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.

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.

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:

But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?

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.

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.

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.

Given how we use “unfairness” in everyday speech, you usage here is quite misleading.

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.

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.

Even so, come Lord Jesus…

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”.

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?