A word on methodology
The following approach is used to identify the Christian
model of marriage. It is postulated that marriage is a unique, covenantal
relationship created by God and superseding all other relationships between
humans. This is based on the central role given to marriage in the second
Genesis creation account and the importance accorded to certain
marriage-related prohibitions and injunctions … as measured by their frequency
in scripture. Also, marriage is used in both the old and the new testaments as
a key archetype of the relationship between God and his people (Jews and
Christians, respectively). Consequently, it is inferred that “getting it right”
is important. To find guidance for the God's expectations of married people,
the following three-step approach is taken. First, scripture is searched for
actual pronouncements on the duties of husbands and wives in marriage (“What it
says”). Preference is given to the New Testament on the assumption that this
text contains teaching that is more immediately relevant to Christian life. The
Old Testament, conversely, is a repository (among other things) of stories that
reveal the nature of God to us. Because there are some statements in the New
Testament that can be difficult to reconcile with other passages, a rule of
thumb is that the more often something is repeated, the more weight it is
assigned. The second step involves contextualizing the statements located:
first with respect to the rest of scripture, and then with respect to cultural
and linguistic background (“What it means”). It is very important at this step
to bear a caveat in mind: People who have devoted their lives to studying
scripture have come to widely divergent conclusions regarding nearly every
imaginable question … up to and including the existence of God. Scholarship can
be very useful and interesting, but it is not, ultimately, the key to the
truth. The third step involves translating the findings from the first two
steps into contemporary life (“What it means”). The relationship between the church and secular society is always complicated and
changing, and there is clearly a need to be able to jettison traditions and
institutions that are part of an obsolete culture while retaining the core
teachings and values. For the reasons given above I believe that the existence
and nature of marriage belongs to the latter. Finally, it must be emphasized
that only the Holy Spirit provides authoritative exegeses of scripture.
So, what does the New Testament specifically say about the roles
and responsibilities of husbands and wives? I believe the following list is
exhaustive.
|
Husband |
Wife |
|
Ephesians 5:22–33
|
Love your wives (as Christ loved the Church and gave
himself up for her)
… as they (love) their own bodies, with nourishing and tender care
|
Be subject (submit) to your husbands
… (in everything)
|
| Colossians 3:18–19
|
Love your wives and never treat them harshly
|
Be subject to your husbands
|
|
Titus 2:4–5
|
|
Love their husbands, love their children, be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, submissive to
their husbands
|
|
I Peter 3:1–7
|
Show consideration for your wives, paying honour
|
Accept the authority of your husbands.
adorn yourself with a gentle and quiet spirit
|
|
I Corinthians 7:3–5
|
Do not deprive each other (of ‘conjugal rights’) except by mutual consent.
|
There is some uncertainty whether I Timothy 3:11 is about women
deacons or deacons’ wives, so I left it out. In either case, it is not directed
at all Christian wives in their capacity as such.
What it says
HUSBAND (lover): The overriding notion
here is love. It is important to bear in mind here that, to the modern mind,
love has acquired a very romanticized, feelings-oriented
meaning. It is beyond my skill and the scope of this paper to discuss the
meaning and connotations of the word agape, suffice it
to say that we have a user’s manual for love in I Corinthians 13 and the
best possible example in the four gospels.
WIFE (submitter): The overriding notion
here is submission. Hupotasso means to be ordered under. Apparently, this word
was originally associated with military rank. Now, it would be difficult to
find an institution in the secular world that conveys a stronger sense of
authority than the military. This word is also used to describe the
relationship Jesus had to his parents in (Luke 2:51), which is usually
translated with the word “obey.” The concept is a strong one. (cf. remarks
below).
What it means
HUSBANDS: I think it primarily means two
things: servanthood and sacrifice. Just as our Lord devoted his life on earth
to serving those he encountered, so husbands are to assume a stance of servant
to their wives. The difference between serving and being a servant,
incidentally, is in that the former is deed-oriented, part-time, and
volitional, while the latter is an identity, full-time, and an obligation. This
is the husband’s role/duty. On occasion it might involve real sacrifice,
including laying down his life for his wife and family.
Looking at examples of lovers in the Bible, a few principles stand out.
- The lover always puts those in his charge first.
Moses provides a striking example. On at least two occasions, God is fed up
with the Israelites and tells Moses that he intends to wipe them out and start
over again with Moses (Exodus 32; Numbers 14). This would have been just about
the highest imaginable honour to any man in those times, but Moses implored God
to spare his people … always reasoning that God’s own name and glory were at
stake. The apostle Paul talks of how he forfeited his right to be supported by
the churches he was serving, choosing instead to work in his trade as a
tent-maker so as not to be a burden on them.
- When lovers fail, those entrusted to them pay a
price. When David conducted a census (which, despite some rather strange
paradoxes in the wording II Samuel 24 & I Chronicles 21,
was clearly against the will of God), the whole nation of Israel suffered. [While
my intuition is that this point is very important, I have been unable to find
another example in scripture where it is as clear … I welcome feedback].
- God helps lovers fulfill their tasks. On several
occasions Moses (again) was overwhelmed by these responsibilities. In one such
case (Numbers 11) God told Moses to select 70 elders, and then God said
that he would take some of his Spirit, which was on Moses, and distribute it
among them.
WIVES: Submission is not a complicated concept,
just an unpopular one. A centurion in Luke 7:8 describes it “For I too am
a man set under authority, with soldiers under me. I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and
to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” Throughout the Bible there are
examples of people having been placed under the authority of others by God.
Submission:
- First, submission is exactly what it sounds like.
A wife is to obey her husband in anything that she does not believe to be sin.
The husband’s authority is not absolute (nothing is in this world), but a wife
needs a very good reason not to comply with it.
- In addition to outright submission, there is a
further element of the deference due to ordained leadership. David exemplifies
this very well. On several occasions, after the Lord had withdrawn his favour
from Saul and David had been anointed, David had power over Saul’s life. He
refused to take advantage of his position and raise a hand against the
“anointed of the Lord.”
- I struggled to understand why Peter would give the name of Sarah—as the only
example in scripture of a submissive wife—when nothing in the Genesis record
stands out in that regard. It may be, however, that she is an example, not of
how a wife submits, but of what happens when she does. She benefitted from a
miraculous blessing in having a longed-for baby late in life, and in that same
event became the matriarch of God’s chosen people.
How it applies
HUSBANDS: The godly husband will always
put the interests and needs of his wife ahead of his own. That covers the great
issues and the small. From decisions about where to live to a willingness to do
the chores that need doing to helping his wife when she needs it … but also
when she doesn’t. He will also strive to do the best possible job, and will do
these in a spirit of joy and love. He will take her to activities she enjoys,
and learn how to extend love to her in ways she appreciates and relates to. He
will habitually make himself uncomfortable to provide her with comforts. He
will do all of this in the knowledge that, in addition to the responsibility he
bears for his own righteousness, he bears some additional responsibility for
both the righteousness and welfare of his family. Finally, God will give him a
measure of his Spirit to fully enable him to bear that load successfully.
WIVES: In situations of fundamental
differences of opinion, especially when these differences have a significant
impact on the family, when every reasonable effort has been made to find common
ground, the duty of the wife ultimately is to defer to her husband’s
leadership, obey, and put her will into making it work. Even if she believes
that her husband has erred, she must loyally serve and make the best of the
situation, with joy and love.
Concluding comments
Submission should not be confused with subjugation. The latter is imposed from the
outside, the former is freely given. This is fundamentally important: The husband
is not to exact obedience from his wife, through either physical force or
browbeating. The phrase in Ephesians 5:22 is key here,
“Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.” God provides all
individuals with free choice in the matter of submitting to him, and wives have
that same freedom with regard to their husbands. This does not mean that the
choice is morally neutral, but it does mean that it cannot be exacted. To
rephrase that, the fact that a wife has the obligation to submit does not
confer on the husband a right to her submission. Similarly, the husband’s
servanthood does not confer on the wife the right to have him as a servant,
much less to treat him as one. This is characteristic of the paradoxes that
keep cropping up in Christianity. There is a real risk that, if only one spouse
takes his/her God-given role to heart, the other will fall into a trap of presuming
on him/her. Even in that case, however, since the servanthood/submission is
ultimately to the Lord and not to the spouse, it is binding regardless of
whether or not there is reciprocity.
The equality of believers has often been used to refute this notion of wifely
submission. Thus, for example, Ephesians 5:21 has been treated as a trump card:
Wives may have to submit to their husbands, but husbands have to submit to
their wives, too … so it’s a draw. Now, there is some plausibility to this
objection, especially in light of a notion that is deeply ingrained in our
psyche, to wit that equality and “symmetry of treatment” are
one and the same thing. However, the consistency of the instructions to
husbands and wives is too great to be ignored, so it would seem best if some
kind of broader perspective could be found that reconciles asymmetric roles
with the equality of believers. A first attempt might look as follows:
Christians are involved in many different relationships, and each of these
relationships involves specific responsibilities and tasks. For example, a
person will be governed by one set of priorities when dealing with an employer,
and another when dealing with his or her children. There are, thus, tiers of
responsibility: The husband is first to love his wife, and second to submit to
her, while the wife is first to submit to her husband, and second to love him. The
equality comes in here: All people ultimately stand before God, who rewards them
according to how well they performed their assigned duties, with no regard for
sex, race, etc. Scripture does not, in general, support a very egalitarian worldview.
After attending several Christian marriage conferences, I was struck by the following
observation. Many teachers start from the assumption that the Biblical command
to wives to submit to their husbands must be “disarmed.” This takes the form of
treating it either as a cultural artefact or as a command that—though
technically binding—should be circumscribed to the point of irrelevance.
However, close observation reveals that often these teachers are very reluctant
to burden the wife with any obligations, aside from some very generic ones.
Rather, their counselling to wives seems to focus much more on sharing certain
techniques (typically from pop-psychology) for building a better relationship.
I believe this approach is rooted in an unspoken, but widely-held, belief that
women are inherently more moral than men, and that they don’t need to be
taught, only encouraged. Men, on the other hand, do need exhortation to do what
is right, but lamentably all the verses addressing husband’s duties are
contaminated by proximity to “submission” verses. This notion of women’s moral
superiority is quite persistent, despite the fact that it is difficult to
reconcile with either observation or scripture. I suspect that in today’s world
the fact that men are more associated with physical violence, which has
attained special status in terms of wickedness, might play a role.
That brings me to a final point regarding the issue of violence against women. Now,
I do not believe that a majority of men have ever considered the practice of
wife-beating to be anything other than abhorrent. However, when women had
little if any access to the levers of power (justice system, politics, etc.)
those men who could have stood up as their protectors generally failed to do so
… at least on any large scale. Therefore, many people are profoundly, and
understandably, distrustful when they hear such a suspiciously patriarchal
sounding notion as the submission of wives. By association, the Biblical
paradigm has fallen into disrepute, and it is incumbent on Christian husbands
and men to rehabilitate it. The objection I raised in point 3 to the way wives
are taught must be extended. While men don't get quite as much of a free ride,
not nearly enough is typically done to drive home the fact that being a husband
is being a servant.
As is so often the case, these
principles need to be interpreted in light of common sense. Wives are often
more capable than their husbands, and the husband who micromanages his wife is
not thinking like a servant. Husbands and wives can only do so much. Both
spouses need to have some down time. Marriage needs to be characterized by
trust and affection (but founded on the above mentioned principles). As couples
grow in the Lord, these roles should come more easily. I conclude by repeating
that the only reliable guide to the Christian life is the Holy Spirit, but that
both husbands and wives should bear in mind the he is rarely as interested as
we are in protecting our comfort level.
