Frank

Dave, I appreciate both your and Kay’s comments and suggestions on my last comment. Right now, I am expanding and editing my comments on Colossians 3:15-17, as suggested by Kay, which I hope to post to Mike’s website later today or tomorrow night. And thanks, Dave. for the reminder of how Mike is likely to follow Grudem’s view of mutual submission, or in this case, mutual ministry. That is something else I plan to incorporate in the revised version of my comments on Col. 3:15-17, using material from Alan F. Johnson’s article in the Priscilla Papers, “A Christian Understanding of Submission: A Nonhierarchical-Complementarian Viewpoint.”

In the above article, Johnson discusses a book that I believe will prove troublesome for complementarians. It is by a British NT scholar, Gregory Dawes, entitled THE BODY IN QUESTION: METAPHOR AND MEANING IN THE INTERPRETATION OF EPHESIANS 5:21-33. Now as Johnson points out, egalitarians with find that they strongly disagree with some points of this author’s arguemts, but the book is still of great value.

The first thing Dawes does in this book is demonstrate is that in NT Greek, kephale is what is linguists describe as a “live metaphor,” which has a plurality of meanings that can only be determined by its contextual usage. So according to Dawes, because of its context, Col. 2:10 b is correctly translated, “[Christ] is the head over every power and authority,” while Eph. 4:15, because of its context, speaks of Christ as the unitary source from which the Church receives life and power for its growth and development, hence the translation, “we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ.” However, Dawes criticizes patriarchial-traditionalists for holding that kephale can only mean “authority over,” regardless of the context; and he criticizes egalitarians for refusing to see kephale as potentially meaning “authority over” in Eph. 5:21-33. But it is what Dawes argues about mutual subjection, contrary to Grudem and Piper, that I find most interesting and pertinent to what we are now discussing. Here I quote Johnson:

Dawes also argues that while hypotasso “in itself is not quite synonymous with ‘obedience’ (hypakouo), the two terms are closely associated in 1 Peter 3:5-6…and in Titus 3:1” (p.212). What then, he asks, can be made of the peculiar expression in Eph. 5:21, “be subject to one another” (hypotasso allelois)? Dawes believes that this expression when correctly exegeted means, “mutual subordination,” and that “it helps to undermine the (apparently) ‘patriarchical’ ethic of the following verses” (p. 213)…Finally, is there any reason to restrict the meaning of the word “one another” (as meaning “everyone to everyone”) to mean “some to others” as Grudem and Piper advocate? Dawes argues that the context shows that the exhortation, beginning with Eph. 5:19, where we find a series of five participles (speaking, singing, making melody, giving thanks, and submitting to one another), are all dependent on the command to “be filled with the Spirit” (v.18) and give no reason to believe that any of the five participles are directed to only some Christians and not to others. Furthermore, verse 21, with its call to mutual submission (and from which verse 22 gets its verb), cannot be limited to the relationship between husband and wife, but it must be taken as a general Christian ethic addressed to every believer. Mutual submission applies to all Christians, and it can be applied to Christian married couples also because they too are members of Christ’s Body (Johnson, pp. 14-15).

And I think this is a good reply to Grudem’s nonsense regarding mutual submission. But you know, the more I interact with complementarians, the more I am convinced that they regularly violate this principle of biblical interpretation: A text must always be understood, explained and applied within its proper context. Or as I like to say it, “Any text, explained and applied from its proper context, is nothing but a pretext!”