The CBE Scroll

Comment by Psalmist in Texas

July 22, 2006 @ 12:40 pm

Amen on every count here! I happen to believe that THE biggest danger in the church embracing patriarchy is that it makes gender THE focus. It’s a shorthand in sorting people out; it minimizes the need to get to know certain people because “he’s a man” or “she’s a woman,” so he or she doesn’t “fit” whatever the issue might be. In other words, the one absolutely common characteristic of all people in the church (human child of God) is superimposed with one–and only one–overriding identity of male or female. You can ignore the humanity if you sort people into their blue and pink pens as though they are sheep to be counted.

I don’t believe that if we find it difficult to relate to a fellow Christian as brother or sister–as sibling, we’re capable of truly respecting that one as fellow worker, Spirit-gifted leader, or even husband/wife. As you say, “sibling” needs to be the basic Christian identity and level on which we should relate to one another. That is what equality does, and what patriarchy circumvents.

Thanks again for a great entry!

Comment by Lori

July 26, 2006 @ 12:05 pm

I haven’t commented before just because there’s so much I could say on this subject. I could almost write a book about it…

I believe that marriage has almost become an idol in comp. circles. I mean, walk into the single’s section of any Christian bookstore and most of the books, written from a comp. viewpoint, tell you how to get married. A prominent Christian leader said a while back that Christians aren’t getting married because they’re selfish (tell that to all the women waiting for Prince Charming). He also said that when you get to Heaven you’ll be commended for having gotten married. Many comps. advocate that women stay home with their parents until they get married, thus implying that a girl will get married fairly quickly. (I have yet to hear the story of any comp. who still had a daughter at home by the time they reached 30. It seems they all get married when they’re 20 or 21.) A recent book said flat out that women living by themselves are ruining their chances of getting married–seeming to imply that this is the only thing single women should be aiming to do with their lives.

As I said, I could go on and on….

Comment by C Snyder

August 11, 2006 @ 6:09 am

Interesting – while I married a long time ago – I just read Elizabeth Elliot’s Book – Passion and Purity – convicting, deep and potentially life changing for anyone who is single and contemplating God’s will for marriage or singleness.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is seeking :D

Comment by Von

August 26, 2006 @ 5:37 pm

It is strange that you should say that the “metaphor for understanding gender relationships” — by which I assume you mean marriage relationships — “should be that of sibling.” Scripture actually gives us a specific metaphor that God wishes us to use to understand gender relationships. See Ephesians 5:22-33 and 1 Peter 3:1-7. Thus we see that the metaphor God chose for defining “gender relationships” is that of Christ and His Church, a relationship of utter subjection and obedience on the one part, and utter love and leadership on the other.

Comment by Alex

August 31, 2006 @ 7:37 am

Re: comment #4:

Thanks for the comment, but much needs clarification. First of all, your assumption is incorrect. What I was saying in the original post is that far too often the assumption in church (your assumption also) is that the most ideal (or only possible) relationship between men and women is marriage. While marriage is a great relationship, it is only one of many in your life. Therefore, if the church is to be equipped with a community of believers that work together, we need to start viewing our fellow believers as brothers and sisters—full of respect. This view doesn’t detract any importance from marriage; however, it seeks to encourage us not to see marriage as *the* final end, as if marriage is the completion of a person. The completion, the goal (telos), of a Christian should be for one to use the God given gifts in service to God and to the world through the church. This can be accomplished with or without marriage, but in my original post, following the Apostle Paul, I pointed out that 1 Corinthians 7 tells us we can do this ministry better if we stay unmarried.

Regarding the references to Ephesians and 1 Peter; the Ephesians passage clearly starts in verse 21 (not 22), because the main verb of the section “submit” occurs in v. 21 and not in v. 22. Grammatically, there should be no break in the flow from 21 to 22. And this is a significant addition to the passage: “Submit to one another out of reverence (phobos) for Christ.” Without the call to mutual submission, we might miss the mutuality in the verses below where different instructions are given to the wife and husband. One additional thing to note about this passage is v. 32: “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Therefore, this whole section may not even be about understanding marriage, since it clearly says that this is a “mystery” about “Christ and the church.” So instead of placing the Christ-church relationship in a metaphorical relation to the husband-wife relationship in order to understand marriage, we seem to find the opposite. Marriage, it turns out, is the metaphor to understand the Christ-church relation (similarly to Christ’s own language of himself as the bridegroom).

In 1 Peter, the passage you referenced starts: “Wives, in the same way…” Now, when the text says “in the same way” it is necessary to see what precedes the new section, otherwise we will not understand what the new section is supposed to be “in the same way” as. Returning to the previous section, we find that instructions on how to live godly lives in the presence of non-believers. In one instance in these preceding verses, 1 Peter 2:16, we find this instruction: “live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.” Further down, we find Christ is the best example for this attitude, in his suffering, he submitted only to God. If we miss these important contextual clues, we might inappropriately believe that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands, even if they are not believers. But in context we find that women are to “live as free people,” and are expected not to exploit this freedom in Christ. Therefore, they are to be submissive, but only to God, even as Christ was in his suffering.

I hope that helps to clarify.

Comment by Von

January 26, 2007 @ 10:44 pm

Perhaps the reason for the assumption that the church has, over the centuries, made is that it is Biblically accurate… although your characterization of it is not.
Biblically we see God dealing, specifically, by name, with several human to human relationships; laying out rules for them and using them as metaphors for his own relationship with us. Principally among these we see the Lord/Servant relationship, the Father/Son relationship, and the Husband/Wife relationship. In the negative sense we see the flip side of these relationships… Lord/disobedient, unfaithful servant… Father/prodigal son… Husband/Adulterous, disobedient wife or young man/seductress.
Along with these relationships we do see Father/daughter, friend/friend , brother/brother, and employer/worker relationships. Interestingly, however, we never see God address, or employ as a metaphor, the idea of ‘single’. The closest that we see is Jesus speaking of ‘Eunuchs’ and Paul’s ‘gift’. And in neither case does He follow with any instructions on how these (rare) people are to behave particularly in relationships to others, whereas the other relationships have entire chapters written about them (or a book in the case of marriage).
Nor do we see addressed or imaged the idea of the brother/sister relationship, unless you wish to count the idea of Levitical marriage; or the bride in the Song of Solomon wishing that her husband were her brother so she could more freely kiss him in public.
So perhaps it is not the historic church which has been wrong over the centuries, focusing on the various relationships that God emphasizes in Scripture, but the modern church, and our modern culture, which is wrong in its vitiation of the marriage relationship and its exaltation of ‘single’ness.
As to the Peter passage you are certainly correct that we need to see it in the light of the proceeding verses, which do, indeed, tell us how to live Godly lives in this present world. The verse commanding wives submission; concluding with the example of Sarah who obeyed her husband and called him ‘Lord’ (the same ‘Lord’ used to refer to God in other passages) is a parallel to the verses preceding it which use the same word/concept:
“13Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;
18Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.”
It is certainly a novel interpretation to say that in the light of these passages we are ‘not’ to obey those over us, whether husband, ruler, or master if they are unbelievers. Indeed both the passage on servants (“not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward”) and that on wives (“that, if any obey not the word”) seem to go out of their way to say the exact opposite. Christ, it is indeed true, submitted to God… but God commanded that submission to others as well… as it is written: ‘Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not;’. The orthodox interpretation is that it is precisely in the wife’s quiet obedience to her ungodly husband, the servants quiet acquiescence to the horrid master, each of our quiet life’s under laws written by ungodly men, that God will use to bring those authorities to himself, much as he used the quiet obedience of Daniel, or Joseph, who suffered frequent wrongs and saved two entire nations from famine.