4. Why Paul Told Wives to Submit—The Social Situation of Ephesians 5:18–33
Why Paul Told Wives to Submit—The Social Situation of Ephesians 5:18–33
Because Ephesians 5:18—6:9 is the longest passage in the New Testament addressing household roles, and because most elements of the other passages are found here, we have devoted the second half of the book to an in-depth analysis of this passage.[1] The present chapter introduces the general social setting and issues that we will confront in our examination of the passage itself in the following chapter.
The question that this chapter on social setting addresses is, Why does Paul, who calls for mutual submission, deal more explicitly with the submission of wives than with that of husbands? The answer this chapter proposes is, in short, “Because he was smart.” His social statements are among the most progressive of his day, but if he wanted the gospel to gain a strong hearing in the Greco-Roman world, he needed to temper his radicalism with prudent sensitivity to his culture. Assuming that Paul wrote this letter while imprisoned in Rome, we can well understand how sensitive he might have become to such issues.
ARISTOCRATIC FEARS OF ANTITRADITIONAL GROUPS
The Roman aristocracy felt their power base increasingly threatened by social changes occurring around them. These changes included the upward mobility of socially inferior elements, such as former slaves, foreigners, and women. Foreign religions were sometimes suspected of aiding what the aristocrats viewed as a subversion of the appropriate moral order.
The recognized guardians of traditional Roman values, Roman aristocratic men, were uneasy about the “new” religions from the east that seemed to challenge standard values like the honorable man’s sober guidance of his family.[2] Juvenal’s oft-cited complaint about the influx of foreign culture and superstition reflects the feelings of many well-to-do Roman men: “The Syrian Orontes has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners,” and its music and religions.[3]
Xenophobia, or aversion to foreigners and foreign ways, was not limited to ancient society. In the United States of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the nonconformity of each new wave of immigration to U.S. societal standards has been viewed by established groups as a threat to social stability, no matter how loudly we may have simultaneously praised the virtues of pluralism. This should make it easier for us to understand the uneasiness of the conservative aristocracy when they were confronted with groups that not only seemed to hold “antisocial” beliefs, but began converting Romans to those beliefs.[4]
Roman mistrust of eastern cults is reflected in Roman literature. For instance, Apuleius writes of rogues who follow the “Syrian goddess”[5] but turn out to be guilty of temple robbery.[6] Especially significant, however, is his association of such cults with sexual perversity,[7] an accusation that also turns up in other texts: for instance, Petronius ridicules the sexual abnormalities of worshipers of Priapus.[8]
Although Roman policy tolerated foreign religions on their own soil, some religions were viewed as too disruptive for Rome itself.[9] Romans valued seriousness and duty, and emotionalistic cults threatened their very identity as respectable Romans. Only after such a cult’s behavior became sufficiently tamed or Romanized by time would it be officially permitted in Rome. Roman citizens were thus officially restricted from the cult of Cybele until the time of Claudius,[10] i.e., within a decade or two before Paul arrived in Rome and wrote the letter we call Ephesians.
Egyptian cults, like the cult of Isis,[11] gained in popularity over time,[12] but became acceptable in Rome only shortly before the middle of the first century.[13] They gained prominence in Rome only in the period of the Flavians, i.e., after Paul’s death.[14] Perhaps because Egyptians worshiped animals, and because most Greeks and Romans viewed them as socially inferior, Egyptian religion took some time to catch on in Greco-Roman cities.[15] But rarely would any city have offered worshipers of these cults as hostile a reception as Rome, where all secret meetings were suspect and where the Isis cult was persecuted as late as the early first century CE.[16]
All potentially questionable foreign religions came under the suspicion of upper-class Roman conservatives, who did not always bother to get their accusations straight. It was easy for enemies of various foreign religions to get them mixed up. Indeed, some people believed that Jews worshiped Dionysus, and associated Judaism with Dionysiac revelry.[17] Since Roman authorities would easily have viewed Christians as a special form of Jews in this period,[18] their attitude toward Judaism tells us much about their attitude toward Christians as well.[19]
In the eyes of the Roman elite, both Isis-worshipers and Jews in Rome represented a foreign superstition of the sort that could subvert the morals of virtuous Roman women. Earlier in the first century, scandals arose in regard to both religions that brought about persecution against both. The events are linked by those who report them,[20] and are linked by a certain important similarity: a male representative of the offending religion took advantage of a good Roman woman.
Josephus, a Jewish historian writing at the end of the first century, describes scandals that arose in relation both to the cult of Isis and to Judaism. A priest of Isis helped a deceiver to fulfill his adulterous designs on a virtuous Roman woman, and when the story got out, the authorities were enraged: the emperor banished the deceiver,[21] crucified the priests, and destroyed the temple of Isis. Although there is no evidence that all the priests were guilty, or that such behavior characterized the entire cult of Isis,[22] the religion as a whole suffered a great setback from the scandal.[23]
Josephus likewise tells us of a Jewish man who, pretending to teach the law, tricked a wealthy woman into giving him funds for the temple that he actually kept for himself. Josephus is quick to point out that this man was no proper representative of the rest of the Jewish community, but that this fact did not protect the rest of the Jewish community from the anti-Jewish sentiment aroused by the incident. The response of the emperor Tiberius was to banish the entire Jewish community from Rome.[24]
Nor did this mistrust of Judaism end with the expulsion under Tiberius. Juvenal, writing in the early second century, complains about the secrecy[25] and subversiveness[26] of the Jewish religion, and Tacitus devotes considerable space to slanders against it.[27]
Judaism and other foreign religions[28] were viewed with hostility by the Roman elite precisely because they were winning so many converts in Rome. The most virulent anti-Jewish attacks derived from Alexandria,[29] but Jewish rights were protected by legal precedent there and in most of the Roman Empire.[30] In Rome itself, however, the success of Jewish proselytism seems to have threatened the traditional Roman establishment.[31] It would not be long before the success of Christian evangelism would create a similar threat, but the Roman Christians, once they were distinguished from other Jews,[32] would quickly become an object of more outright persecution; they still had no politically powerful patrons.[33]
Judaism seems to have appealed especially to women—who did not have to contemplate the pain of circumcision at their conversion—and their willingness to convert seems to have irritated Roman men, who expected their wives to follow their own beliefs. The turning of a wife from her husband’s religion was viewed as an especially subversive ploy on the part of foreign religions. Plutarch emphasizes the importance of the wife’s worshiping her husband’s gods:
A wife ought not to make friends on her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the front door tight upon all queer rituals and outlandish superstitions. For with no god do stealthy and secret rites performed by a woman find any favour.[34]
Conservative writers like Plutarch, and especially the socially insecure satirist Juvenal, reacted against foreign cults which, they believed, were greatly strengthened through the gullibility of women.[35] The conversion of wives to Christianity thus posed a threat to upper-class men, and through them could provoke increased hostility toward Christians. Ephesians 5:22–33, unlike 1 Peter 3:1–7, deals only with Christian spouses; but the behavior of Christian families would no doubt affect public perceptions about Christianity. Paul did not want the church to be viewed as an immoral mystery cult.
The gains of women in ancient society had introduced new tensions into Greco-Roman life in general and probably into some marriages as well, due to the greater flexibility of possible role expectations now available. This meant that religions that were thought to ignore traditional roles for women would be viewed as threatening by the conservative male establishment.
Many scholars have commented on the gains in women’s social status during the Roman imperial period. To say that women in later periods had more freedom than they had had in classical Athens is not to say very much; even if their poor status in classical Athens has been exaggerated, it was worse than we find it in most other societies in the ancient Mediterranean. But papyri from Egypt do indicate that women’s status gradually improved over time,[36] especially in the Roman period.[37]
Roman laws in the New Testament period provided more independence for women than earlier laws had,[38] although the motives behind this stemmed from the advantage it would give the legislators, to whom the result of women’s independence was a completely incidental matter.[39] Some women, such as the empress Livia,[40] became extremely powerful socially, and though such women may have been exceptions, their example could encourage other women to advance as much as their gender, social class, and especially economic status permitted.
Not only politically and legally, but also philosophically, women had received a greater hearing; even in very conservative circles, they were sometimes recognized to have moral and intellectual potential.[41]
Resistance to Social Change
The perceived link between the growing social inversion and the religions from the eastern Mediterranean naturally bothered many members of the Roman elite, who sought to preserve the status quo and longed for more traditional times when their own power base was more secure.[42] The ideal figure of the Roman upper class was that of a “benevolent patriarch,” who ruled fairly on behalf of those under him, but maintained his own superior rank and social status.[43] He thus viewed it as better for everyone if he wielded the power on everyone’s behalf.
Thus the Senate passed laws to ensure that traditional boundaries for social classes were not transgressed; for example, members of aristocratic families were not to engage in nonaristocratic professions.[44] The Roman upper class also tried to protect its special prerogatives against the social advancement of freedmen.[45] The actual practice was, of course, quite different from the aristocratic ideal; as we have already observed, social mobility was occurring in the first century, to the consternation of the elite, who stood to lose most by it.
Maintaining the system as it was had long been emphasized by ideologists of the state: “Preserve the present order, and do not desire any change, knowing that revolutions inevitably destroy states and lay waste the homes of the people.”[46] Thus it was commonly believed that earlier Roman society had had much “higher” morals, including much more severe discipline of unsubmissive wives. This idea became an important feature in Stoic and Augustan propaganda for proper aristocratic marriages.[47]
The increasing mobility of women drew fire from satirists like Petronius,[48] Martial, and especially Juvenal, satirists being among the first who were prone to criticize social trends. Juvenal complains that marriage might lead a man to suicide, since women were always wrangling and asking for more presents; a male bedfellow, he mocks, would be better than these women.[49] They love violence, delighting in their strength like men, while wishing to remain female for its superior joys.[50] The wife who lords it over her husband thus becomes a familiar object of his satire:
“Crucify that slave!” says the wife. “But what crime worthy of death has he committed?” asks the husband; “where are the witnesses? . . . Give him a hearing at least; no delay can be too long when a man’s life is at stake!” “What, you numskull? You call a slave a man, do you? He has done no wrong, you say? Be it so; but this is my will and my command; let my will be voucher for the deed.” Thus does she lord it over her husband.[51]
Although some wealthy noble ladies were undoubtedly genuinely “spoiled,” Juvenal’s criticisms cannot be taken to reflect general social reality; the force of his satire is in the exaggeration. What bothered Juvenal and writers like him appears to have been the increase in women’s social power, which threatened their own position of male dominance. This is presumably why Juvenal ridicules women who try to be educated in philosophy and rhetoric.[52]
So severe does the criticism seem to have become that one writer laughs:
You do not know . . . how women dread satire. Lawyers may retreat and scholars may not utter a syllable before the flood of a woman’s words, the rhetorician may be dumb and the herald may stop his cries; satire alone can put a limit to their madness, though it be Petronius’ Albucia who is hot.[53]
Nor was such criticism an entirely new phenomenon.[54] Cato the Elder is quoted as complaining, “All mankind rules its women, and we rule all mankind, but our women rule us.”[55] Cicero charged that a man who could not deny his wife anything was not a free man but the lowliest of slaves.[56] But the aristocratic discomfort was increasing by Paul’s day, and this means that the antifeminist rhetoric of Roman aristocratic males was apparently getting hotter as well.
This dissatisfaction of men with freedoms they felt were increasingly being given to their wives led to marital conflicts. In modern society, wives are often more disappointed than husbands by the failure of marriages to conform to a romantic ideal; but in imperial Rome, husbands may have been the ones most dissatisfied by a failure of spousal role expectations, because their wives failed to emulate the legendary, submissive, domestic matrons of old.[57]
Different writers responded to this situation differently:
For example, in Juvenal’s case, bitter misogyny and nostalgia for an earlier, pure day; in Plutarch’s, an attempt to subsume the new values under the old and so to preserve the essential structure of the old values by making certain minimal concessions to the times; and, in the case of Xenophon of Ephesus, easy acceptance of the new spirit of egalitarianism.
But those who did challenge the old traditionalism were opposing standard aristocratic opinion and “risked the charge of political subversion.”[58]
The family was held to be the basic unit upon which society was built,[59] and ever since Aristotle political philosophy had outlined the proper family relationships necessary for the health of society as a whole.[60] This outline continued to be a standard format for defining proper family relationships in later writers.[61] Groups accused of undermining the moral fabric of Roman society thus sometimes protested that they instead conformed to traditional Roman values, by producing their own lists, or “household codes,” fitting those normally used in their day.
HOUSEHOLD CODES
Aristotle introduced three pairs of relationships into the household codes: the head of the family’s relationship with wife, children, and slaves, in each case defining the nature of the father’s rule.[62] As he puts it, “household management falls into departments corresponding to the parts of which the household . . . is composed . . . the primary and smallest parts of the household are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children.”[63] This threefold format was preserved by Aristotle’s philosophical followers and adopted by some other writers as well.[64] Given the relatively small percentage of families actually owning slaves in Roman antiquity, we may suspect that those who wrote such household codes had primarily other well-to-do people in mind as their readership.[65]
It was typical for ancient writers to think of families in these general terms of rank and duty; “family” was defined more by relationships of subordination than by blood relationship.[66] The man in charge of the household was often even compared to a king, since the family was viewed as a microcosm of society.[67]
It was important that propagandists for “suspicious sects” like Judaism and the cult of Isis emphasize their profamily orientation. They often did so, occasionally resorting specifically to three-part household codes. Thus, for example, an Isis aretalogy (a writing that celebrated a god’s deeds or virtues), probably directed toward the average kind of family that did not have slaves, emphasizes proper child-parent and husband-wife relationships.[68]
It was likewise natural for Greek-speaking Jewish writers to dwell on the proper ways to act in various relationships.[69] To the extent that they needed to demonstrate their lack of subversiveness to Roman society, their use of household codes became all the more important.[70] If they could demonstrate the “orthodox” character of their family practices, they would have answered a critical charge leveled against them by powerful members of the surrounding society.[71] In fact, Josephus follows the three-part household code pattern in his defense of Judaism against Apion, one of its slanderers.[72]
Early Christian household codes[73] may serve the same apologetic purpose: to show that Christians were good members of society who did not seek to radically overturn Roman social structures.[74] Given Jesus’ activism in Jewish Palestine, this apparent reticence of Paul to challenge many of the structures of his day is disappointing to some modern readers; but the rest of the Roman world required a different strategy for change than Jewish Palestine had. And, as we shall see, Paul’s ethics were more revolutionary in function than they may appear on the surface.[75] Indeed, it may have been the socially liberating aspects of early Christianity that made it most vulnerable to the charges of subversion Christians ultimately would encounter despite Paul’s precautions.[76]
CONCLUSION
By adhering to certain societal standards, the early Christians could perhaps hope to distinguish themselves from traditional objects of Roman slander, “undignified” eastern Mediterranean religions, including such mysteries as the cult of Dionysus.[77]
This is not to suggest that Ephesians 5:18—6:9 is to be read as a direct defense of Christianity to Roman readership in the way that Josephus’ tract Against Apion defends Judaism against the charges of its opponents. After all, this letter was no doubt sent to Asia, not to Rome; further, it was addressed to Christians, not to the opponents of Christianity.[78] But by encouraging Christians to live in a way that would silence some of the needless objections raised against the faith, as he had done in his previous letters,[79] Paul was contributing to a cultural defense of Christianity that would hopefully gain it a better hearing in Roman society. When he had written to the Romans, he had encouraged their support of civil authorities; now that he himself was in Rome, the issues that would contribute to a lifestyle defense of Christianity had no doubt become even clearer to him.
There is thus reason to think that Paul, awaiting trial in Rome, would have been contemplating strategies to appeal to the powerbrokers in Rome whose decisions could set precedents for policies toward Christians elsewhere in the empire. His household codes may represent a long-range response to basic Roman cultural objections to the gospel.[80] Stressing the wife’s submission would be important for evangelizing resistant elements in the Roman world and for resisting progressive cultural temptations for wives to affirm too much independence at the expense of their marriage. This strategy makes sense if, as we suspect, it would not have alienated any other groups from the gospel; to my knowledge, no one was going around criticizing women for being too submissive.
But we are still left with a question. Let us say that Paul emphasized the wife’s submission because it was an essential part of her witness in that culture. Would he have ignored her personal needs in favor of the church’s witness? Would he have left “submission” undefined and ambiguous, so that she could theoretically be subordinated even more than most Roman women were in his day? Would he have ignored the gospel’s equal demand for the husband’s servanthood and submission? A brief examination of Ephesians 5:21–31 would suggest that he does not; he places her submission squarely in the context of mutual submission, and qualifies her husband’s position of authority as one of loving service. To this point we will return in the next chapter.