Craig

Just working out some responses to Mark that I can send. Any thoughts are welcome.
Mark said

I think egals have reconstructed ‘submit’ to mean something like ‘voluntarily yielding our own desires to put others first and meet their needs’. You won’t find that meaning in any greek lexicon I know of (not that I’m a linguistic guru) that covers extra-biblical examples. It is a meaning that simply doesn’t work in many contexts in the NT. Submit to the authorities = voluntarily yield your desires to put them first and meet their needs? Submit to God means I meet his needs?

My understanding is that a well accepted definition of submit is “voluntarily yield to”. When I first started to question these issues a few months ago with one of the staff at my church, he pointed me in the direction of “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”. On p166 George Knight (a comp) quotes from BDAG p848 that submission is “voluntary yielding in love”.
I expanded that a bit as to how I see it operating in practice in the “one anothering“ that goes on in church to give ‘voluntarily yielding our own desires to put others first and meet their needs’. I don’t know if other egals would agree with this definition, but of course, as you rightly point out, this whole definition is a bit silly when applied to other spheres like governments, slaves/masters, and to Christ. But I think you have focussed on the way I apply the yielding to one another rather than on the yielding itself which is the heart of submission. Sorry to cause confusion. If I say what something means I should just stick to what it means rather than how it applies to me in a particular sphere. I hope that helps to clear up many of the comments and questions below where you discussed the weaknesses of the way I understand submission.
So in order to have one consistent definition that applies in all spheres I would just leave it with the core meaning of “voluntarily yield to” in agreement with George Knight and BDAG. I think this can be applied to submitting to one another, as well as to Christ, the government etc.
As I see it, if it is just “voluntarily yield to” then this can be done to someone whether they are in authority or not. We can “voluntarily yield to” one another and also “voluntarily yield to” the government. So I think just because the word submit is used in the bible doesn’t necessarily imply that it is to an authority. How do you understand “submitting to one another” if you see submission as always to an authority? Eph 5:21, Eph 6:9, 1 Pet 5:5, 1 Cor 16:15,16. How do you understand what these sort of passages are teaching?

You were wondering about extra biblical examples. I believe 1 Clement 37:5-38:1 explains the Christian duty of submission to one’s neighbour.