason is that I see more differentiation between the two themes in Scripture than egals tend to see.

In 1 Cor 11 Paul grounds some of his concrete applications on appeals to the structure of creation, to nature, and to a series of relationships involving ‘kephale’.  In 1 Tim 2 the order of creation, and the fall, is invoked.  In Ephesians 5 marriage is held up as a mystery of Christ and the Church (and again is tracked back to creation in v31). Further, marriage has the situation where it explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2 (in a very rare editorial commentary), something that Jesus appeals to in Mat 19 and Mark 10 to indicate that Moses’ regulation on divorce is in no way an approval of it.
Putting it together, marriage is basically seen as something given in creation, that is the pattern for the New Creation relationship with Christ, and that is fundamentally good.

Slavery is a far more mixed theme. I see no such theological heavyweights attached to it in the household codes.  People are to submit to and honour their masters out of reverence to Christ, but nothing substantial theologically is said about the institution of slavery itself in those contexts – nothing in the creation accounts, or the order of creation, or the nature of the new creation, or the fall is ever invoked to ground the institution the way that is done for marriage.  More broadly, slavery is used in both positive and negative senses.  We are slaves of Christ, and slaves of God, and slaves of righteousness.  Christ is spoken of as the doulos of God IIRC.  Those all give it a fundamentally positive orientation.  But on the other hand, salvation is often spoken of as a redemption from slavery, of a setting people free or giving them their freedom. When Samuel warned Israel about taking a king, the appeal focused on how he would make the people into his slaves. Slavery does not seem to appear (even by inference) in the creation accounts, and when it is regulated, there is no appeal to something more primordial than the concession to indicate what the true purpose of the institution is (something quite unlike marriage and divorce). Finally, in 1 Cor 7:21 Paul (and this is controverted) probably encourages slaves to get their freedom if they can, and in v23 (and this is not controverted) calls on people to not become slaves of men as they were bought with a price.  This suggests a stance towards slavery that is fairly clear in the textthat does not see it as an unalloyed good.  Paul does not say for people not to get married because they were bought with a price – he indicates that singleness is better given the current crisis, but his take on marriage seems more inherently positive. Similarly Philemon seems to suggest that Paul sees the freeing of Onesimus as a kind of moral imperative – an unusual one, but something of nature.

Taking that together, I see slavery as like most non-marriage forms of human institutions – it is given by God, it is not built into the fabric of either creation or redemption.  It is given no inherent dignity or theological weight, but both positive and negative connotations attach to it from how it is used in various contexts.  Given that Paul seems to promote freedom from the institution when it is possible, it does suggest a stance that can live with the institution, but that does not see it as an ideal – somewhat like how I think the Bible views divorce.

One of my difficulties with “the” egalitarian approach on this is that the analogy between the two (men-women and slavery) is not taken through properly.  The ‘usual’ argument offered is that the Bible was facing a problematically hierarchical culture that couldn’t be taken head-on.  And this had three big manifestations – women needing to be subject to men, the existence of slavery, and social institutions being run on the basis of power and authority and submission to that authority.  So in the household codes we have a subversion of these institutions – where slavery is being completely reframed (indeed, done away with).  But if that’s the case with slavery, then it must also be the case with marriage as well on this argument, if the two are so closely parallel.  If the household codes are attacking authority and authority bound institutions, and sees treatment of women and slaves as two examples of the same category of sin, then its treatment of marriage must have the same goal as its treatment of slavery – to do away with it.  If that is not the case, then egals, just like comps see a huge difference between the two institutions – they too see one as fundamentally good, and the other as fundamentally problematic.  So their argument that they applying the principles of the slavery debate to gender is simply wrong.  They aren’t.  They’re being fairly highly selective about it – unless they want to start talking about the fundamental goodness of a properly reframed vision of one person owning another.

This is similar to my problem with how the argument cashes out with parents and children.  In Ephesians 5 wives are to submit to their husbands as the Church does to Christ in everything.  But this is seen to not have any authority implications because husbands aren’t called on to command their wives.  This either misses the fact that the same issue is there with slaves and masters in chapter 6 – slaves are to obey masters, but masters aren’t told to command slaves or, if it is argued that here too masters and slaves are being put on the same footing without any authority, it misses the fact that the same thing is true of children and parents.  Children are to obey parents, but fathers are not told to exercise authority or command them. The three relationships are clearly some kind of analogy of each other – three relationships where (at least traditionally in society at large) one party had some kind of authority over another.  Egalitarianism either extracts marriage out as the relationship that doesn’t fit, extracts marriage and slavery out, or is consistent to the end and puts children and parents on an ‘equal’ footing where there is no authority in that relationship either.

There’s some basic thoughts – both about how I read the texts, and about my problems with the plausibility of egalitarian readings of the texts – on the diffrence and similarity between the two issues, hope that helps.

I replied

I will think a lot more about the content of your email, but my first reaction is the same as when I recently read one of Wayne Grudem’s answers to this question. My question is not dealing with a comparison between “slavery” and “marriage”. It is dealing with the authority aspect. So the comparison is between “slavery” and “patriarchy”.
It is the authority or patriarchal aspect of marriage that is in question, not marriage itself.

Mark replied

Interesting that Grudem and I thought in parallel lines here. 

I agree with you that the comparison is slavery and patriarchy, not slavery and marriage.  My point is that patriarchy has two main social instititutional structures (at least that we chew around) – marriage, and public roles in church, and then slavery.  Marriage was a patriarchal institution in the ancient world slavery was another patriarchal institution.  We can’t make a direct comparison from slavery to patriarchy because they are eggs and apples – one is a philosophy (for want of a better word) the other is an institution that (according to egals) probably exists as a result of that philosophy.  There is no ‘patriarchy’ as such – there are specific beliefs, and there are specific institutions.

I think my point is trying to be with that – do egalitarians then read the household codes differently when they come to husbands and wives (marriage), masters and slaves (slavery), and fathers and children (children)? “The” argument is that the NT is rescuing marriage from patriarchy in places like Ephesians and trying to deal with a bad situation in places like 1 Peter. Well, if egalitarianism is being consistent, is that how it sees what the NT is doing with slavery – is it trying to rescue that institution? In both cases it is facing a contemporary patriarchal institution on an egalitarian reading – does it respond the same in both cases? Egalitarianism sees marriage of the day, and slavery, as both patriarchal, and seems to just ignore children – doing there what it accuses complementarianism of doing with patriarchy and taking those passages as establishing authority relationships as a good thing. 

So I get the pointy end of your concern, I’m not trying to muddy the waters. My point is germane nonetheless, I think.  Egalitarianism reads Ephesians 5 and 6 as a word to a patriarchal society to reform patriarchal institutions – marriage, slavery (and, I’ll keep putting out there, children).  The argument is that complementarians treat slavery and patriarchical marriage differently, and that their argument that marriage is different from slavery – is built into creation, has big theological themes and the like attached to it – is special pleading, as the same is true of slavery. My point is that if that really is the case, then why don’t egalitarians treat all three relationships in the household codes the same.  Their own practice indicates that there is something different about slavery and marriage and children.

There’s two different arguments on view.  In one I’m rejecting the egalitarian claim that slavery has as much theological support as the Bible seems to give to marriage (and gender roles in church) and its particular structure.  In the other, I’m saying that egals are doing what they accuse comps of doing – they see ancient marriage as patriarchal, and read Ephesians as a godly response to that, yet still see what is happening in those chapters differently somewhere on the marriage-slavery-children spectrum. Their own practice is a sign that comps either aren’t being inconsistent here – to see that the Bible’s response to patriarchal marriage and patriarchal slavery is different, or if it is inconsistent it’s common ground in the debate. Having invoked the idea that Eph 5 needs to be read as response to a prevailing patriarchy, egalitarianism then sees that response as quite different as it moves from marriage, to slavery, to children – and yet all three were patriarchal institutions.  There seems to be a very big inconsistency there, as it is doing what it criticises comp for doing, and yet seems to be unaware of it.

The point is subtle, I’ll admit, and I’m probably not doing a good job of explaining it – it crystalised as I wrote the first thing to you yesterday, and I usually explain things better when they’ve sat with me for a bit.  Come back again if it still seems like I’m culpably reframing the question away from the one you think is the real one.

Any thoughts before I reply would be appreciated. Thanks.