Kristen

Ok, getting back to answering Mark.

Several of his paragraphs subsequent to the ones I have already addressed are expansions on the same issues. So I’m going to comment only on the ones that are left that my earlier comments did not address.

First, there’s this:
1. The Bible indicates that marriage is built into Creation and New Creation, and is good.
2. The Bible doesn’t do that for slavery.
3. The society of the day had a unanimous strong view about both marriage and slavery that was patriarchal, and Jewish exegesis of the Bible understood the texts patriarchally.
4. The Bible does teach a structure of marriage, either patriarchal or egalitarian.

My argument was that the Bible does treat marriage and slavery as different – one is built in and fundamentally good, one is not built in and is not an unequivocal good.

I do not deny that marriage is built in from the beginning and shown as good. But I will say that the way I read it, marriage as an institution of patriarchy was not the way God originally conceived it– and the New Testament appears to overturn husband-rule as the norm for New Covenant marriage. I do not think that this would be lost on Paul’s original audience, as I have said. Paul was a Hebrew scholar. I understand that Paul was also Jewish, and it is true that in general, Jewish exegesis of the Bible understood the texts patriarchally. But much of Paul’s writing repudiates common Jewish understandings of many OT texts. Paul was not wed to rabbinic understandings. My question is, do the OT texts really show that God set up marriage from the beginning as a patriarchal institution? Because if they don’t, then given the nature of the New Covenant kingdom of God, it is quite likely that Paul had moved beyond Jewish patriarchalism in this area, and that he was trying to move his readers beyond patriarchalism too.

“And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and . . . over all the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth.” Gen. 1:26-28.

What this shows is identical treatment of the man and the woman, and identical status of the man and the woman before God. He formed them both to be in His image and to have dominion, and then he told them to be fruitful and multiply and rule the other creatures. But to me, the important thing to note here is that for Paul, as for us, Genesis Chapter 2 cannot be read without a view to Genesis Chapter 1. The woman, no less than the man, is given rulership in Genesis 1. There is no hint in Genesis 1 that the man is in authority over the woman.

It is in the next chapter that we see the words “help meet” (note that these are two words, not one): “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an help meet for him.” Genesis 2:18.

It is important here to note that the name “Adam” is simply the Hebrew word for “human.” Genesis 5:2 says, “Male and female He created them, and blessed them, and called their name “adam” (human) in the day when they were created.” Woman is not an afterthought that God happened to have. When God made the “adam,” the male and female human were in God’s mind from the beginning. But he created one “adam” alone at first, for a reason. Genesis 2:19-20 says that God deliberately brought the animals to the adam to name them, “but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.”

God then causes the adam to fall asleep, and he takes “one of his ribs” (the original Hebrew says “from his side”), and makes a woman. She is made of the exact same substance as Adam, so that he cannot claim her nature as different from his in any way. Adam recognizes what God intended him to recognize– that no other creature is of Adam’s own nature, but this woman is. And this is where the word “man” as in “male” is first used by Adam in regard to himself, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” v. 23. But is a relationship of authority and submission being set up here? Was Eve created to be Adam’s help, as we understand it in English today– his “assistant”?

The Hebrew word there for “help” actually refers to someone who renders strong aid that is desperately needed. Most of the other times that this word, “ezer,” is used in the Old Testament, it refers to God. In Psalm 33:20, for instance: “Our soul waiteth for the Lord; He is our help (“ezer”) and our shield.” An “ezer” is not someone who is subordinate to the one helped. God as “ezer” is above the humans who cry for Him to be their “help.”

But the woman is not a “help” from a superior position, as God is, so the text in Genesis 2 adds a modification. The woman is a “help meet for him.” “Meet” in the KJV is an old word meaning “suitable to” or “corresponding to.” The Hebrew word is “kenedgo,” which literally means “facing him,” or “as in front of him.” The idea is that here is a help (strong aid) that is not above Adam, as God is, but is face-to-face with him. Equal partnership is strongly implied by this phrase.

God makes the woman because one “adam” alone is not good. The “adam” needs a strong aid that stands face-to face with him. God wants the “adam” to recognize this strong, face-to-face aid for what she is, so God makes sure the “adam” knows that this being is not like one of the animals, but is of his own substance and nature. Genesis 2 then concludes with a parenthetical– that it is because of this manner of creation that man and woman are to join in marriage and be “one flesh.” There is still no hint of subordination of Eve to Adam. In fact, the later subordination of the woman to the man is clearly shown in Genesis 3:16 to be the result of sin.

Would Paul really have understood that because Adam was made first, and because he named the animals, this put him automatically in a position of authority over Eve? If you take 1 Tim 2:15 and overlay it over the top of Genesis 2, it may seem that way– but can we be sure Paul would actually have read Genesis that way? The Bible clearly shows that the reason God had Adam name the animals was because God wanted to show Adam that there was no “facing-him-strong-aid” to be found among the animals. And even if naming something implied authority over it, Adam did not name Eve till after the Fall– in Genesis 3:20. When Adam said, “She shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of Man,” he was not naming the woman. He was simply distinguishing both himself and her from one another as male and female. The Hebrew word for “called” is a different word from the word used when he “named” the animals and “named” Eve. If the idea of “naming” has any meaning of “authority” at all, then it is interesting to note that Adam did not name Eve until after sin had entered the world and after God told Eve, “he shall rule over you.” (Notice, too, that God did not give a command to the man, “See that you rule over her,“ but merely made a statement to the woman, “He shall rule over you.“ Male rule, like thorns and thistles and pain in childbirth, was a consequence of the Fall, not a command of God.)

Nor is there any indication in Genesis itself, that being made first put Adam automatically in authority over Eve. If being made first implied authority, then the fish and the birds would rule the land animals, and the land animals would rule the humans. But God made the human alone at first so that God could show the human how much he needed an “ezer kenegdo.”

Looking at other Old Testament passages about marriage, we definitely see that “ruling over her” quickly became the norm in Israelite thinking. The Law largely assumes that men are going to consider their wives and daughters to be their property, and sets up certain parameters to give women and wives some protections. But even within those parameters, we often see God working with and through women in ways that elevates and ennobles them. Deborah, Miriam, Abigail, Esther — all were used by God in ways that indicated grace and dignity far above man’s usual treatment of woman.

And then Christ came. And He did things like tell Martha that Mary didn’t have to serve in the kitchen but could come sit and learn as a disciple, right in the same room with the guys. He spoke to the Samarian woman in theological discourse, in a way very similar to that in which He spoke to men like Nicodemus. Unlike the way the Old Testament’s point of view is fairly consistently male, Christ frequently would tell one parable featuring a man’s perspective, and then another parable featuring a woman’s perspective, in a parallel fashion (see for instance Luke 15:1-10). In short, Christ made it plain that while Israel’s law was male-focused, the kingdom of God was focused on men and women together.

And then we get Galatians 3:26-4:7, which is one of Paul’s great statements about the nature of the New Covenant community brought about by Christ’s death and resurrection.

“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Now I say: That the heir,, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all. . . Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. . . Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

Looking closely at this passage, it is not referring only to salvation; this is not just about the fact that people of all races and both sexes can become part of God’s family. See the last part of this section of Scripture: “that ye might receive the adoption of sons. . . and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” That phrase, “adoption of sons,” was a special legal term in the original Greek, referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir.. Adopted male heirs had the same status as freeborn male sons, with all the privileges and benefits that sons enjoyed in that culture.

Paul is saying that “in Christ” Jews and Gentiles, slaves and freemen, males and females, all have full and equal status as adopted freeborn “sons” in the family of God. It was not Paul’s intention that a freeborn Jew, after reading this passage, would feel able to tell a Gentile or a slave, “There, you get to be saved just like us; now be content with that, because positions of authority in the Kingdom belong only to freeborn Jews.” Such flesh-based distinctions are part of the “elements of the world,” (Gal. 4:3), and these “elements” are not part of God’s covenant community in Christ. And according to the same passage, this applies to “male and female” distinctions too.

In other words, when the New Testament is looked at as a whole, it appears that Christ’s coming was meant to change the damaging effects of male-female relations created by the Fall, so that wives can again become the “face-to-face strong aid” of their husbands. 1 Cor 7 makes this abundantly clear in the careful, line-by-line parallels indicating equal reciprocity that Paul shows throughout the marriage-advice section. “Let each man have his own wife/let each woman have her own husband.” “Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her/likewise also the wife to her husband.” And so on and so on, throughout the whole passage.

Looked at in this light, it becomes hard for me to believe that Paul’s passages about practical Christian living (including marriage practices in Eph 5 and church conduct in 1 Cor. 11 and 1 Tim 2) were meant to override his principle in Gal 3:28 that in Christ, oneness between the male and female is being restored through equality of status and full “sonship.” It seems to me instead that Paul was working out how those principles of equal status could be worked into the culture in which he and his readers found themselves.

(Note: the more I study 1 Tim 2:14-17, the more it looks to me like Paul was addressing a specific problem distinctive to the church at Ephesus in the early to mid-first century. According to Greek scholar Philip Payne, the word “permit” in the Greek almost always implied a case-specific injunction. And Paul’s general grammatical practice was to use the first person singular, present active indicative tense (translated here as “I do not permit”) to indicate a current desire or conviction, not a universal, timeless command. Philip Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ, p. 320-21. I simply do not think Paul intended this passage as an interpretation of Genesis such that we can read it back over and into the meaning of the original Genesis passage in the way complementarians do. We need to read it instead, in light of what the New Covenant Kingdom is supposed to be.)

So what it comes down to is that as far as I can see, the whole New Testament, including Paul, gives women a new, equal status with men, restoring them to what was lost in the Garden. Practical issues had to be worked out in light of the situation the young churches found themselves in, but the weight and thrust of the Scriptures as a whole is for male-female functional equality.
***

I will address Mark’s last point as soon as I can. Today’s my 23rd wedding anniversary! And I have to start getting ready for an evening out with my sweet equal partner and best friend. (grin)