On The Scroll we do not sanction critical comments to one another and in our observation the pro-CBE people have adhered to the blog guidelines as written on the home page. This blog is designed to be a place of peaceful interaction and we perceive that if this conversation is continued it might degenerate into something less than what is desired.

SO..any further comments will be deleted and we will write to all who have made recent comments to clarify this decision.

Thank you for writing what you did. When you spoke up, that meant you were using authority. Perhaps God’s authority but through a woman. This is essential. If someone wants to teach that women can survive with no personal authority, that is their business but I will fight it.

You encourage me to blog more often about men and women in our day who do precisely what you seem to deride:

I do not deride it. You misrepresent me and use incredibly loaded language. Don’t make oblique and snide remarks about trying to educate me.

You also diminish the witness of the historical Anabaptist tradition, for whom the vote and participation in the life of the state and its laws are irrelevant at best and evil at worst.

I do not diminish it. This is my own heritage. I lived that way and my parents lived that way. I do not see that the CBMW is teaching this. You take me at the opposite of what I say every time I speak. I know how to live this way. I was holding this up as an example of what the male authority men do NOT do. You miss my point entirely.

Are you deliberately trying to represent me to be the opposite of what I am? You have yet to actually cut and paste anything I write and respond to it. The disrespect shown for my words is unacceptable.

You sometimes praise traditional marriage arrangements, or at least do not criticize them, such as those of the Victorian era, and sometimes you seem to suggest that any and every relationship with a power differential creates unacceptable risks. I’m having a hard time following you.

I said that for a certain well off class of woman, this could be a livable situation. The point is that if there is balancing arena of female authority that would make a difference, and the relationship would not be an undiluted authority-submission relationship. By female authority, I do not mean only that a woman can refuse to do something sinful.

I mean that every human being must have an arena of authority. If deprived they descend into inhumanity. An arena of female authority might come from the family connection or financial resources of the wife, or from the arrangement of space in a house, or the relationship of the wife to the children and their upbringing, or where she sits at the dining room table. She may derive real authority from any of these, or from the understanding that the bedroom is her domain.

However, in an authority-submission relationship, all spaces are the domain of the man. The bedroom, parlour, kitchen, dining room and every activity of the children.

A woman with a traditional understanding of marriage entering an authority-submission relationship realizes in very short order that she is now a virtual slave. She is deprived of all traditional arenas and space.

I don”t know how to explain how this is both a descent into insanity and yet it is possible to keep this invisible to others. It is the deepest and most devastating abuse. It fractures the person.

To not understand this and say that an authority-submission arrangement is valid, is to be negligent in the extreme. It is a disregard for the right to sanity for a woman.

(1) You accept the consensus view that the NT household codes retain the authority-submission framework but qualify it christologically.

Yes, they retain the framework as well as the social framework of the day. It was a time when a man could have his wife undergo an abortion. It was a cruel age. Most of the women in the NT narratives did not seem to be in any such arrangement, except Sapphira.

(2) You admit that the idea that hierarchy in marriage is divinely instituted is very widespread in Jewish and Christian tradition. The abuse or the perversion of the arrangement, not the arrangement itself, is consistently condemned in Jewish and Christian tradition. But you find this “compromise” unacceptable.

Yes I find this compromise unacceptable. Couples today live in single family dwellings, and the wife is supposed to have her husband as her closest confidante. She is not encouraged to share all secrets with her mother or sister. Another female relative is no longer the relevant other. She may live a thousand miles from her parents. Her brothers are unwilling to beat the bejabbers out of the erring husband. Maybe she does not have brothers. Maybe she is financially dependent on her husband who will not be able to work in jail, if she calls the police. Probably 75% of women do not get out of abusive situations. The collateral damage is unacceptable to me. I do not believe that any other arrangement than egalitarianism is equitable to women. I don’t mean a bunch of silly rules about who does what. I mean equal and balancing authority, shared or contrasting, it doesn’t matter.

You talk about codependency, but you do not talk about the role that the shame of divorce, or Bible teaching, or blaming the wife for abuse has in this. Nothing that you have ever said on this topic resonates with me as real.

I do understand your beef with egalitarianism but I believe the centre of the problem does not rest on authority and submission but on balancing and sharing out, on giving each other personal liberty and permission, and knowing not to take too much permission for oneself. I don’t see that a husband and wife have to arrange the shared work in any rigid way, nor do most egalitarians. There should be lots of complementarity but not inequality of authority.

You emphasize that authority-submission relationships – it doesn’t matter, presumably, whether the locus of the relationship is that of husband-wife, parent-child, or employer-employee – are subject to abuse

I do not ever interact with my employee without being very aware of the law, the collective agreement and my close connection to other employees. I get on well with my administrator, but I do not have to sleep with him. Even if he were horrible, I could go home at night. There used to be a day when a woman might be at the mercy of a lecherous employer. I am grateful for recent changes in the name of feminism.

The raising of children is one place where we must have authority over the child. We have more intelligence and strength in order to keep them safe. However, we accord them an ever-growing arena of authority. Maybe you would like to read this story.

I work with children of the lowest IQ. Matters of personal exousia (authority/ permission/ liberty) are absolutely crucial. I am considered exceptional in my interaction with these children because I know that everyone needs personal authority. I know what it is to live without. And I cannot agree with anything that you have said on this topic. It is shameful beyond all belief that anyone thinks that another human being can live in total submission. Even in the strictest orders a person lived in community, not in an authority-submission dyad. Such a thing belongs in the most vile and filthy literature available. A person needs their own bedroom or they cannot live in total submission. A marriage like that cannot last. Yes, as I said, I saw my friend’s arms covered in scar tissue, and that is how some women are inside.

I do not consider that RCs and EIs, and many traditionalists are in authority-submission marriages. Someone has already said that here. As far as Asian cultures are concerned, many women have their own strong arena of authority. Don’t imagine otherwise. And yet other females are aborted, raped, killed and destroyed.

I have never read such a lot of unsupported nonsense in my life. You start off complaining that egal marriages are short-lived. When that is proved to be unfounded you move on to another premise. You claim to be egal but you never once say if you think male only authority is instituted by God or not.

The women of the scriptures had their arena of authority from start to finish. The CBMW teaching that men and women are in the image of God, in that men reflect authority and women submission is profoundly wrong and needs to be critiqued. Absolute authority on the part of the man, and absolute submission on the part of the women defaces God and humanity. I don’t know how anyone can condone the deconstruction of all that it means to be human.

I don’t think your etymologizing exegesis is defensible, but I think your command of scripture is otherwise excellent. I think you are perfectly capable of going head to head with biblical comps and scoring a point or two.

However, whereas there are Christians who believe that revelation has progressed beyond the New Testament and that extra-biblical truths received hence can be used to declare earlier and/or traditional understandings as no longer acceptable, more traditional Christians, myself included, do not take that approach. The Reformation also steadfastly resisted that approach.

Perhaps you see no danger in recognizing a standard of truth outside of Scripture. For the classic statement against your approach, see the Barmen Declaration (easily googled, I imagine).

I don’t think, in any case, that you have shown that Sarah Sumner’s approach, which preserves and contemporizes the gender-differentiated exhortation typical of the NT household codes, is less biblical than your approach. If that is because you accept that her approach is a biblically defensible position, I would accuse you of being a person with an open mind and an open heart.

That’s part of the United Methodist motto, by the way. To others that means, empty-headed and morally undiscriminating. To my mind it means “catholic” and “evangelical” in the sense Wesley understood those terms.

Is this what we teach?

For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. …

Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands

Is it commendable to take the beating? Is that what we preach from the pulpit? Do we really counsel women to stay or not? What was Peter saying? Either we are with Peter on this, women submit to being beaten, (and I honestly believe that is what he was saying) or we are not?

Sue, you asked “Is this what we teach?”. Every bit of God Word is precious and if we are understanding it in a way which reflects poorly upon God then the problem is our understanding, not God’s Word. I wouldn’t teach it that way at all. Here is some of what I would say about 1 Peter for women (people?) struggling in their marriages because I have been there and done that and 1 Peter really helped and challenged me to grow:

Did you know 1 Peter says you can “love life and see good days”? :)

Its a promise from God’s Word,
but it is conditional.
It is NOT conditional upon anything my husband does or does not do,
It is completely conditional upon my following Jesus’ role model.

I used to be very bitter and resentful. Once I became aware of these deeply rooted sins, I really stuggled with them and battled them for a couple years… but the Lord helped me dig out from their snares.

That whole book of 1 Peter is very deep and provided much wisdom and guidance for me… Indeed Jesus is given as the role model (to both husbands and wives)…. Look at the calling and the *promises*

21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

…

1 ¶ Likewise, ye wives, …

7 Likewise, ye husbands, …

8 ¶ Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:

9 Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a *blessing*.

10 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:

11 Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.

I noticed the instructions for responding to verbal abuse (no insulting back, but blessing). And I noticed a “no guile” sandwich (2:22; 3:10) around the renowned Sarah role model of submission . For me- timid, wimpy, weak, doormat type that I was- it meant I had to start speaking up. God would not allow me to continue to be conflict avoidant and brush things under the rug in denial. It was scary and I was absolutely horrible at it at first… Takes practice.

In reflecting upon this passage and upon the role model of Sarah, I have come to identify with Sarah. (I commented on Sarah in 86979). She goes through a maturing process and comes to the place of having a great deal of influence and authority in her household. When Abram and Sarai are called, they don’t know God deeply at first. The covenants progress, and the accounts of them hearing God’s voice and seeing His miraculous interventions increase as they mature.

God’s miraculous interventions. HE is the same God. I’ve am more aware of His miraculous interventions now having experienced them so vividly on occasion And I think its probably far far more often than I am aware but I was not tuned in to give Him the credit for that. In fact I think that- like Joseph in the Bible- even things that were meant for evil and hurt me very deeply, even those things God has turned around for good.

You say:

I don’t see large groups of celibate and impoverished apostles traveling from one place to another subjecting themselves to a cruel and dictatorial government. I don’t see rafts of men resigning the right to vote or agitating to rejoin Britain. I don’t see Christians agitating for a return to any other authority structures which were in place at the time of the epistles.

I’m sorry, Suzanne, but I think you are guilty of cultural arrogance. First of all, truth is not decided by numbers. That the number of men and women that join an order like that of Mother Theresa and take vows of celibacy and chastity are few says nothing about the quality of their Christian witness. You encourage me to blog more often about men and women in our day who do precisely what you seem to deride: take vows of chastity and poverty and subject themselves to cruel and dictatorial governments out of devotion to the Gospel.

You also diminish the witness of the historical Anabaptist tradition, for whom the vote and participation in the life of the state and its laws are irrelevant at best and evil at worst.

Finally, you underestimate the breadth and depth of neo-traditionalism in our day. It is about restoring clearer lines of authority, not only in the husband-wife relationship, but in the parent-child relationship, and in the workplace. The truth of this approach is not decided by numbers either, but if it were, one might argue as you do, and claim that its growing appeal in the world today is a reflection thereof.

I will let your mischaracterizations pass.

You sometimes make a clear distinction between hard and soft complementarianism and sometimes do not. You sometimes praise traditional marriage arrangements, or at least do not criticize them, such as those of the Victorian era, and sometimes you seem to suggest that any and every relationship with a power differential creates unacceptable risks. I’m having a hard time following you.

This is what I think your views are – please correct me if I’m wrong:

(1) You accept the consensus view that the NT household codes retain the authority-submission framework but qualify it christologically.

(2) You admit that the idea that hierarchy in marriage is divinely instituted is very widespread in Jewish and Christian tradition. The abuse or the perversion of the arrangement, not the arrangement itself, is consistently condemned in Jewish and Christian tradition. But you find this “compromise” unacceptable.

(3) You emphasize that authority-submission relationships – it doesn’t matter, presumably, whether the locus of the relationship is that of husband-wife, parent-child, or employer-employee – are subject to abuse. For reasons you have not explained, you imply that hierarchically ordered marriages, traditional and neo-traditional, should be considered forms of slavery, presumably, to be outlawed as slavery was. But you do not feel that way about hierarchically structured parent-child or employer-employee relationships. Or perhaps you wish to see all types of authority abolished. Please clarify.

(4) At times, you are careful to point out that male authority has traditionally been balanced by female authority in various ways. But you have not been clear about what “margin of error” is tolerable according to you. How balanced must the arrangement be to meet your standards? Sometimes it sounds like you have no real beef with comp lites and traditionalist RCs and EIs. But sometimes it sounds like you regard their understanding of marriage as sub-Christian or as wrong on other grounds. In that case, though you protest that you do not want to criticize Sarah Sumner’s positions, you are in fact in fundamental disagreement with her. Please clarify.

(5) I don’t know for sure if you have declared a culture war against traditional and neo-traditional understandings of the husband-wife relationship. Perhaps you don’t compare your stance to that of abolitionists of yore. You are free to clarify.

Sometimes I get the impression that you refuse to consider non-egal marriage arrangements as redeemable in Christ and consider egal marriage arrangements as acceptable in God’s sight quite apart from 1 Cor 13. If so, this is where we disagree, and yes, I wish to oppose that kind of viewpoint with all my strength.

I am surprised that you now claim that traditionally arranged marriages have higher rates of abuse than egal marriages. Now you take issue with a social scientist like Mary Stewart van Leeuwen as well?