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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
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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]