Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: palosaari@tiger.oxy.edu (Jedidiah Jon Palosaari) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Husband as leader in marriage Message-ID:Date: 17 Aug 89 09:13:47 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 Lines: 73 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I'm currently engaged in a discussion over whether or not the man should make the crucial desicians in a Christian marriage when there can be no agreement. My opponent argues that those passages stating that the wife should obey the husband were made for a certain church and a certain time only. Could anyone point me to some relavent passages on the subject. (I want to learn the truth- not just support my own view, so passages stating there should be equal descision making or that there are certain passages for certain times and people would be helpful too.) [There are certainly passages saying that in Christ there is no male or female, e.g. Gal 3:28. Typical passages talking about wives submitting to the husband are Eph 5:22 ff. and I Pet 3:1. It's a bit hard to argue that the authors originally meant these as advice for a specific church. Particularly Eph seems clearly to be a presentation of the author's general concept of marriage. About the best you can do if you want to adopt a different view is to say that the most general principle is Eph 5:21: Be subject to one another. One could argue that the wife's submission to the husband is simply one example of this, but that fully carrying out the concept of mutual dependency requires the husband to be subject to the wife as well. Indeed I Cor 7:4 does show that in some ways husbands should be subject to wives. Based on statements such as Gal 3:28, Eph 5:21, and I Cor 7:4, one could argue that mutual submission of husbands and wives is a reasonable extension of Paul's ideas. But in all honesty, one has to admit that it is an extension. It seems nearly certain that Paul accepted the existing social structures of his time, including an assymmetrical concept of marriage, slavery, etc. It is very hard to believe that the advice in Eph 5:22ff was intended only for the specific situation of Ephesus. Those who would adopt the model of mutual submission of husband and wife have to make a slightly more abstract argument. They would claim that there is a sort of implicit dependence of all of Paul's advice on the particular social structure in which he lived. When ours are different, we should attempt to apply his principles to our social structures, rather than keeping his advice unchanged. What makes this principle dangerous is that we need to be in a position to judge social structures. We can't afford to allow the structure of Christian marriage to be dictated entirely by what our society is doing. Unfortunately, the NT simply doesn't tell us how to judge alternative social structures. So one has to decide whether the fact Jesus, Paul, etc., accept the structures of their time indicates that we are bound to them for all time, or whether it indicates that they simply didn't consider the issue of changing the society. One can argue that most of the NT was written from a perspective in which the Final Judgement was expected almost immediately, so redesigning the society simply wouldn't have made sense to them. As I'm sure you know, Christians come down on both sides of this issue. Many believe that the fact that Paul accepted an assymmetrical view of marriage means that we should too. Others believe that change is possible, and indeed that passages such as Gal 3:28, Eph 5:21, and I Cor 7:4 would support a change in our concept of marriage to a more symmetrical model. Unfortunately I know of no convincing argument on either side. Those who believe that we must continue to use the social forms endorsed in the NT believe that anything else denies the authority of Scripture, and ultimately God. Those who believe that change is permissible believe that the alternative view turns the NT into a new Law. Scriptures can be cited that warn against both dangers. It seems to be a basic difference in approach. One thing however is clearly not permissible. That is to abandon the concept of submission in marriage, and to accept the all too common situation where husband and wife really want to continue to be autonomous. If you are going to adopt a symmetrical view, you should do it not by abandoning the idea that the wife submits to the husband, but by adding the idea that the husband also submits equally to the wife. --clh]