5. Mutual Submission in Ephesians 5:18–33
Mutual Submission in Ephesians 5:18–33
In the last chapter we saw that it was important for ancient Christians not to be viewed as undermining the ethics that were holding Roman society together. They could go beyond those ethics—as we argue in this chapter that they did—but for the sake of their witness and their survival, Paul portrayed Christian ethics in terms that would best communicate to their culture the moral superiority of Christianity.
Paul understood the particular values of ancient society well enough to know how best to impact it. Those who thought most about morality in that culture called on wives to obey and husbands to govern them honorably. Paul avoids the nuances of “obedience” and “ruling,” but he does not mind calling on wives to submit or husbands to love, because this was behavior that should indeed characterize all Christians. Paul does call children and slaves to obey; we shall examine the exhortations to them in the following chapter.
For all the social conservativism in Paul’s words, there is yet a subversiveness he dares not play down. All believers were equal before God in Christ, regardless of race, social status, or gender (Eph. 2:11–22; 4:4–6; cf. Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 12:13). In this chapter we shall argue that, despite Paul’s attempt to relate to the best values in Greco-Roman culture, his words differ from those values precisely where Paul believed those values fell short of the will of God.
Interestingly, when Paul calls on wives to submit in Ephesians 5:22, he presents this as a particular example of the submission of all believers to one another in 5:21. Paul uses the traditional form of household codes discussed above, but by grounding the wife’s submission in general Christian submission, he qualifies the meaning of those codes. Yes, the wife should submit to her husband; but the husband, following Christ’s example of self-sacrificial service for his wife, also must submit himself to his wife. This is even more explicit than that the wife should love her husband even as he loves her (cf. 5:2, 25).
In this chapter we will examine several features of the text under consideration. First, the text addresses the most practical question of how believers are able to live a submissive life: by depending on the Spirit. Second, to understand what Paul means by the wife’s submission we must consider how and why wives were expected to submit in antiquity, so we will examine women’s inferior status in society and inferior authority in the home. Third, we will look at how ancient readers might have read wives’ “submission,’’ if it were not placed in the context of mutual submission. Fourth, we will briefly examine the call for husbands to love their wives and the role models of Christ and his church. Finally, we will investigate the nature of mutual submission in this passage and consider the relevance of the nearest ancient parallels to this idea.
THE SPIRIT AND SUBMISSION: EPHESIANS 5:18–21
Sometimes 5:21 is translated as if it begins a new section only incidentally related to the preceding section: “Submit to one another.”[1] But it is more likely that the Greek phrase “submitting to one another” retains here its usual force in the context of the parallel phrases that precede it: a subordinate participial clause dependent on the preceding imperative.[2] In other words, the submission of 5:21, like the worship of 5:19–20, flows from being filled with God’s Spirit (v. 18).[3]
Those who are filled with the Spirit, as opposed to being possessed by intoxication, show their inspiration by the Spirit in singing songs to one another[4] and worshiping God (5:19–20). This suggests that Paul views the charismatic, corporate worship of the community as a normative part of early Christianity, not just an aberration at Corinth that he was powerless to change (1 Cor. 14:26).[5]
The presence of the Spirit further leads believers to worship by confessing their faith that God is sovereign over the universe and will accomplish the purposes for which Christ came. When Paul says that the Spirit moves people to “give thanks in everything,” this would no doubt have struck a resonant chord both in Jewish readers who knew of God’s providence in the Bible[6] and in many Gentile readers influenced by common counsels of the time to be satisfied with God’s or Fate’s decrees.[7] In one list of virtues, for instance, Epictetus declares that the wise man will be “free, serene, happy . . . giving thanks for all things to God, under no circumstances finding fault with anything that has happened, nor blaming.”[8]
But another expression of being filled with the Spirit affects one’s relationships with others, particularly in the home. Those who are filled with the Spirit will also be “submitting to one another out of regard for Christ” (v. 21), and this mutual submission will be expressed in specific family relationships in the household (5:22—6:9).
This means that Christians cannot complain that what God asks in the following passage is too difficult for them because of their own background or emotional makeup. The power of the Spirit is sufficient in believers’ lives to enable them to fulfill God’s will in interpersonal relationships.
WOMEN’S INFERIOR STATUS IN HOME AND SOCIETY
When Paul calls on wives to submit, his words, even taken in their strongest possible sense, do not call wives to further subjugation. At their strongest, his words merely fail to challenge the prevailing structures of authority in society, perhaps because challenging authority structures was not his purpose in this letter and would have accomplished little in his situation except to increase the persecution of Christians, as we suggested in the preceding chapter.
But before we can ask whether Paul meant submission the way his contemporaries meant it, we must ask exactly how his contemporaries did mean it, and ask what the “normal” roles for women were in his day. We shall first examine the general status of women in and around Paul’s day, and then turn to the question of what wives’ submission meant for most ancient men.
Non-Jewish Greco-Roman Sources
The status of women was not constant through all periods of antiquity.[9] Women probably provided both skilled and unskilled labor in Mycenaean Greece,[10] but their status had declined significantly by the time of Plato and Aristotle,[11] at least in Athens.[12] Although women’s seclusion there has been exaggerated, it seems that their opinion and even presence was not valued in discussions on moral matters.[13] Their position seems to have improved in the centuries before the spread of Christianity, at least where we have evidence.[14] This was not least true in Asia, the province where Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was sent.[15]
But even by Paul’s day, many men felt that women were morally weaker than men.[16] Among those who expressed such views were prominent philosophers and moralists. Earlier philosophers were credited with a prayer of gratitude that they were not born women,[17] and a century after Paul a Stoic emperor could differentiate a women’s soul from that of a man.[18] Aristotle felt that virtue was different for women and men; just as it was the virtue of the master to command wisely, and of the slave to obey diligently, so the different natures of men and women required them to express virtue in different ways.[19]
The evidence is not always clear-cut: it is not all “for” or “against” women.[20] The moralist Plutarch is a case in point. He allows that women can acquire virtues,[21] and he praises the bravery of virtuous women throughout history[22] But when Plutarch argues that women should learn philosophy from their husbands, it is in part because he believes that if left to themselves, apart from men, women will produce only evil passions and foolishness.[23]
Stoic philosophers likewise declare that women are capable of the same virtues as men.[24] But this was all too often a theory not translated into practice.[25] In theory, a man and a woman could be capable of the same virtues, but the different dispositions of their genders and other characteristics were thought to lead them to develop naturally in different ways.[26] While equality was good in theory, the same philosophers who advocated such a theory usually also maintained hierarchical roles in home and society.[27] This was not much of an improvement over Aristotle, who had argued that the virtue of men was different from that of women, and that men’s courage was shown in commanding, whereas women’s was shown in obeying.[28]
Jewish Sources
Our Jewish sources also speak both positively and negatively of women. Properly behaved Jewish women were to be honored, but mistrust of women’s moral character in Jewish texts is often stronger than what we find in the philosophers.[29] Since these Jewish texts were written by men and for men, women are usually viewed only in terms of their relationship to men, often as objects of sexual temptation in ethical admonitions, and as wives and daughters in wisdom and law.[30]
There is a striking preponderance of what would appear to us as negative evaluations of women in early Jewish literature. An early Jewish teacher whose work was undoubtedly known to Paul advised men not to sit among women, because evil comes from them like a moth emerging from clothes. A man’s evil, this teacher went on to complain, is better than a woman’s good, for she brings only shame and reproach.[31] The same teacher warns of the hardships of being married to an evil woman, developing a theme that also appears in Proverbs.[32]
The early Jewish teacher Hillel is said to have associated women with sorceries,[33] and some later rabbis expanded on this suggestion.[34] A still later rabbi points out that the initial letter of Satan’s name first appears in the Bible at the creation of Eve, and draws from this the conclusion that Satan was created with woman.[35] Women are said, in a Diaspora Jewish document, to do their best to trick men into falling sexually,[36] and another such document declares that out of sixty thousand people led to destruction, only one woman had as many good deeds as bad deeds.[37]
There were other signs of a woman’s inferior social status in early Judaism. One is the oft-cited[38] prayer of R. Judah:[39]
A man must recite three benedictions every day: “Praised [be Thou, O Lord . . . ] who did not make me a gentile . . . a boor [ignoramus] . . . [or] a woman.” A gentile—as Scripture states, All the nations are nothing before him. . . . A boor—for “A boor does not fear sin” [m. Abot 2:5]. A woman—for women are not obligated [to perform all] the commandments.[40]
This prayer was probably not in use as early as the first century, but it reflects a generally understood premise of social reality; it was not only the perspective of later rabbis[41] but a commonly cited Greek perspective as well.[42] The male privilege reflected in this specific case is the privilege of being able to keep all the commandments of the Torah; women were obligated only to keep certain ones.[43]
Although Palestinian Jewish women had some freedoms that their contemporaries lacked under Greek and Roman laws,[44] rabbinic law also suggests women’s generally inferior social status in Palestinian Judaism.[45] That the woman was acquired as wife on the legal analogy of property[46] is not particularly significant; this just reflects the customary way of describing the husband’s exclusive sexual rights to his wife under law[47] and does not mean that the wife was viewed by her husband as impersonal property.[48]
More significant, however, was her legal responsibility to obey her husband and surrender to him any income she might receive.[49] A second-century law also appears to place a higher priority on a man’s life or property than on a woman’s, and a higher priority on protecting a woman’s sexual purity than that of a man.[50] Laws that reflect positively on women or offer them protection[51] do not change this indication that the husband had superior social status and power.
Old Testament rules about a woman’s menstrual “uncleanness” were developed and extended by later Jewish legal authorities, which came to restrict the interaction of women and strict male observers of such rulings.[52] But from an earlier period, respectable Jewish men in Palestine avoided social contact with women for much less ceremonial reasons. It was argued that one should not sit among women;[53] indeed, sitting near another’s wife could lead to desiring her and thus to destruction.[54]
A pre-Christian Jerusalem teacher and those who commented on him are reported to have said: “And do not multiply gossip with a woman; they said this concerning one’s own wife—how much the more concerning the wife of one’s companion.” The end result of indulging in chatter with a woman, the Sages thus warned, was hell.[55] One rabbinic interpretation of this saying was that it referred to the danger of being seduced; another rabbinic interpretation was that it meant that trusting a woman would lead one to ruin.[56] Even conversing with a relative publicly was considered inappropriate for a scholar, since onlookers might not realize that she was a relative and could (presumably) suspect flirtation on his part.[57] Indeed, so important was this matter, later rabbis reasoned, that God himself avoided speaking with women.[58]
These later Jewish teachers normally regarded a woman’s testimony as considerably less reliable than that of men,[59] and they were not alone. Josephus, an aristocratic Jewish writer familiar with broader currents of the Greco-Roman world, regards the prohibition of women’s testimony as part of God’s law, based in the moral inferiority inherent in their gender:
Put not trust in a single witness, but let there be three or at the least two, whose evidence shall be accredited by their past lives. From women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their sex; neither let slaves bear witness, because of the baseness of their soul.[60]
Many Jewish writers thought of women as unstable and overly talkative.[61] This is at least as true in most Jewish writings from outside Palestine as it is in Palestine.[62] Philo, our most productive example of a Jewish writer outside Palestine, indicates as a matter of common knowledge that women are “endowed by nature with little sense,”[63] and generally associates them with sense-knowledge, the opposite of masculine rationality.[64] The Sentences of the Syriac Menander warn a man—especially one seeking a prospective wife—to avoid the talkative woman.[65] Jewish women may have been somewhat better off in the Roman province of Asia,[66] but the evidence adduced for this indicates only that more women gained prominence there than in Palestine. The same evidence demonstrates that such upwardly mobile women remained in the minority even there.
For whatever reason—it may have often been economic[67]—male children also were often preferred to female children in Jewish Palestine.[68] (This attitude was, however, stronger elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. For instance, a Greek dream handbook predicts that a dream about male children is a favorable omen, but a dream about female children augurs bad luck.)[69] This is not to imply that daughters were less loved than sons, but it does reinforce the picture of their generally inferior social status in antiquity.
The picture is not wholly negative, of course.[70] Aside from literary texts, it seems that Jewish women outside Palestine (and possibly within Palestine as well) took part publicly in the life of their communities.[71] In Palestine women were not confined to the home and could work in local shops,[72] and the husband was required to allow his wife relative freedom of movement.[73] Further, the husband was always to respect his wife.[74]
That different views about women could exist side by side is illustrated by the dispute of several much later rabbis, whose conflicting opinions their followers felt compelled to harmonize:
Rab also said: He who follows his wife’s counsel will descend into Gehenna. . . . R. Papa objected to Abaye: But people say, If your wife is short, bend down and hear her whisper!—There is no difficulty: the one refers to general matters; the other to household affairs. Another version: the one refers to religious matters, the other to secular questions.[75]
Our point is not to argue that men did not care about women, but rather that they nearly always regarded them as suited to be followers, not leaders, by virtue of their disposition.[76] Some writers felt that this disposition was an innate part of their gender; most writers do not seem to have entertained the question either way. But the vast majority of male writers viewed women as socially subordinate, often ignoring those women who violated the stereotype, or sometimes honoring them as exceptions to the rule.
THE MEANING OF WIFELY SUBMISSION
What then was the feminine ideal in antiquity, in light of these different views of women’s character? And what would womanly submission have meant in the light of this ideal? Traditional Roman writers portrayed the feminine ideal as supportive and subservient.[77] Roman inscriptions similarly indicate that women were usually honored for their roles as mothers, wives, or daughters, even though they sometimes made other contributions to society.[78] Part of the male ideal of women’s submission was that they be meek, quiet, and apparently what we would consider “shy” and “self-conscious” in the presence of men. This did not mean that a woman would never be valued or praised for her wisdom;[79] but the most standard womanly ideal included a quiet and reclusive demeanor,[80] and other elements were, for normal women, at best incidental.
This is partly because ancient male writers generally saw a qualitative difference between the character of men and that of women. “Manly” character could be expressed in negative ways like drinking too much,[81] but it normally had to do with strength or courage,[82] including courage in virtue.[83] When a woman acted with courage, she was thus said to act “manly.”[84] This is not to imply that ancient people were offended by a woman’s virtuous courage; it is to say rather that they were often surprised by it.[85] In a culture where a woman’s timidity was a regularly practiced feminine virtue, it is not unnatural that the men thought this self-consciousness an innate feminine trait, despite the exceptions, and this anticipation perpetuated their expectations of women’s normal unsuitability for societal leadership roles.
The submission of wives was standard in ancient culture. Roman law gave men binding authority over their wives and unmarried daughters.[86] Early Roman aristocrats were said to have believed that women themselves preferred submission to their husbands over freedom.[87] Marriage contracts from first and second century BCE Egypt stipulate specifically that the wife must be submissive to her husband.[88]
Philosophers had long extolled this virtue. Centuries before the New Testament period, Aristotle argued that the man was by nature superior to the woman and fit to rule her.[89] Plato described a woman’s virtue as taking care of the home and being obedient to her husband.[90] In the Roman period, a Stoic writer thanks the gods for an “obedient” wife.[91] A Cynic moralist, pretending to give womanly advice to women, demands that doing whatever her husband wants must be the rule by which the virtuous woman lives her life.[92]
It appears in other writers as simply the expected norm of ancient society. Artemidorus in his dream handbook assumes that wives, like children and slaves, “obey” their men,[93] and in Apuleius’ novel, Psyche promised to obey her unseen husband.[94]
As usual, the writings of Plutarch shed light on ancient moral thinking concerning the issue at hand. Plutarch insists on the wife’s full submission in social and religious matters; she is to share her husband’s friends, rather than to make her own, and thus she should also accept his gods and religion.[95] It is proper for a man to rule his wife, and a man who failed to do so would come under Plutarch’s criticism.[96]
The few extant Jewish writers from the first century are at least equally insistent. The Jewish philosopher Philo assumes that the masculine rules the feminine,[97] and describes the wife’s proper duty to her husband in the language of slave service.[98] Josephus attributes to “the Law” the view that the woman must submit to her husband: “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given to the man.”[99]
Most Jewish writers seem to have shared this view.[100] A pre-Christian work admonishes a man not to let his wife have authority over him while he lives.[101] The ideal wife in this work is silent, restrained, modest,[102] chaste, in a home that the husband rules well.[103] In one work, God disciplined Adam with death for listening to his wife, who should have been subject to him instead.[104] The later rabbis also recognized the husband’s authority over his wife as standard.[105]
In other words, submitting to one’s husband and other male relatives was part and parcel of what it meant to be a “good” woman in ancient society. This may give us some sympathy for the rarely told perspective of the “bad” women in antiquity, many of whom may have simply been normal wives struggling to deal with insensitive husbands. Some marriages may have been nearly equal, with husbands and wives working in the market together; but the ideal model propagated in ancient society was that wives should be submissive and obedient, often even slavishly so.
Paul urges submission, but by placing it in the context of mutual submission (see above), he defines it quite differently than most of his culture did, even at the risk of raising the charge of subversion he had worked so carefully to avoid. Paul does not call on wives to take charge of their husbands, but calls on husbands to love their wives in such a radical way that husbands become their wives’ servants, too.
HUSBANDS’ LOVE FOR THEIR WIVES
That husbands and wives normally loved each other is, of course, almost a foregone conclusion; whatever else love might have meant in antiquity, it would naturally have been used to describe the ideal relationship between husbands and wives. Funerary inscriptions dedicated by widows or widowers to their deceased spouses testify to this affection among all social classes.[106]
Despite the likelihood that love between husband and wife might simply be assumed, some ancient moralists explicitly called for it. Some writers emphasized that the wife should love her husband.[107] Cicero declares that the most crucial natural bond is between husband and wife.[108] Some Jewish writers, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, emphasized the responsibility of the husband to love and respect his wife.[109]
Nevertheless, the responsibility of the husband to love his wife is not explicitly stressed as much in ancient literature as the wife’s responsibility to submit to him, though this may in part be because it was generally assumed. The household codes normally instructed the head of the household how to “rule” or “govern” his wife, rather than how to love her.
Paul is certainly among the minority of ancient writers in that he devotes more space to the exhortation of husbands to love in Ephesians 5 than to that of wives to submit. In our culture, his exhortation to wives to submit stands out more strongly; in his culture, the exhortation to husbands to love, rather than the normal advice to rule the home, would have stood out more strongly. Further, Paul does not address the husband’s role in the wife’s submission; he does not urge the husband to inculcate submission in his wife. Paul’s only instructions to the husband are to serve her as Christ served the church, and, since husband and wife are “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), to love her as he would his own body.
ROLE MODELS: CHRIST AND THE CHURCH
Like any good ancient teacher, Paul was ready to cite authoritative role models to demonstrate how submission and love were to be expressed. Not settling for any secondary characters, Paul chooses for each the most authoritative models available to him: Christ as the lover and the church as submitter. Christ is also the example of love for the whole church (Eph. 5:1); the church is naturally enough not cited as the role model for its own submission in 5:21, but the parallelism is clear enough: all are to submit as part of the church, and all are to love as Christ did.
Husbandly love and wifely submission in this context thus become examples of those more general virtues, rather than statements that love is only the husband’s role, and submission only the wife’s. Indeed, Christ’s love is explicitly defined in this passage in terms of self-sacrificial service, not in terms of his authority (5:25–27). Of course, authoritarian leadership on any basis conflicts with the teaching and example of Jesus throughout the Gospels, so those who advocate it today would do well to consider whether they grieve the Spirit of God.
The picture of Christ’s relationship to his church as a husband to his wife has sometimes been associated with the “sacred marriage” of some Greek gods to their followers,[110] but most scholars[111] recognize a much more natural source for Paul’s image.[112] Both Paul and his readers accepted the Old Testament as God’s word, and found there plenty of examples of a certain “sacred marriage”: God’s covenant relationship with Israel is often portrayed in these terms.[113] This image continued to be used by Jewish people in Paul’s time and later.[114]
Just as husband and wife became “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), so Christ’s church is his body, and those joined to him are one spirit with him (1 Cor. 6:17).[115] The emphasis here is not on hierarchy but on oneness, spiritual and sexual unity.[116] We have dealt with Paul’s meaning of “headship” in chapter 1, but whatever Paul or others may have meant by “head” in general, Paul defines it by his usage here specifically as “Savior” (Eph. 5:23). The wife recognizes her husband as “head” in terms of submitting to his authority (5:22–23), but the husband recognizes his headship in terms of loving and serving his wife (5:28–30). The image of head and body here is meant to emphasize especially that the husband and wife should see themselves as one and work together with a common purpose and goal (5:31).
Many household codes were addressed as instructions only to the male householder,[117] but Paul addresses his instructions to each member of the household. He wants wives to do their part and husbands to do their part—not to use his letter to enforce the other person’s part. Although Paul uses the most socially acceptable language of his day to present his case, his point is that both partners must seek to serve one another because of Christ’s reign in their lives. It is likely that their roles will be different, according with their own background and cultural leadership models that develop different skills and preferences along gender lines. But Paul gives no instructions on transcultural role differences here, such as who does the cleaning or who works outside the home. He merely defines the marriage relationship in terms of mutual service.
MUTUAL SUBMISSION
To call on wives to submit themselves to their husbands would not have been a radical statement in Paul’s day. To “submit oneself” could mean to “give in” or “cooperate,” and need not mean “obey”;[118] the closest thing Paul gives to a definition of the term in this context, in fact, is the word “respect” in 5:33, where he plainly summarizes his whole exhortation to wives. This alone makes Paul’s exhortation quite weak by ancient standards. But the context in which Paul places his exhortation qualifies it much more: it is an expression of the kind of submission all Christians render to one another, the kind that Christian husbands would thus also need to render to their wives.[119]
It is clear that the submission of verse 22 cannot be other than the submission of verse 21 from the simple fact that the word “submitting” does not even appear in the Greek text of verse 22: it has to be borrowed from verse 21. It is perfectly legitimate to read verse 22, “Wives, submitting to your husbands,” as long as we understand that we must take verse 22 as an example of verse 21’s mutual submission. Indeed, one commentator points out that verse 22 might be translated, “for example, wives to your husbands,” and this is no doubt its force.[120] Wives should submit to their husbands because Christians should submit to one another.
Paul’s argument here is both powerful and well crafted. If wives submit to their husbands, Roman moralists and others could not claim that Christianity subverted pagan morals. But if the husband also submits, and husband and wife act as equals before God, Paul is demanding something more than Roman moralists typically demanded, not less.
Further, Paul enjoins that submission must be done out of “the fear of Christ” (5:21).[121] Someone who keeps in mind that he or she has a Lord in heaven is not likely to lord it over others, but to take more willingly his or her place as a servant—whether the world views them as master or servant (6:7–9).
Would Paul’s readers have caught the idea that he was trying to qualify what he said about wives’ submission? Since some other writers in Paul’s day also qualified such expressions, we may guess that they would have. For instance, the Stoic writer Hierocles assigns the husband the public duties and the wife the domestic duties, but he is not willing to separate these roles completely.[122] As mentioned above, many Stoics maintained both women’s natural equality and the propriety of their social subordination to men.[123]
In a marriage relationship, Plutarch urges that the husband and wife act in harmonious consent—something like what we mean by mutual submission—but with the wife recognizing the husband’s leadership.[124] The wife should not be afraid to joke around with her husband,[125] and the husband should respect no one as much as his wife.[126] But Plutarch also writes in no uncertain terms of the wife’s duty to obey her husband, and that the husband should rule her with sensitivity:
So it is with women also; if they subordinate themselves to their husbands, they are commended, but if they want to have control, they cut a sorrier figure than the subjects of their control. And control ought to be exercised by the man over the woman, not as the owner has control of a piece of property, but as the soul controls the body, by entering into her feelings and being kind to her through goodwill . . . it is desirable to govern a wife, and at the same time to delight and gratify her.[127]
This is one of the most “progressive” social models in Paul’s day, and is similar to the one Paul advocates for his readers, although Paul, unlike Plutarch, does not explicitly call the wives to obedience (5:21–22).
But does Paul mean by mutual submission exactly what Plutarch means by his instructions? In this case, he would then have to mean that wives should always submit, and husbands should submit only in the sense that they lovingly look out for their wives’ interests. If this is what Paul intends, we might even be led to think that Paul means the wife’s submission in the complete and total sense in which Plutarch means it. Paul would then be saying that all Christians should submit to one another, but they should submit in different ways, as detailed in his list of duties in 5:22—6:9.
But while others speak of wives, slaves, and children submitting differently,[128] they do not speak in terms of everyone submitting: rare indeed is the ancient writer who would, with Paul, call all people, including the male heads of households, to submit to one another—other writers certainly would not have had them share the same verb as Paul does in 5:21–22. Other writers may have qualified traditional gender roles, but no one we know of qualified them as clearly as Paul did.[129]
It is most natural to read Paul as making a much more radical statement than Plutarch, both because of what Paul says and because of what he does not say. He subordinates wives so weakly, and emphasizes mutuality so strongly, that it is difficult to believe that he is arguing for their transcultural subordination.
Paul is responding to a specific cultural issue for the sake of the gospel, and his words should not be taken at face value in all cultures. Paul believes that Christians should be submissive and not seek their own interests, and thus that Christian women in his day should moderately conform to the general social ideal without fighting it. Although he explicitly defines the wife’s submission only as “respect” (5:33), he emphasizes this duty from the wife more than from the husband to relate to the culture in which Christians were living out their witness. But would Paul expect Christian women today to conform to the forms of submission that were standard in Paul’s day? Or would he expect Christian submission, both for the husband and the wife, to take a different form?
Interpreters who differ on this matter may read the same cultural background and interpret Paul’s words to his own culture in the same way. But whether we believe that the nature of mutual submission will be different in our culture than it was then depends in part on how well we know ancient culture. It is unlikely that a wife today could perform the duties ancient cultures expected of wives and still submit to husbands in our culture, who would most likely find the cultural differences impossibly frustrating. It would not be possible for wives to submit in all other cultures in exactly the same way Paul was suggesting wives submit in his day.
Whether we believe that mutual submission must be practiced in the same form today as it was back then also depends in part on a different question: how we get from the “then” to the “now” in biblical interpretation. The question is not whether to apply and obey Paul’s words, but rather how to apply and obey them in a new setting.[130]
Those of us who both study the Bible in the light of its culture and preach it to congregations face this question every time we preach, trying to apply the principles of the Bible in the way most relevant to our listeners. When we preach narrative, we look for the moral of the story and apply it, and we do the same when we read what Paul addressed to various situations in his churches. I am convinced that, in many cases except for the issue of women’s submission, we simply unconsciously assume that this is the right way to read the Bible. But when it comes to an issue like women’s submission, where a culturally informed reading of the text can challenge our church traditions, we are more reluctant to read the Bible on these terms.
One issue of debate in the nineteenth-century United States that is no longer a matter of much debate is the issue of slavery. Because I expect that all my readers will now agree with the abolitionists that slavery is morally wrong, I believe the way we read the Bible’s teachings about slavery can be very instructive for how we read the Bible’s teachings about women. This is especially the case since Paul goes on in the very context we have been discussing to address slaves in much the same manner that he has addressed wives. To this issue we turn in the next chapter of this book.
CONCLUSION
As has often been pointed out, Ephesians 5:22–33 advocates mutual submission. The only explicit definition of the wife’s submission in the text is that she respect her husband, and though Paul probably has more in mind than this, his call to submission was not at all radical. Paul defines the husband’s submission in much greater detail, however, and defines it in terms of Christ’s self-sacrificial service on behalf of the church. Paul’s language seems to go considerably beyond his culture in this respect.
Some ancient writers did believe that husbands should nurture their wives as persons of equal worth, yet wives should obey their husbands. Their language concerning mutuality is not nearly as strong as Paul’s, but for the sake of argument, we now raise the possibility that Paul was not as radical as he appears, and that he meant by wifely submission exactly what they meant.
Yet if we indeed read the husband-wife part of this household code in this way, we must also read the master-slave part of the household code in the same way. In the following chapter, I hope to show the parallels between the two issues, since Paul calls on slaves to obey their masters, no less plainly than he calls on wives to submit to their husbands. I also hope to demonstrate that Paul does indeed go beyond the most progressive elements of his culture and would not have mandated the continuance of the authority of the pater familias (the head of the Roman household) over either wives or slaves for all cultures.