One of the things that I’ve run across in my studies of the bible is that a great many people bring their own suppositions to their belief in God. In the early church we had a great many men carrying on with their chests out and grunting, believing that Christianity was a man’s thing; that women were secondary if not inferior. Today’s woman, through the fight for equality, has unfortunately reopened this door. Feminism, in it’s purest form, was the fight for equality. What has happened though is a newfound taste for the power...some have given up on being equal to men and would rather be superior to them. It’s not a fight for what’s right anymore; it’s all about ‘who can I run over (or through) to be the best.’ We have to start checking ourselves when it comes to our attitudes about the opposite sex (we can even apply this to different races). In the days of old, men believed they were superior simply because they believed they were 'superior' to women. Was that right? Obviously not.
Today women can be found thinking that they deserve to be the leader because of years of suppression. Is this right? No. Remember the clear words of Paul that neither man is superior to woman; that woman is not superior to man, that husband is not the ruler over the wife; and that the wife is not the ruler over the husband.
Galations 3: 28 says:
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (NAS)."
Was Paul "just remarking in passing (1)?" In the midst of a ‘male dominated era’, a champion of the Reformation, John Calvin, put it this way,
"When Paul says that there is no difference between man and woman, he is speaking about the spiritual Kingdom of Christ, where the outward characteristics, count for nothing, and are not taken into consideration, for it has nothing to do with the body, nothing to do with men’s physical relationship with each other, but it is concerned wholly with the spirit. That is why Paul declares that there is even no difference between ‘a slave’ and ‘a free man’. At the same time, however, he leaves intact the civil order and also the distinctions in honours, for ordinary everyday life cannot get on without these....Therefore, so far as spiritual union is concerned, in the eyes of God, and inwardly in their conscience, Christ is the head of both the man and woman without any distinction, because, in the spiritual realm, no consideration is given to male or female. On the other hand, as far as external connections and social propriety are concerned, the man takes his lead from Christ, and the woman from the man, so that they do not stand on the same level, but this inequality exists.(2)"
If Calvin was playing darts he would have scored very high but still missed the bullseye. This verse was not the only if its kind in the bible. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue for Paul (who in a moment of weakness and insight accidentally contradicted himself). We can find this same notion of equality in several of his other writings. Paul knew there was equality at the spiritual level, and at the same time he believed in this very same equality here on earth.
1 Cor 7: 3-4 states:
"Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband {does} and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife {does} (NAS)."
Paul spells it out in plain simple terms. For whatever he says of the husband he also says of the wife. Each is given the same task equally.
Ephesians 5: 24-25, 28-31, 33 says:
"But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives {ought to be} to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her:...So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also {does} the church, because we are members of His body. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. Nevertheless let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and {let} the wife {see to it} that she respect her husband."(NAS)
Just by taking this passage on it’s own merit (without consulting books, or looking into the original Greek text) we find that women are to be subject to their husbands...and the husbands to love their wives as they would their own body. A woman who is subject to her husband is willing to do as he says and work hard to please him. And a man who so loves his wife as himself would listen to what she says and work as hard as possible to please her...in any way, no matter the cost. It isn’t ‘I’m the man and I should do this, or I’m the woman and I should do this,’ but rather ‘the husband and the wife have come together to become one, and we should do this.’
But like we are finding out, the biblical concepts that should be easy to understand have taken the form of a distorted view. John Bristow (5) would use the example of when Nikita Kruschev told America "We will bury you," which chilled the hearts of his listeners thinking it a threat to their lives (as it was a foretelling of war and death). But his translator tried to explain afterwards was that he meant that communism would be the political system of the United States by the time the current generation had passed. In the midst of what was happening at the time (the cold war) we could see how people would have drawn this conclusion upon hearing those ominous words (‘we will bury you’). In part it might have been due to bad translation; but what happened was that people used their presuppositions to color Kruschev’s words. They saw a man of his time; who was a part of his country, and drew the connection with what they believed to be true (that Russia was evil and bent on world domination even if it meant the death of many, so Kruschev must be evil and bent on genocide to political domination). In the same way Paul is seen as such (a man of a sexist period of time who, like every man of the day, bent on degrading women and teaching that the female sex was inferior; this is what we believe about the people of the day; this is what we’ve been told, so it must be true...); undeniably wrong.
Eph 5: 24
"But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives {ought to be} to their husbands in everything."
The key word in this verse is ‘subject.’ In Greek the word is hupotassomai. It has been translated as subject, but this has made the passage unclear (in light of how our society views things). Just as sigao is a voluntary silence (used in Corinthians 14), hupotassomai is a voluntary subjection. To reiterate, hupotassomai is not saying that the husband is superior to the wife, but that the wife should willingly place herself at her husband’s disposition.
The next verse then goes on to tell husbands to love their wives. There are three words for love in Greek. They are eros, phileo, and agape. Eros is the love of passion and sexual desire (being why the Greeks called their womanizing god Eros). Phileo would be the way a person would love their friend or just a deep liking. Philadelphia gets it’s meaning from this word; The city (delphia) of brotherly love (Phila). And finally we come to the word that Paul uses in this text. Agape is a love that is less about feeling and more about attitude and action. Agape love is the love Jesus talks about when he says to love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10). Agape is a sacrificial love (that God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son...John 3:16). A husband that (agape) loved his wife in this way would not lord over her; he wouldn’t be her master. Paul wouldn’t have used it to describe how a man should relate to his wife if he wanted the husband to rule her. And so we find that through agape and hupotassomai husbands and wives are subject to each other equally.
Paul was not a man who condemned women and uplifted men. He, in fact, worked through this idealogy to protect the women who were being persecuted in their own homes. He was working to keep women from being victim to their husbands. Paul was brought up in a sexist society. He knew what was taught about a man’s place and a woman’s place in the home. He learned this and knew it was wrong. He saw the truth and preached it. He knew (as we should know) that a man should treat a woman as a woman should treat a man as he should treat a woman (and so on...and visa versa).
References
1. Herbert J. Muller, Freedom in the Ancient World (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 318-19.
2. John Calvin, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: I Corinthians (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960 [English translation]) 229-230.