There’s a fascinating element in the discussion of the Sabbath year in Deuteronomy 15. The general law requires releasing people from their debts every seven years. That means if you lend to someone a few months before the release of debts, and the person is too poor to pay it back in time, you have to release them of the debt. You might expect this to give rise to unprecedented amounts of stinginess in the time before the year of debt-release. The law anticipates this, though, and it commands Israel not to use such fears as excuses not to give. It’s sin to refuse to give in such a situation, and they were commanded to give and not grudgingly. It says God will reward those who get stiffed in such a situation.
In the debate between complementarianism and egalitarianism about gender distinctions in marriage, egalitarians often say that calling on a woman to submit to her husband is unfair when the man isn’t called on to do the same. This does ignore that the same Ephesians 5 that tells women to submit to their husbands commands husbands to love their wives as self-sacrificially as the love that brought Christ to die for the church, which I think should count as at least as significant a level of sacrifice as what the wife is asked to do. But one thing complementarians often say strikes me as missing the point. They say that in any ideal marriage this shouldn’t be an issue. If the husband is loving his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, then it won’t be difficult at all for the wife to submit to the husband.
One hint that something is amiss here comes from considering the flip-side, which would be: If the wife submits to the husband, then it won’t be difficult to love her as Christ loved the church. Really? I suspect it would still be immensely difficult for a sinful husband or wife to follow these commands even with a sinless spouse.
But I think the main reason I don’t like that complementarian response is that you shouldn’t have to go to the ideal situation to see that these commands are all right. If complementarianism is correct, then wives should submit to their husbands even if their husbands are complete jerks, and husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church even if their wives are as unlovely as someone’s inner self could be.
Indeed, I would say this is so even with an egalitarian interpretation of this passage. This is simply Christian teaching. Philippians 2 makes this utterly clear. Christ’s model of giving himself for us is just plain the model for Christians and how we should treat others, regardless of how those others treat us. And this is simply continuous with the Hebrew scriptures, including the Mosaic law, since the very same principle underlies the command in Deuteronomy 15 that lenders should give to the poor even when there’s little chance of getting the money back before the debt-release year (and many other places in the Torah, Proverbs, prophets, etc. along these lines).
So, while I don’t think the complementarian reply above is correct (i.e. saying that in an ideal situation it isn’t all that bad to follow complementarianism), at the same time I think objections to complementarianism that involve any claim that it asks too much are, at the very least, contrary to the very spirit of Christ and his call on the church. There are those who will resist such an ethic. They will say that Nietzsche was right in his diagnosis of Christianity as a slave-morality. I’m willing to grant that to a point, as long as they recognize that they resist Christianity in doing so. What I will have little patience for is those who think they can maintain a Christian ethic while thinking any unfairness here is immoral.
It reminds me of a discussion I overheard between two atheist philosophers, both of whom had some Christian influence when they were younger. One was giving a certain argument against a certain conception of hell, saying that it would be unfair, and the other said that it won’t make much sense to use an argument that assumes God is fair against the followers of Jesus, since Jesus described God in terms of an employer giving the same amount of pay to the laborers who only worked an hour as he gave to those who had been working all day. These were day-laborers who subsist on a day’s wage to live for the day. The Torah even requires people to pay day-laborers every day for that very reason. Jesus says God is like the farmer who pays the day-laborers a full day’s wage even if they don’t earn it. There’s nothing fair about that arrangement, and yet Jesus says it represents what God’s character is like. It’s not remotely fair to ask Israelites to give to their poor fellow Israelites who will almost certainly end up with no debt due to the closeness of the year of debt-release. But it’s very clear that biblical morality requires doing exactly that sort of thing and much more.
September 22nd, 2010 | 10:33 am | #1
“I think objections to complementarianism that involve any claim that it asks too much are, at the very least, contrary to the very spirit of Christ and his call on the church. There are those who will resist such an ethic. They will say that Nietzsche was right in his diagnosis of Christianity as a slave-morality. I’m willing to grant that to a point, as long as they recognize that they resist Christianity in doing so. What I will have little patience for is those who think they can maintain a Christian ethic while thinking any unfairness here is immoral.”
Egalitarian Adam Omelianchuk, have you heard these types of objections from egalitarians before?
September 22nd, 2010 | 11:53 am | #2
Great post, and well worth musing over.
September 22nd, 2010 | 3:02 pm | #3
[...] Pierce over at First Things has a post about complementarians/egalitarians and submission: But I think the main reason I don’t like that [...]
September 22nd, 2010 | 3:32 pm | #4
““I think objections to complementarianism that involve any claim that it asks too much are, at the very least, contrary to the very spirit of Christ and his call on the church.”
That could be, but I think E’s could argue C’s don’t go far enough. I have always found it strange that it is the “mans business” to love their wives self-sacrificially and that somehow this is not something the wife is called to do. E is primarily concerned with mutuality, not modern notions of fairness.
I think the real reason why C’s shy away from telling “wives should submit to their husbands even if their husbands are complete jerks” is because it sets the table for potential spousal abuse. Steven Tracy is very aware of the C pitfall here, and as a C I think he is judicious in his warnings which can be found here.
September 22nd, 2010 | 8:51 pm | #5
There’s a difference between being a jerk and being abusive.A jerk is selfish and expects things that shouldn’t be expected. That might be an abusive of husbandly authority, but it’s not abuse in the sense of spousal abuse. That requires serious harm, either physical or psychological. Most of us are jerks sometime or other. Much fewer are abusive, in comparison.
I would have thought the right way to prevent complentarianism leading to spousal abuse is to point out that nowhere in the Bible do we find permission for husbands to make their wives submit and to emphasize the positive commands. Spousal abuse is impossible if those are followed. (And if it’s coming from a spouse who doesn’t accept scripture, then it’s not complementarianism that’s driving the abuse.)
September 22nd, 2010 | 9:03 pm | #6
And an abusive spouse (well, we ARE really talking about husbands in this context) is not abusing his wife because she’s submissive, but because he’s an abuser. I suppose the response is that the wife “might get the idea” that the abuse is to be submitted to. But this supposed danger of the position is easily remedied by simply pointing out that abuse is not merely an abuse of authority, and over-the-top exercise of leadership, but a crime, and should be dealt with accordingly. There has to be major league stupidity going on for people to take the idea of complementarianism and make it into a requirement for a wife to submit to abuse – not on the part of the wife, but on the part of those teaching complementarianism yet somehow failing to point out the blindingly obvious principle that no one is allowed to abuse anyone else. And I really doubt this stupidity is as common as egalitarians believe, and I’m particularly convinced that when this stupidity occurs, it’s not driven by a belief in complementarianism, but by a stupidity that fails to take scripture seriously and teach it with anything approaching accuracy in the first place. IOW, if seriously messed up people are teaching that wives are required to submit to abuse, it’s because they’re seriously messed up, not because they’ve concluded that complementarianism best reflects the whole counsel of scripture on the marriage relationship.
September 22nd, 2010 | 10:43 pm | #7
There is another great article published by Tracy that explores what “submit in everything” really means. In it he explores the history of C interpretation on what the text says about the scope of male authority and when it is qualified by certain restraints. After reflecting on the various views and the startling empirical data concerning the abuse women suffer today, he recommends 6 qualifications of wifely submission:
1. A wife must not submit to her husband when
obedience to him would violate a biblical principle (not just a direct biblical statement) — note how the wife has a right to interpret the Bible herself and does not need a man to “teach” her what it means.
2. A wife must not submit to her husband when
obedience to him would compromise her relationship with Christ. — Note how the wife has a unmediated relationship with Christ and does not need a man to mediate it to her.
3. A wife must not submit to her husband when
obedience to him would violate her conscience. – Note how she is autonomous in forming and following her conscience.
4. A wife must not submit to her husband when
obedience to him would compromise the care, nurture, and protection of her children. – Note how she is to protect the family, a role often consigned to men.
5. A wife must not submit to her husband when
obedience to him would enable (facilitate) her husband’s sin. – Note how she has the right to hold him accountable.
6. A wife must not submit to physical, sexual, or
emotional abuse.
Notice how only one of these has to do with legality (the last). The other five have to do with religious and ethical commitments that are governed by Scripture or one’s conscience. The woman’s inviolable equality grounds all of the qualifiers.
While we can all be “jerks” or act out of “stupidity” (and thus the commands of mutual submission stay in play) there is far more restraints to be considered and should paid attention to if someone is a “complete jerk” (how “complete” are we talking about?) or abiding in stupidity. Of course C does not “permit” spousal abuse. But unqualified (or under-qualified) versions of it make it difficult to know when one is free from the duty of submission. C’s need to be careful of this, which I think should be uncontroversial.
September 22nd, 2010 | 11:22 pm | #8
I think we need to be careful about describing an overly generous employer (one who gives to each laborer a full day’s wage) as unfair. Or, even if we say that generosity is unfair, let’s observe that this is a very different kind of unfairness than the refusal to give a full day’s wages to those who worked for a full day.
As for the release of debts every seven years, what exactly is supposed to be unfair here? If it’s really just “stinginess” that is prohibited as the Sabbath year approaches, I don’t quite see the problem.
September 23rd, 2010 | 4:13 am | #9
Maybe one day Adam Omelianchuk will be embarrassed to say that he was once an egalitarian just like Albert Mohler who has since repented of his youthful aberrant view.
September 23rd, 2010 | 11:01 am | #10
Adam, glad you are here. I wish completarians in my church community would make these principles clear. Unfortunately, because it comes from CBE, they probably won’t. 5 & 6 (sometimes with a little of 3) are the only ones I hear. 6 usually gets mentioned as a quick “of course” in each “submission lecture to wives.” It leaves so many questions… and so much misunderstanding. No wonder many women whow have been through abusive situations would not trust their church leadership to help them…
September 23rd, 2010 | 11:13 am | #11
EM,
Perhaps, you can download it and print it off for them. Tracy is a C and ought to be widely read. He and his wife recently co-authored a book with Bill and Aida Spencer on marriage and it is the best case for C-ism I have ever read.
September 23rd, 2010 | 1:27 pm | #12
Thanks, Adam. This is an issue which has been on my heart a lot – perhaps in part because of my background w/ abuse in my family of origin and with what seems to be the willful naivete of church leaders on this subject. I love my church community but have concerns about what they teach and endorse in this area. Positively, they’ve moved away from Doug Wilson in the last five years but still promote Martha Peace to wives. I just read the piece by Tracy that you recommended and thought it was very well done.
September 24th, 2010 | 9:24 am | #13
Adam, I’ve heard most of those principals argued at my decidedly complementarian church. In all cases we are told not to submit to authority (in the civil sphere, the church sphere, or the family sphere) when it violates God’s law, and for a Christian the conscience is binding as God’s law. While I’ve been taught that my husband is my spiritual head, I’ve not been taught that he mediates my relationship with Christ – no one can do that. Seems like Martha Peace (mentioned above) tends to promote the first 3.
I’m curious how 4 in any way is distinct from loving the husband by being opposed to any sin in his life and not allowing him to lead the wife into sin? What else compromises care of the children besides sin?
September 24th, 2010 | 10:02 am | #14
This is interesting. What abuse situations I’ve come in contact with have happened in the church I attend right now.
It’s an egalitarian church (for the record, I’m complementarian) and we’ve found that their even while they seem to try and handle abuse well, they really don’t. And no small part in that is their apparent refusal to lay the blame for the safety and general godliness of the home at the husband’s feet.
Where they continually get caught up is in “fairness”. Why should he have to (fill in the blank) when you keep saying that she needs support and healing and not (again, fill in the blank).
When confronted, the leadership has real trouble with those who would hold the head of the house to a higher standard, which is (or should be) the result of complementarianism.
Now granted, the fall mucks everything up and so sinful men will try to take advantage of their power. But I’ve seen the other side of that.
It seems to me that one of the fruits (unintended) of egalitarianism is that there is no place for the buck to stop when it comes to the condition of the family.
Having said all that, I realize that men will abuse power, any many (undiscipled and perhaps even unbelieving in most cases) men will try to take advantage of the complementarian view to say that they are the “boss”.
September 24th, 2010 | 10:04 am | #15
Abuse makes me mad. But the failure of church leadership to deal with it head on and biblically, makes me livid…
Even so, come Lord Jesus…
September 24th, 2010 | 11:44 am | #16
I wonder if the problem here is not at least partly bad (or at least inattentive) exegesis? If one looks at the passage rightly — as beginning with verse 21 (“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”) the supposed “unevenness” levels out significantly.
Paul begins his discussion of household/family relations not with “wives submit” but with a plea to mutual submission in Christ. For Paul, the first standard of relationship between a believing husband and wife is as brother and sister in Christ. From there he then moves on to some more particulars. But the principle overarching all is ~mutual~ submission under Christ. How do we know that the paragraph should begin at verse 21? Well because verse 22 does not even contain the Greek word (hypotasso) for submit. The passage reads as follows in a literal translation: (21) submit one to another in fear of Christ (22) wives to your husbands as unto the Lord.
Thus submission is conceived under love (cf Phil. 2.1-11) and worship, not power.
Now, one recognizes that a plea to mutual submission does not simplify the matter of what and how and when — much less issues of sexual politics, but at least it reduces the (improperly) perceived question of balance between the sexes to it’s proper level.
September 24th, 2010 | 12:21 pm | #17
David, a lot of scholars take “submit to one another” not to mean that every believer submits to every other believer. After all, the elders of my congregation don’t submit to me when it comes to church leadership, and I don’t submit to my kids. It then must mean that we should all submit to other believers when the role relationship between us makes that appropriate, i.e. when the person we’re submitting to has authority over us.
I tend to think this goes too far in order to adjust to a good objection, but I don’t have a good idea of how to frame a mediating position, so I’m not really sure what I think. But the point is that it doesn’t simply follow from “submit to one another” that every single believer is submitting to every other single believer, certainly not in exactly the same ways. That last bit is completely untenable.
September 24th, 2010 | 12:24 pm | #18
C Ehrlich: I think you’re running unfairness and injustice together. It’s unjust to deny someone earned wages. It’s unfair to give someone wages they didn’t earn. Grace is unfair. It’s not unjust. But your example is unjust. If we didn’t all deserve hell, then it would be unjust to send people there. But it’s not fair even for non-Calvinists that some get to go to heaven, because not all have the same opportunity to believe (and for Calvinists it’s even more unfair). So fairness in this sense is not something we should attribute to God, even if we want to say that God is never unjust.
September 24th, 2010 | 12:48 pm | #19
Jeremy, there is significant overlap between “injustice” and “unfairness.” Moreover, to say that voluntary generosity is unfair is quite surprising. Is it really unfair of you to perform a supererogatory act of kindness?!
Given how we use “unfairness” in everyday speech, you usage here is quite misleading.
September 24th, 2010 | 1:42 pm | #20
Jeremy,
I don’t think I said “every believer should submit to every other believer all the time regardless of authority” or anything like it. What I said was that the text demands (and that is not too strong a word) that we begin our understanding of submission ~in the household~ not with wives submitting to their husbands, but as brothers and sisters submitting to one another out of the “fear” (and here Paul means worship/awe) of Christ.
I very deliberately avoided specifics as to what that looks like, because I think that’s a large and complex discussion. We make it infinitely more so if we start dragging in relationships that Paul does not have in mind in this discussion (like the one between you and the elders of your church). Whatever else this passage may be saying, it simply doesn’t have the relationship between you and the elders anywhere in view, so perhaps at least we agree that this passage doesn’t bear on that.
My concern was that we should ~begin~ this discussion with a proper reading of the text. Discussion of this passage always seems to revolve around the question of authority — ie. “who’s in charge”. To START a consideration of these questions with verse 22 is (in my view) to fundamentally misconstrue the passage. That was my (rather limited) point. The rest is, as I said, complicated and a much longer discussion.
September 24th, 2010 | 3:31 pm | #21
If I regularly give special treatment to one of my kids, and the other never receives it, I think it’s fair to say that I’m not being fair, and I think this fits with ordinary usage. Suppose I refuse to give any chocolates to one child when I take him to the grocery store but buy something for all the others when I do so. I think that’s unfair.
Even so, I don’t think it’s unjust. If the reason I do so is because that child responds badly to chocolate (e.g. lactose intolerance), then I’m justified in being unfair.
September 24th, 2010 | 3:43 pm | #22
Jeremy, now you are switching the case. Obviously there are relevant features of scenario you are describing, in which a parent shows systematic favoritism to one of his/her children. No one is denying that some cases of favoritism are unfair! What’s being denied is rather that it is necessarily unfair to show generosity to some, or to perform a supererogatory kindness.
Now you may of course have peculiar doctrinal reasons for your peculiar vocabulary. I’m simply pointing out that your usage is misleading, at least by the standards of ordinary language.
September 29th, 2010 | 11:36 am | #23
Read the responses of the employees to the employer within the parable. They certainly think it’s unfair. All I’m saying is that you can defend it morally without having to claim that it’s fair. You can simply say that there are good moral actions that are unfair, and other moral issues explain why.
September 29th, 2010 | 11:57 am | #24
“All I’m saying is that you can defend it morally without having to claim that it’s fair.”
And I’m simply pointing out that you are relying on a peculiar notion of a fairness–and one that likely isn’t shared by the employer in this story. Listen to how he rebuts his envious workers:
September 30th, 2010 | 1:36 am | #25
There are translations that translate it that way, sure, but I think that’s a mistaken translation. A lot of translations have it as not doing them wrong rather than not treating them unfairly, and I think that’s more accurate. The Greek word is “adike”, which is usually translated as “unjust” or “unrighteous”. Plato uses it in a way fairly equivalent to what we mean by “immoral”.
September 30th, 2010 | 2:12 am | #26
Jeremy, I think you should at least acknowledge that you are fighting an uphill battle here. You would insist that a generous person acts unfairly when he gives a beggar spare change. More ambitious still, you would also insist that it would be wrong for the generous person to resist a complaint that he has acted unfairly (and as in the parable, it is a complaint–which should probably tell you something).
Remember that this is a point about ordinary language. It is not a debate about some preferred refinement of ordinary language in which “just” and “fair” are given neater, non-overlapping definitions. Take a step back, and listen to what you’re saying without all the doctrinal baggage and commitments to the idea you’re after in this post.
October 1st, 2010 | 7:21 am | #27
It’s only very, very slightly unfair to give a beggar spare change, enough that no one cares and thus no one would usually say it. But that doesn’t mean there’s no sense it which it’s unfair.
I don’t insist that it would be wrong to resist the complaint that the generous person is being unfair. The reason the complaint is being made is because there’s an assumption that unfairness amounts to moral wrongness, and that assumption needs to be tackled. That’s why the employer in the parable does indeed respond, and he does so by saying he wasn’t being unjust. He doesn’t criticize their claim that they had to work far more to get the same amount. He simply says it’s morally fine to create such a situation.
In any case, everything I want to say could be captured in terms of making the precise refinement of ordinary language that you describe in your last paragraph. I’m just not convinced that I need to do it that way, because I do think there’s a sense in which the parable’s employer is being unfair but not in any immoral way.
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