Craig

Hi everyone,
I sent Kristen’s comments @136-140 (amended as requested) to Mark yesterday. I also sent some comments of my own to Mark, which I have posted below. If you see anything where you feel my thinking needs to be a bit refined, or I haven’t understood something as well as I could, please feel free to provide your own thoughts.
So these thoughts are my reply that I sent yesterday to Mark’s comments @135.

Just some thoughts and questions as I am thinking about what you have written. Sorry if some of them seem a bit jumbled.

1.The apples to apples comparison that I would see is
Patriarchal rule in marriage with Patriarchal rule in slavery or
Patriarchal rule over wives with Patriarchal rule over slaves.

Sorry to harp on this one but I am just checking that this is the comparison in your mind, so that when you say things like “Marriage…. explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2,” and “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.” I think to myself “Yes, but what has that got to do with the question?” Everyone agrees with these things. The question is not about how foundational marriage is, but rather how foundational is patriarchal authority in marriage. That is quite different in my mind and a much more difficult thing to establish. So I am wondering if your main argument is really things like “Patriarchal authority in marriage…… explicitly features in the story in Gen 1-2,” and “Putting it together, Patriarchal authority in 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.”

2.Regarding your problems with the egal approach.

a.I am not sure myself that the household codes are written to rescue or reform institutions (or to endorse them either). They seem to me to be more about encouraging godly living and relationships amongst the members of the household within the culture and situations people find themselves in. If you are a slave this is how you are to live. If you are a master, this is how you are to live. Paul is encouraging mutual submission, mutual yielding to the needs of others, mutual love and servanthood.

b.You said Mark,

“ 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.”

I agree that there is a huge difference between marriage and slavery. One is fundamentally good, and the other is fundamentally problematic. But as I said above in 1. , the real comparison is between Patriarchal authority in marriage and Patriarchal authority in slavery. So if the real comparison is valid, marriage itself, doesn’t have to end up the same as slavery. The question is whether the patriarchal authority is a good thing in both, a bad thing in both, or a good thing in one and not the other. If it is decided that patriarchal authority is similar in both, and bad in both, it doesn’t necessarily mean that marriage and slavery need to end up the same way. If you remove patriarchal authority from marriage you end up with marriage. Marriage can exist perfectly well without patriarchal authority (1 Cor 7:1-5, Gen 1 :26-28, Gen 2:23,24.). Can slavery?

c.With regard to parents and children, you said,

“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.”

Are the three relationships really an analogy of each other? Aren’t they just the three relationships that existed in the household with the Patriarch? Do they all have to end up the same after the principles of mutual submission and Christian love are applied? If there are good reasons for some authority to be exercised by parents over children I don’t see why this has to be the same for the other relationships.

The patriarch is not told to exercise authority in these passages in any of his relationships so I certainly don’t think that it can be drawn from these passages that he must do this, or that we must do this today. We must look at the rest of the scriptures to determine if this is so. I think we find from other scriptures and practical wisdom that there are good reasons for parents to exercise authority over children.

d.All these things seem very different to the egal arguments I hear with regard to comparing patriarchal authority over women and slaves.
The argument I hear seems to be more along these lines:
“Historically, up until a couple of hundred years ago, the church read the passages about masters/slaves as universal and normative. A big change occurred when Christians debated the slavery issue. Some Christians argued that a plain reading of some very clear bible texts showed that slavery is approved by God. Others disagreed by examining some of the big themes in scripture and the culture in which it was written. They argued that these passages didn’t teach what had been thought for hundreds of years.

As Christians today have looked at the gender debate, many have seen a parallel between the arguments used for maintaining slavery and the arguments used for maintaing the authority of men over women in marriage and in the church.”

The argument I hear is not “slavery is in the household codes, and everything in the household codes must be the same as each other, so marriage must be the same”.

It is “slavery is in the household codes. It was always assumed to be normative. Perhaps we can’t just assume Patriarchal authority in marriage (and over children) is normative. We have to study the whole sweep of the scriptures to determine if what is said is normative, not just assume it is. We need to have some good reasons for what we believe.This was the error made by those who opposed the abolition of slavery. Patriarchal authority in marriage has to be studied throughout the bible to determine if it is normative, not just assume it is or isn’t because it is in the household codes”.

Thanks for considering these things Mark, from your Christian brother,

Craig.