How else am I supposed to read this?
That discerning and applying truth claims about the God-ordained relationship between a man and woman in marriage is not the same thing as simply acting out gender roles.
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It’s not simply acting out or stamping a name on some practice and calling it gold. It’s like discerning immodesty. I found a really good article on immodesty last year or so. It relates to male headship in marriage, and while this is open to innumerable degrees of nuance, it doesn’t follow that female headship is an acceptable form, or no headship.
I’m not interested in arguing about headship, I’m interested in talking about how we come to Bible interpretation with cultural constructs and the gospel challenges them, it doesn’t give us new ones. Do you have anything to add that is on topic?
You don’t have to be egalitarian or think LGBTQ is okay to accept evolution. But if you bring complementarianism and the view that homosexuality is sin with you as you explore hermeneutics and the Bible, you will certainly find what you brought with you.
For some, it is claimed certain things in the Bible are just cultural but this is not something all Christians agree with. Many would see these statements on men and women as binding and usually an attempt is made to soften them (e.g. Artemis). This is how the church operated for its first 1900 years. I mean, women were only just allowed to vote in the US 100 years ago. Credit card when, in the 70s? Not only that but democracy itself, the right to vote for anyone was certainly not the norm for thousands of years.
But for me, the idea that the Bible accommodates ancient cosmology throws wide-open the rest of scripture. The buck certainly doesn’t stop there as critical scholarship has told us a lot of our preconceived notions about the Bible are just wrong. It is also hard to deny the cultural component of the Bible (slavery, misogyny, sexuality etc). The Bible doesn’t radically oppose these things, it just assumes them as the reality of the day and tries to teach its followers how to navigate them appopriately. We all have to figure out how to glean truth from the Bible. For inerrancy advocates it is easier as you can just harmonize everything to fit preconceived notions (what they bring to the text).
The main problem with the hermeneutics espoused by Christy for a lot of folks is they just seem so complicated. These books were all written to be read in mostly illiterate societies. We need to wonder what the first audiences would have “heard” in a lot of cases. Why is reading the Bible so hard? But maybe it is meant to be. Maybe we are meant to wrestle with it like Jacob and to keep praying, digging, scratching and learning.
But I think the church has just built too many theological castles on sand the last 2000 years. Clearly, given the bible has cultural elements, arguing over things like post, pre or amillennialism is just trying to squeeze water out of a rock. All our fancy systematic theologies come crumbling down like a house of cards. There is a reason “inerrancy” is so strongly argued for in some circles.
I find the Catholic church has a tremendous advantage over “sola scripture” Protestants in this regard. The official teachings of the Church hold weight. This cuts through the problem of 40,000 denominations. Any Christian with a bible and a blog can believe what they want.
But we do need to be open to change as well. The idea that the Bible is a once for all, timeless revelation until God rolls up the scroll of the world is not something I am buying. I’ll bet Jews thought that of the Pentateuch at one time.
There is the point to be made that a lot of times the Bible is pushing or moving a culture in a certain direction, working from within. That might be the lesson to glean. But this is a hermeneutics issue. How do we read the Bible and apply it in our lives?
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Harmonization comes in various flavors. After seeing how the commentators handled Hebrews 9:7, I’m open to some new interpretations blowing our minds. I’m also not comfortable with some other things which clearly contradict the text. Besides, the works of the flesh are evident.
But for those of us that are buying it, hopefully we do a better job of evidencing the love of Jesus, both for him and to others.
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So do you feel the Gospel challenges modern concepts on sexuality (marriage, sex before marriage, living together before marriage, casual sex, homosexuality, etc.?) that are partially based on passages we find in the Bible?
What I want to know from complementarians who tie gender roles into the created order in Genesis 1, and I am not saying they are wrong, is why isn’t there an equal emphasis on keeping the sabbath? Genesis 1 is as much about the sabbath as anything. And as we saw from Jesus who was questioned on Moses allowing a certificate of divorce, creation trumps law. It wasn’t Moses’s law either. This was Deuteronomic Code or Law from God in the OT. Jesus clearly priotizes the primordial beginning, the same one being used to establish gender roles but not the universality of the sabbath for all followers of God?
Vinnie
I have no disagreement with keeping it as weekly holiday given to rest, merriment, and feasting.
Absolutely. Most of our modern constructs of love and romance are inherently individualistic, self-centered, and pleasure/self-actualization focused. I think you definitely can find specific ethical guidance in the Bible (for monogamy, faithfulness, boundaries of sanctioned sexual behavior, obligations to other individuals and the community) that you then apply to your society’s norms and practices. And yes, the ethics the Bible teaches are going to call Christians to make certain moral choices within their enculturation. I just don’t think it gives them a different reality in which to ethically choose. (I also think there is room for Christians debating what the gospel ethically calls us to in our culture, because I don’t think it’s always as clear as some people pretend it is.)
For example I think our Christian ethics around something like healthy sex in marriage start from our cultural constructs of what constitutes abuse, assault, bodily autonomy, equality, and consent, and then we apply moral obligations we derive from the Bible to our understanding of the situation.
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This has been a good discussion and finally I have to say something, for what it’s worth. For the most part I come out on Christi’s side in terms of how we should live today as Christians. In various places Paul cautioned his followers to behave modestly in order not to increase public condemnation of Christians. In following his specific instructions, we often actually do increase public condemnation of Christians. That would be funny if it weren’t so sad. So we have to be careful.
But I am thinking that a closer reading of Scripture will help us out more than a generalized dismissal of any category or topic in them. For instance–in 1 Timothy where the author says Adam was created and then Eve…I think the usual take on that is that this gives Adam, and men, some kind of prerogative. But look at the stories of the Old Testament. Abel, the approved son, was second born; Isaac, the son of promise was second born; Jacob, who carried the promise, was also second born. David was the youngest of many brothers. So being first born is no great shakes with God. But the phrase does tell us that Adam and Eve were not made at one time, they are not twins, they were different. And Eve was deceived. She thought she was making things better for her family by trying the fruit. But Adam had no such excuse; he just did what he wanted. And when God said “you listened to your wife and ate…” the only thing that Eve said to anyone was that she and Adam were not allowed to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. So Adam even had warning. He’s the problem child. What’s to be done? He needs help. Many find that they learn more in teaching than in being a student. Women already have this advantage, since they teach and train their children. They will work out their salvation (sanctification) through childbearing. But what can men do? Well they can teach each other. Should women do this, teach men, also? It seems obvious that women can teach men many things, as Priscilla did. But when it comes to refraining from sexual sin, that’s something the people who experience it can teach more genuinely, I think. Judging by the headlines we see in the news, we need a lot more of this teaching for men, even in, especially in the churches. Should women be excluded, so that men and women develop their own subcultures? No, the women can be present as long as they’re quiet.
Also, in 1 Corinthians 14, verses 33b through 38 are found in the margins in the oldest manuscripts. I find the tone of these verses to be kind of grouchy, unlike the rest of the discourse. If you read 33a and then skip directly to 39, the words flow smoothly, as if they were originally written that way. It is true that we will probably never be able to retrieve the original writing, but even so we don’t need to interpret the passage the way it has been. It may just as easily be interpreted as telling us that women shouldn’t talk with their husbands during church, but should wait until they get home. This makes much more sense to me.
I think the ancient Greek disregard of women colored the earliest interpretations of our Scriptures. I think we should take it back.
And by the way, modern cosmology corroborates Genesis 1 down to the details. Just sayin.
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Good thoughts on a difficult part of scripture. The longer I look at it, I think that most of the problematic verses are situational and cultural, not meant as universal and eternal guidelines.
Puzzling verse, but I wonder if it has to do with the idea that just as woman came from man in Genesis, man then comes from woman in birth, and of course Christ came through birth from Mary.
And yet Paul writes of women prophesying on multiple occasions, which makes me think this is a situational instruction for the specific church addressed.
Well, I would say roughly, but not to the details. And with some pretty big holes in the roughly when you get down to life on earth.
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The problem begins with the assertion that “the Bible teaches”. This assumes that the Bible is one book and speaks with a “flat” level of inspiration throughout. Readers of the Bible should not be intimidated by the aggression of those who hold this view. It is not required to be an evangelical Christian.
In fact, the Bible is composed of many books, each from variant manuscript traditions, edited over wide ranges of time. Humans made decisions about which books would be included in the collection of books we call the Bible and which were to be excluded. Humans continue to decide which manuscripts provide the best available text.
The most important division of the Bible for Christians is that into the Old and New Testaments. The New Testament is primarily inspired by the resurrection of Jesus as an eschatological event signaling the turn of the ages – the dawn of the Age to Come. The earliest author in the New Testament is Paul of Tarsus who, in 1 Corinthians 15, unambiguously interpreted the resurrection of Christ as the beginning of an eschatological event culminating in the general resurrection of the dead. Matthew’s Gospel shares this eschatological view, with the resurrection of “many” occurring in the interval between the time of Jesus’ death and the realization of his resurrection. (Matthew 27:51-53).
It is clear from these writings that an understanding of the Christian life, in the light of these eschatological events, is a matter of tension between “the already and the not yet”. Paul expresses this life as being a baptism into Christ – we die and rise with him. (Romans 6). In Galatians he alludes to the consequences of this understanding:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29 NIV)
In his various writings, Paul addresses each of these pairs. With respect to the division between Jew and Gentile, Paul looks at his own Jewishness – his circumcision, his descent from the people of Israel through the tribe of Benjamin, his assiduousness in observing the Law of Moses, etc – as a load of crap for the sake of gaining Christ and being found in Christ. (Philippians 3, esp. verse 8, where the word is translated “garbage” for the sake of the public reading of Scripture. I apologize for the use of the word “crap” in this sentence, but according to the BDAG Greek Lexicon, this is the most accurate translation here.)
In regard to the division between “slave and free”, Paul was not generally in a position to prevent slavery in the Roman Empire (neither was Spartacus!). However, in regard to a Christian slave owner by the name of Philemon, Paul was in a position to insist that Philemon was to receive back his runaway slave, Onesimus, no longer as a slave, but as a “brother in Christ”. (Philemon 1:16). Paul also tells Christians who are slaves, they should get their freedom if they can. This brings them into a Christian realm.
In regard to “male and female”, Paul imagines Christian worship as being an occasion when women, as well as men, led the congregation in prophesy and prayer. His only request was that the women covered their hair when doing so, as in that culture and that time, a woman letting down her long hair was regarded as being sexually provocative. (See Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 11. It is not clear in this chapter when Paul is quoting his opponents or putting forward his counter argument. I think Paul begins his views with the word translated “nevertheless”. It is also known that the Greek word for “head”, had its first metaphorical meaning as “source”, not “boss”. We’ve known this since the 1950s, so I am not sure why it is not commonly referenced.)
The other reference where Paul addresses being “male and female” is in regard to having sex. The sexual drive remains because we still have one foot in the Old Age. In other words, we are not yet like the angels in heaven. Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 7. It is interesting to note in his conversation here that he says the wife has authority over her husband’s body. Surely such advice for the moments which are the essence of our gender differences, must flow into all areas of our sexuality.
Outside of the Fundamentalist camp, Biblical scholars generally regard the Pastoral letters as having been written by others in Paul’s name, which we are told was a common practice. Today we would be more direct and say they were fraudulent. Enough said. These letters seem to be an attempt to rein back the radical Christian message and make it conform to cultural pressures.
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Hopefully Matthew isn’t “teaching” that the saints literally rose because it is complete fiction.
Many here still fight tooth and nail in defense of the pastorals which do the same thing with slavery that they do with misogyny. Ephesians (assuming this was written by Paul!) dares to give slave owners obligations. Crossan writes, “A Roman peterfamilias might growl: How dare you tell my slaves about my obligations to them, and by the way, do not dare to address my slaves directly rather than through me.” Yet in Titus there is no more distinction between slave and free or rules for slave owners. It is all about slaves being obedient to their masters.
Titus 2:9-10 reads, “ Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, 10 not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.”
It doesn’t even address slaves. The “free people” have to tell the slaves. Yes, I realize its addressed to “Titus” but it was meant to go to a community since this was just the cover story for the forger.
For some, Ephesians isn’t as radical as Philemon or Galatians 3:28 or 1 For 12:13. It assumes Christians can own slaves and that Christian slaves should obey their Christian earthly masters in all that they do as if they were serving God.
We learn it is Philemon’s duty to not just forgive Onesimus but to embrace him as a brother in both flesh and the Lord. Paul could command this but wants Philemon to do it on his own and knows he will go above and beyond even what Paul is asking. There is rhetorical brilliance in the letter and Paul is essentially telling him without telling him to free Onesimus. He is no longer his slave but to be welcomed as a brother. This is not just spiritual freedom as flesh makes clear. For real-Paul in the 50s, a Christian should not own another Christian as a slave. They cannot be unequal in Christ.
The situation changes with Ephesians though it still is a step up from society in general. By the time of the pastorals, slaves and women are put back in their place.
Do you consider the pastorals scripture?
Vinnie
Let us suppose, just for the moment, that this story of a wider resurrection is fiction. We would then be left to consider what Matthew is trying to say theologically. Matthew associates the resurrection of Jesus with the general resurrection. In other words, Matthew asserts in narrative form what Paul asserts in a statement in 1 Corinthians 15.
We do not have to believe that Matthew’s account of a wider resurrection is fact to understand the theological points being made. We might easily move on from Matthew’s account. However, for some the assumption of “fiction” lingers as an unanswered question. Is it?
As a historian, I cannot tell you what actually happened. I can only tell you what people at the time believed had happened. Since that time, people make assertions about Matthew’s account being fact or fiction based on the epistemological phenomenon of “what everybody knows to be true”. And herein lies the problem. “What everyone knows to be true” is constantly changing.
I tend to use examples from astronomy because it reflects my interests, but also shows clear examples. When the Rev Dr Nicholas Copernicus put forth his view that the Earth spun on its axis and orbited the Sun, most people regarded it as absurd because of what everyone knew to be true. Whenever people hopped onto their horse-drawn carriage and hit a corner at high speed, they would roll the carriage and have been flung into a tree and died. A satisfactory answer to this problem came only centuries later with Einstein’s theories about the fabric of space being warped into curves around objects of immense mass, and the rate of flow of time being affected by one’s speed through space.
You would have to unpack what you mean by considering the pastorals scripture in order for me to be able to answer that question.
I do not disagree but there are 3 options if the story is fiction. Matthew very well may have believed his myths.
True. But on the flip side, why do we have to understand and agree with the theological points being made if the guard story, the earthquakes and the holy ones rising from the grave are all fictional embellishments of Mark’s narrative which Matthew copied? Why believe a “historical report” shown to be false, or why believe “the point the author tried to convey” with a historical report that is shown to be false. It is all canon but I’d rather zoom out on the gospels than laser in and try to find a hidden meaning behind every fiction. Clearly Matthew has in his mind something like Ezekeil 37 and the general resurrection of the dead. Beyond this the story is bizarre in every way.
Of course its fiction. A summary from what I wrote (more details are provided in the link itself):
What field of history do you work in? Sometimes we can infer what people think happened most likely did happen (its historical) but this is all based on probability. For example, Jesus was crucified is something I would consider historically certain. The more complete the record the more confidence we can have. Of course this depends on the nature of our sources, potential lines of transmission, etc. Even then you have to interpret what the text says (what the people believed happened). For example, did Matthew believe his myths? One cannot fully answer that as we are in no position to cross-examine ancient sources or read their minds on most issues.
This doesn’t force us into solipsism. Despite that science changes we can still trust its findings. We know that the sun does not orbit the earth. Contrary to some uncritical opinion that tries to attack things they disagree with, changing beliefs is a good thing. Yes, we don’t want a field to be completely flimsy and a wishy washy consensus changing too and fro with the wind, but changing beliefs is a sign of people being open to the evidence. If beliefs never changed they couldn’t be trusted in my opinion. What matters is the evidence presented and clearly the holy ones in Matthew is troubling in every regard if not viewed as fiction, regardless of whether or not you are a full methodological naturalist or believe miracles are possible.
And to use your own standard, this isn’t about changing beliefs because the silence is so deafening that no one seems to have believed this besides Matthew (assuming even he did).
Kind of self evidence. Are they normative for faith? Any more normative than say 1 Clement, Didache, Thomas etc? I am not asking if they are inerrant or infallible. Only if you consider them authoritative for Christians in some sense.
Vinnie
Genesis is not science, but history. But if it is reliable history, it will not conflict with science.
Acts 17
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.
Paul was not “presuming polytheism” as his belief. He was distressed by the Athenian polytheism. Here is his response to their belief:
22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
The divine counsel is the one God in three persons–monotheism, not polytheism.
Those two issues are so different. I don’t see how “flat earth” and husband and wife relationships can inform each other.
And then we end up with competing and often contradictory intuitions. When “my intuition” is contrary to “your intuition,” then how can we reason together? How can intuition be a helpful criteria?
Ephesians 5
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
This is a biblical truth, not a social construct. It can’t be because it is parallel to and illustrative of Christ and the Church. We certainly need to put “submission” in the context of husbands loving their wife in the way that Christ loves the church. Then “submission” will never be abusive or “suppression” or “oppression.”
First, the author of Genesis was writing history as informed by a first person eyewitness account, God the Creator. Because of this, there is no delineation between history and science. If we want to know about President Lincoln and the Gettysburg address, we appeal to history, not science.
Hebrews 9:22
According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Jesus did not forgive sins without the shedding of his own blood.
Ephesians 1: 4, 7
For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Redemption comes though Jesus’ blood. And in context, Jesus’ sacrifice is not time bound. So when Jesus forgave sin “before” his crucifixion and death, it is not as if he forgave sins “before” he died.
There seems to be an implied assumption that Jesus and Paul were on different wavelengths. I don’t see that at all.
Ancient Hebrews had no concept of the Trinity. This is just wrong. Read some scholarship.
They don’t inform each other. They are both examples of cultural constructs, not some kind of absolute truth claim.
Disciplines like antthopology and cognitive linguistics can provide heuristics for identifying cultural constructs in literarture.
What is “this”
I am claiming the audience to whom this was spoken had cultural constructs about marriage that were patriarchal. This is not a controversial claim.
I am also claiming that when Paul said husbands as head and wives as body form a unified whole, and that is the context and rationale behind a wife’s submission, they would have understood that to be countering their assumption that wives were to submit because of unquestioned male authority, which would have been their default understanding based on their constructs. The original audience’s cultural constructs would be challegned to think about how this truth applied to their ideas of men, women, and marriage, just as it will challenge our own today. But the truth will challenge us differently because it is speaking into a different starting construct.
What is parallel is not authority or gender roles, what is parallel is that Christ is the head and the Church is the body and together they form a unified whole.
This seems the crux of it to me. You have to consider the audience to understand the message just as in the the OT when direction is given regarding the limits of the severity of beating which one may inflict on a slave. That is no endorsement of slavery but reflects guidance toward our ongoing improvement. Surely no one feels we are now perfect as we are?
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It’s always bothered me that v.21 is left as a sort of orphan on the previous section in translations that divide the books into topical sections. One of the standard exercises in New Testament was to take the Greek text without any verse divisions or punctuation or other formatting and work out our own format(s) as we went, and v.21 obviously belongs as a heading to the section, which really isn’t about wives and husbands primarily; those are just illustrations. And in one class we located the governing concept clear back to v.15:
Βλέπετε οὖν ἀκριβῶς πῶς περιπατεῖτε μὴ ὡς ἄσοφοι ἀλλ’ ὡς σοφοί
“Observe carefully therefore how you walk [through life], not as fools but as wise [ones].”
Verse 21 flows nicely from that and shifts into a more general discussion of submitting to each other.
I think that comes from looking at the passage as though it’s a set of instructions to be followed rather than an illustration of the manner in which husbands and wives are to be submitting one to the other. That opening clause clearly governs this because it contains the only verb until v.24, which given the ἀλλὰ, “but”, that starts it is a shift in subject. The whole metaphor isn’t about authority, it’s about serving, so the question isn’t “How is the husband the head?”, it’s “How does the husband submit himself to [i.e. serve] the wife?”
And that’s a radical assertion that at least one sociologist has tied to the growth of the church especially early on; it gave status to women, and wealthy women (as we see with Phoebe) apparently flocked to the church – to an extent pulling their families with them.
Well it’s also a bad interpretation given both vv.15 & 21! “Head of the wife” is an instruction on how the husband is to submit to the wife, not be her “lord”, and “submitting one to another” is a subset of “walking” as wise ones rather than as fools.
Ack – I just noticed the time; I’ll have to put that article off till tomorrow. I suspect it will be another one that makes me wish I were back in grad school.
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