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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Dead Horses: Headship
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
Having met Alan and having spent four days in Edinburgh once, I must say, Gordon, that your penultimate post is the most unintentionally funny thing I've read in weeks. As Alan says, you could not have come up with a better way to prove the difficulty of pulling something out of one cultural context and applying it to another.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
Hi Ruth,
well I don't know if it was funny, but it wasn't unintentional. He knew it was wrong, you knew it was wrong, I knew it was wrong. It would've been far more sensible for me to pay attention to what he actually said, not fart around with what he ought to be saying given what I supposedly know about his background.
If it's the wrong approach with Alan, then it's the wrong approach with Paul.
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Posts: 4392 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Dec 2004
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
If it's the wrong approach with Alan, then it's the wrong approach with Paul.
I would respectfully submit that the right approach with Paul is not to read the Holy Scriptures in isolation from the rest of what the Holy Spirit has taught the Church. If you look at all of Holy Tradition, and not just one isolated bit of it, the picture is much clearer.
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
If it's the wrong approach with Alan, then it's the wrong approach with Paul.
I would respectfully submit that the right approach with Paul is not to read the Holy Scriptures in isolation from the rest of what the Holy Spirit has taught the Church. If you look at all of Holy Tradition, and not just one isolated bit of it, the picture is much clearer.
Ah! Now that I agree with. Not in an unqualified or uncritical way, mind, as different bits of tradition will differ from each other. But if we adopted what you suggest with respect to the question under discussion, we would have some solid guidelines in place.
But so far what you've said about headship, Josephine, seems to be something I would say too. Maybe this proves your point.
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Latest on blog: those were the days...; throwing up; clerical abuse; biddulph on child care
Posts: 4392 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Dec 2004
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
Sorry, Levor, I hadn’t caught on that you were also arguing the Orthodox Plot position, so thanks for that clarification. That position has an internal coherence that I don’t usually find in the arguments of proponents of male headship.
quote:
I suppose as I hear egalitarian accounts of marriage it seems to me to be fully explained as a lifelong commitment of two friends to each other in a sexual relationship. I can't see anything else in the account that's not explained by that.
I don’t see it that way, because people in a marriage are responsible for each other in a way that friends are not. When friends start making vows before G-d and their community about the role they will play in each other’s lives, I might understand what you’re talking about (and yes, I do understand that all sorts of vows are made by ‘friends’ in church about how they are to relate to one another, but I think the corporate vow applies to corporate behavior in a way that isn’t analogous to individuals making individual vows).
A marriage vow is one of the few performative utterances (I think I’m remembering that term correctly, but maybe not): the very act of saying “I promise” performs an action and creates a new reality, which mirrors the order created by G-d’s speech in Genesis. It’s interesting to me that apart from Orthodox Jewish weddings (which are set up to protect the woman’s vulnerability; the ketubah specifies the man’s obligations towards his wife, although these days it often also includes a wife’s obligations to her husband) and Quaker weddings (which, IIRC, don’t require either party to speak since the mystical union of the two partners is beyond words and the union is sanctified by the witness of the community), all other Judeo-Christian weddings that I know of involve similar vows being made by both parties. Thus implying the responsibility of both parties to imitate G-d/Christ to the best of their abilities.
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But I think the price tag of egalitarianism is even higher than the way this will be used to justify people's sinfulness.
Can I ask you to clarify the price of egalitarianism? I’m afraid that we may have also reached an impasse here, since from where I’m standing the price of absolute male headship is far too high.
quote:
Then I suspect there is probably a sense in which you don't submit. Submission means more than just recognising that this person is right in this instance.
Thanks. I don’t think a perfect stranger has implied that I’m not properly submissive since the last time I got suspended from high school – certainly no one who is in a position of authority over me has suggested it. Most of the time I have people encouraging me to argue my ideas more fiercely. (Out of curiosity, how does one submit to someone who wants you to argue with them?)
Oh, and since you expressed concern about individualism in your earlier posts, I want to make it clear that when I argue for what I think is right, I’m not necessarily arguing for what I think is best for me. At work, I factor in how a particular action is likely to affect my boss, coworkers, and the students we serve. In my personal life, I think about how the decision is going to affect (at the very least) my close family and friends. I simply don’t think I would be fulfilling my obligation as a human being if I let someone in authority make a decision that is going to negatively impact my fellow human beings without proposing a better solution (assuming that I have one).
There’s exactly one “person” to whom I submit even when I think I’m right (and, frankly, I spend a lot of time arguing with G-d, even if I do always lose). If I’m going to have a sin on my conscience, it’s going to be because I misunderstood G-d’s will, not because I was following orders. (I blame the Quakers for taking my mother in when the people who didn’t think women should speak in church drove her out of the Presbyterian ministry – they’re trouble, those Quakers).
quote:
If that was all it was, then the Bible's call to submit to those in authority wouldn't be so difficult for us.
Apparently it’s difficult for you. I actually think it’s far easier to do as I’m told, then shrug and dismiss the consequences as being the responsibility of the person who told me what to do in the first place. It’s much more difficult for me to stand up for a position that I’ve worked out with much fear and trembling because the principle is more important than the risk involved.
All of which is to say: you’ve worked out your position based on your reading of Scripture and reference to your own life. So have I. And I don’t believe that we’re supposed to take Biblical evidence of hierarchical relationships to mean that we should actively strive to create them. They’re going to exist whether we want them to or not – we’re human, and until we all become clones raised in the exact same environment going through the same life events at the same times, someone is always going to smarter/stronger/more capable of dealing with a given situation. Anyone with any sense will give the authority to that person.
And I don’t believe that a man is always going to be more capable of giving love, and a woman more capable of receiving it. If someone is willing to lay down their life for me, not only should I be able to accept that gift, I should be willing to do the same, and they should be able to accept that gift. I don’t accept that I have less of a responsibility to love my spouse, just as I don’t accept that I have less of a responsibility to love and worship G-d.
Although, really, the more I think about it, the more I have absolutely no idea why I’m arguing this.
We have thousands of years worth of evidence that male headship can be damaging to women. I would like to see some evidence that eliminating the notion of male headship would be damaging to either women or men. If there is no evidence, then I say we should accept it for what it was – a useful model for a while, which eventually got put away with the rest of our childish things.
When Jesus comes back, he can always tell us that we were wrong, and G-d permitted it because of the hardness of our hearts, not because it’s the way G-d intended it. It’s not like it would be the first time humanity screwed up.
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
Posts: 2943 | From: The Wire | Registered: May 2004
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jlg
What is this place?
Why am I here?
# 98
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
I don't look for some kind of external verification of the idea first. I start with what the text seems to be saying and then see how that sheds light on what I see around me. I presume it is true and start looking for confirmation, rather than begin by comparing it to the evidence to see if it will stand or fall.
I'm sorry, but I can only see "...presum[ing] that it is true and ... looking for confirmation..." as pretty much the same as "...look[ing] for some kind of external verification...".
I do realize you are attempting to draw a subtle distinction, what with the talk of "how [it] sheds light" and all, but it still seems to me that the bottom line is you read something, look around at the world and also ponder your personal experience, and use your observations to decide if and how and whether what you read makes sense.
I honestly don't see how that differs from what all the rest of us are doing. Especially because I don't really see any other way to deal with scripture (or anything else we read or hear, for that matter), barring blind obedience to someone else or direct intervention from God on the level of Saul on the road to Damascus.
quote:
If gender was given to humanity for the purpose of marriage,...
OK, I've been slogging through this thread for the past couple of days, trying to get caught up with the discussion, but where did this come from?
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...then the question needs to start with marriage, and work back to gender, not vice versa....
Sorry, I don't buy it.
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...I see what is right and good about male headship by going with it by faith and then finding out what the good is, rather than by trying to work out the good first.
And I am totally mystified by how any of this follows from the preceding two statements anyway!
Posts: 17391 | From: Just a Town, New Hampshire, USA | Registered: May 2001
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
It’s interesting to me that apart from Orthodox Jewish weddings (which are set up to protect the woman’s vulnerability; the ketubah specifies the man’s obligations towards his wife, although these days it often also includes a wife’s obligations to her husband) and Quaker weddings (which, IIRC, don’t require either party to speak since the mystical union of the two partners is beyond words and the union is sanctified by the witness of the community), all other Judeo-Christian weddings that I know of involve similar vows being made by both parties.
FWIW, the Orthodox Christian wedding service contains no vows.
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
The fact that one can make use a whole approach to (intentionally?) come up with absurd conclusions doesn't mean it can't be used intelligently.
Your little trick was just a little too transparent.
Luigi
Posts: 752 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
The fact that one can make use a whole approach to (intentionally?) come up with absurd conclusions doesn't mean it can't be used intelligently.
Your little trick was just a little too transparent.
hi Luigi,
I assume you're addressing me? There was no trick intended; I wasn't at all imagining that anyone would take my cultural reconstruction seriously.
But the argument used in interpreting what Alan said was identical to the argument he'd used to advance his view of how to apply Paul. So you actually need to demonstrate why it is illegitimate to apply such a method to Alan's posts, while it is legitimate to apply it to Paul. You can't simply assert that it can be done without also substantiating your claim.
If anything, the difficulty of playing around with cultural reconstruction today should warn us not to use it as a determinative interpretive tool when reading things from 2000 years ago. It's a risky methodology to muck around with, and involves a great deal of uncontrolled second-guessing.
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Latest on blog: those were the days...; throwing up; clerical abuse; biddulph on child care
Posts: 4392 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Dec 2004
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Duo Seraphim*
Sea lawyer
# 3251
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Posted
I wondered when this would be trotted out. The reason why it is legitimate to interpret the Bible in light of the culture in which it was written is to act as a corrective lens.
Whether you like it or not, you bring your own cultural background and knowledge to the task of interpreting "what do these words mean". If you do not try to apply some sort of corrective in terms of what would those words have conveyed to an audience of St Paul's time, then you run the risk of drawing from them a meaning that was not intended.
Similarly as others have pointed out,in terms of his day St Paul and more importantly Jesus were advancing radically innovative ways of being and earning for women. I find it odd that such a radical message somehow becomes distorted into what appears to be a dogma of headship, simply by reason of the manner that you interpret the Bible. I also think you are trying to have your semantic cake and eat it too - to preserve the trappings of hierarchy, or gender based roles of headship while claiming that what you actually advocating is an egalitarian partnership in marriage. I also note that because you have denied any cultural basis for your intrepretation, much less that someone else may read those self-same words and draw a meaning from them that is essentially one where women must submit in a partnership that is not egalitarian because they are women.
The process of applying some sort of procees of correction for assumptions or perceptions to provide an objectively justifiable meaning in well known and legitimate. There is no obvious or principled reason why it cannt be equally wel applied to interpretation of the Bible. josephine above refers to Tradition in interpretation pf teh Bible - I would say that the accumulated wisdom Tradition represents must be applied in understanding what words in the Bible mean. Why it either my interpretation or yours somehow better than the minds of scholars of over 2000 odd years or so who have wrestled with that meaning too? (On the other hand neither it is necessarily worse.)
Levor - you have either not read what I said correctly or have applied your own assumptions to it. RuthW actually made the same point better than I did. I certainly was not arguing against Chalcedon. I freely accept Christ - fully God and fully man - as head. I do not extend that acceptance and submission to any human male, for they are not He.
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2^8, eight bits to a byte
Posts: 3967 | From: Sydney Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
If anything, the difficulty of playing around with cultural reconstruction today should warn us not to use it as a determinative interpretive tool when reading things from 2000 years ago. It's a risky methodology to muck around with, and involves a great deal of uncontrolled second-guessing.
Exactly. And, those who say "The Bible says that a man is the head of his wife" are doing that as much as those of us who say "that's what the words are, but they're not a Godly way for a man and woman to live by". We've seen it here on this thread where proponents of headship have redefined that word to mean something radically different from the plain meaning of the word - we've been told several times that headship doesn't mean the man gets to make all the big decisions, cast the deciding vote etc, nor that his wife needs to submit to and obey him. That is an example of taking a passage of Scripture from one cultural context and applying it in another, trying to take account of the cultural differences, the only difference between us being the position we end up at.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
It would've been far more sensible for me to pay attention to what he actually said, not fart around with what he ought to be saying given what I supposedly know about his background.
Pay attention to what Paul "actually said"? Because the Bible is so terribly plain and clear and requires no interpretation at all? I'll take reading in cultural context over that any day of the week.
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
quote:
Originally posted by Duo Seraphim:
I don't think either you or St Paul get very far with analogies between our relationship with Jesus and headship in marriage generally. Our relationship with Jesus is unique - no-one else is both fully God and fully man.
Yes Jesus is unique. But the thrust of the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures in the one person was not to make Christ into a 'third thing' - neither human nor God but a human-God.
If you are right, then we've just lost any ability to draw any ethical implications from the pattern of Jesus' life.
No one is arguing that Jesus is a "third thing," and I don't see why our relationship with Jesus being unique makes it impossible to draw ethical implications from the pattern of his life. It is because he is unique that we endeavor to pattern our lives after his.
And Levor, could you cut down the length of your posts? They're getting close to being undigestable.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
It would've been far more sensible for me to pay attention to what he actually said, not fart around with what he ought to be saying given what I supposedly know about his background.
So Gordon, could you please explain why, following this logic, you aren't a geocentrist (see my post here)?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Levor
Shipmate
# 5711
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Posted
Apologies to the posts on the first part of page 12 - this post is too long just in interacting with something of Eutychus' that hasn't been picked up, and responding to Alan. I'll try and get to some of the others sometime over the weekend. Then I'll have to cut back as College restarts.
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think it's hard for us (post)moderns to assimilate the impact of the Copernican revolution on the medieval mindset.
<Snip - cut out a good description of the impact of the Copernican revolution - an understanding of creation that came from culture on how we read the Bible>
I understand the concerns that have been voiced here that tampering with the "creational order" of man and woman (husband and wife?) is really tampering with the doctrine of God, but I can't help wondering whether the same proponents might have found themselves arguing for geocentrism a few centuries ago on the same grounds. Don't you think it's possible we come to a fresh christian understanding of the roles of men and women and how they are to reflect the fact that both are made in the image of God, while at the same time interacting with the changes in human understanding and culture in this area – and without endangering our doctrine of God?
Certainly it is always a live option. But that argument is now used to justify pretty well any departure from historic Christianity - in sexual ethics, relationships with other religions, Christology, possibility of miracles, even the existence of God. The question is whether it is true in this case.
And I don't think there was that much opposition to heliocentricism among mainstream theologians. There was by some but I think the Galileo incident has been a bit overblown because of its iconic nature.
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
No, I'm saying that when a Biblical passage exists within a particular cultural setting then the chances are you can't simply lift that passage out of that context and apply it directly in a different culture. Paul clearly saw that the headship of a man over his wife (or of men over women more generally) was appropriate for the Greek and Jewish cultures he was familiar with.
Except that the NT is quite relaxed about the whole cultural thing when it applies the Jewish OT to the Gentile Christian. Do you think you find a lot of examples of complex cultural hermeneutics in the NT?
Paul relates headship to creation, fall, image of God, and the relationship of Christ and the Church. This is more explicit theological grounding than he gives for most ethical instructions in his epistles, and certainly more than for government-citizen, master-slave, parent-child relationships. Are you going to say that it is difficult to apply all of these across cultures too? That it is difficult to apply the command 'do not lie to one another' because we don't live in an honour culture? Or do not murder because we live in a very different culture? Or forgive one another for the same reason? Maybe children honouring their parents is only appropriate to the Greek and Jewish cultures of the 1st century and, seeing our culture doesn't tend to, it's not appropriate to Christians now.
And, given the amount of explicit theological grounding, what is your evidence that suggests that Paul thinks he's only speaking about headship to a particular culture, and doesn't think that it applies to all believers?
quote:
As I pointed out a couple of pages back (or maybe it was another thread), despite accepting that model (which was the cultural norm) he was still happy to significantly reform it - hence he let women learn, and even have some level of authority in the church (we can leave the discussion of exactly how much authority for another time). To the first recipients of his letters "I permit women to learn in silence" was radically progressive, to us the "in silence" bit is offensively patriarchal and archaic. If we want to be true to Paul and the gospel message, is it better to be radically progressive in recognising the value of women in the church, or oppressively conservative by sticking with the point Paul left us at?
I've already indicated why I think this is a hopeless argument. Let me try and make my criticism more concrete with a couple of examples, taking a different tack from Gordo.
Paul came from a monotheist Jewish culture where there could only be one true God. Despite accepting that model (which was the cultural norm) he was still happy to significantly reform it, hence he included Jesus and the Spirit as somehow within the category of the divine. To the first recipients of his letters "Jesus is Lord" was radically progressive, to us the "those which are by nature are no gods" bit is offensively anti-polytheistic and archaic. If we want to be true to Paul and the gospel message, is it better to be radically progressive in recognising the deity of other gods, or oppressively conservative by sticking with the point Paul left us at?
Or again:
Paul came from a Jewish culture where there was a strong division between the human world and the animal world. Despite accepting that model (which was the cultural norm) he was still happy to significantly reform it, hence he included Gentiles - who were seen to be dogs (even by Jesus!)- as fellow heirs of salvation with Israelites. To the first recipients of his letters "fellow heirs of the promise" was radically progressive, to us the the exclusion of animals from the category of 'human' bit is offensively speciest and archaic. If we want to be true to Paul and the gospel message, is it better to be radically progressive in recognising the full humanity of the animal kingdom, or oppressively conservative by sticking with the point Paul left us at?
Both of these arguments have this same structure of "I can see a trajectory in the NT that finds its fulfilment in a modern world value and so the NT was trying to get to where we are, but couldn't get there at the time". They are all highly subjective, impossible to prove or disprove (which, like a conspiracy theory, makes them highly supect - how could your view be falsified Alan?), and can be used to make the Bible affirm almost anything with no chance of being shown to be wrong.
If my view of what the Bible is saying is wrong, then Weed's view that the Bible is misogynistic (in the way it affirms an inferiority of women) fits the facts better than this attempt to make the Bible a proto-feminist work.
Beyond that, let me put forward my other two problems with this argument at an ethical level.
1. The most it can prove is that some Christians are free today to work egalitarianly. Given that modern western society isn't monocultural, it is quite legitimate and right for some Christians to apply the NT teaching to the letter to their marriage and their church. The most you can argue for is your right to do something different.
2. If culture is such a non-ethical category then what does Christianity have to say to cultural features that seem to go against the ethical teaching in the Bible. Endorsement of mistresses in latino cultures, affairs in France, widow burning in India, footbinding in China, drunkenness in Australia?
Everything the Bible says about how people should behave was directed to a culture quite different from these. There is no teaching that is not expressed in a cultural form. And it is so very, very difficult to work out what it might say to another culture as you said:
quote:
No, I'm saying that when a Biblical passage exists within a particular cultural setting then the chances are you can't simply lift that passage out of that context and apply it directly in a different culture.
So that's it. There is no part of the Bible that can directly apply to anyone who isn't living in the Mediterranean in the first century. It all exists in a cultural setting, so none of it can apply directly.
I think the Bible is rendered effectively silent by this whole approach.
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Starting "with what the text seems to be saying" is good, but that "seems" is important. When you compare that text, or the apparent interpretation of it, and start looking for supporting evidence, what do you do when the supporting evidence turns out to be very weak? Do you not reject the apparent interpretation for an alternative that fits the other data better?
It raises questions for me, but doesn't give me answers. I start to ask why I don't see a good fit from the text to daily reality. I look for reasons - one of which may be that I've understood the text wrongly. But I only change my view of the text when I'm convinced that the text is saying something different.
quote:
quote:
Instead, having tried it in our marriage, we've found it has worked very well. Could egalitarianism have worked as well? Don't know. But we've found the principle has worked.
Well, I'm glad it works for your marriage. But it's a big leap from saying it works in one marriage, or even most marriages, to saying that that's the way it has to be.
Which is why I didn't say that. I don't think there's any way that can be fairly construed from what I said.
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
There are three strands of evidence in the way the narrative works in Genesis 2-3.
1. The man is created first and the woman is created from the man, (and Paul points out, the woman is created for the man not vice versa). Man is the source of woman - a derived equality as Divine Outlaw Dwarf has suggested on the Father-Son side of the issue.
2. The man names the animals and the woman. Naming in the Bible does have an authority component to it - which is one of the reasons why the theme of God's name is so important.
3. When the temptation account is given in chapter three there is an order of animal --> woman --> man. When the judgement account is given there is an order of God --> man --> woman --> animal. It suggests a certain kind of order is built into things and sin disrupts that, like it seeks to overturn all of God's order and destroy all of God's creation and so return things back to being 'formless and void'.
In my response (here) I'd pointed out that 1) requires a chronolgy which is different in Genesis 2 from Genesis 1, 2) also requires an assessment of the differences
between Genesis 1 (where both men and women are given authority) and Genesis 2 (where it is just the man who does the naming, which I agree is an exercising of authority) and 3) relates to the Fall rather than the original creation.
What areas of response to these three strands still leaves the Biblical case for headship based on Genesis 2 on a sure basis?
OK. I'll restate the arguments as I think they currently stand.
1. I've raised two arguments against your counter arguments from the differently chronology of chapters 1 & 2 and from the fact that the woman is created after the animals:
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
The chronological argument only seems to work within things of the same kind. There's no suggestion in Scripture that an old animal takes some kind of primacy over a young human. The chronology principle only seems to work within a category - not between them. Hence the arguments to Jesus' deity: he is taking a priority that breaks the chronology principle so he must be of a different category. I think the same applies in the two Genesis accounts.
And just because there are two chronologies doesn't mean that either or both are irrelevant. Genesis 1 seems to focus on creation more in its relationship to God. Genesis 2 seems to be more interested in what it means to be human and humanity's relationshp with creation and God. In this light, I think the chronologies function the way I've suggested.
I don't think you've addressed these counter-arguments.
2. The man doing the naming in chapter two has to be reconciled with chapter one where both are given authority. My argument above:
quote:
Genesis 1 seems to focus on creation more in its relationship to God. Genesis 2 seems to be more interested in what it means to be human and humanity's relationshp with creation and God. In this light, I think the chronologies function the way I've suggested.
Does a certain amount of work here.
To this I will now add: if we agree that both are given authority over the world in chapter one, and chapter two has the man exercising a certain kind of authority over the woman in chapter two, then I would suggest that that seems to fit fairly well with the kind of non-egalitarian position argued. Both are equals, and there is a sense in which the man has authority over the woman.
How do you reconcile it with egalitarianism without saying that chapter one overrules chapter two?
3. That the order of God-->man-->woman-->animal only applies to the Fall, not creation, I've said:
quote:
I'd suggest that in chapter one we start with everything being formless and void (no order, and empty), with a picture of chaotic water as the basic reality. The first three days creates order by separating things out, the next three days those basic categories established in the first three days are then filled with life.
formless and void vs order and fullness
Part of sin is found in the way it overturns both - it is an anti-creation (death) force. And so the Flood returns everything back to the primordial water, with everything obliterated under water, and all life ended.
Similarly, the order we see in the temptation narrative in chapter 3 is the unravelling of the order we see in chapter 2. The judgment oracles reimpose that order in a more harsh (for want of a better word) and cursed form. The order doesn't start in chapter 3, it starts in chapter 2.
And again, I'm not sure I've seen a reply to this argument.
Finally, whether or not the passage is hard to understand, there is virtually no-one who seriously contests that Paul is grounding his ethics in 1 Tim 2 in an appeal to creation order. That bit is clear. So the Bible does appeal to creation for the position.
Again, I don't think you've responded to this, except to reassert that the passage in which the appeal occurs is unclear.
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in Christ,
Levor
Posts: 276 | From: Sydney | Registered: Apr 2004
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
the NT is quite relaxed about the whole cultural thing when it applies the Jewish OT to the Gentile Christian. Do you think you find a lot of examples of complex cultural hermeneutics in the NT?
Actually, there is. It's a bit tangential to this discussion, but Paul in many of his letters takes a good deal of time putting Jewish theological ideas into terms that his Greek readers would understand - for example concepts such as adoption and inheritance are much more Greco-Roman than Jewish. Contrast that with the letter to the Hebrews where similar ideas are expressed to a Jewish audience using Jewish cultural ideas of priesthood and sacrifice.
quote:
Everything the Bible says about how people should behave was directed to a culture quite different from these. There is no teaching that is not expressed in a cultural form.
<snip>
It all exists in a cultural setting, so none of it can apply directly.
Well, you are right. The Bible is a written document in Greek, Hebrew and a small bit of Aramaic. Language is a cultural artifact. That you need to interpret every single verse of Scripture is what makes Bible study an exciting prospect. A Bible that is a culturally-independant instruction manual (even if such a thing could be produced) would be a dead document, bereft of the life of the Bible that we have.
But, that doesn't mean that every verse of Scripture is equally culture bound. In matters of ethics and morality there are some fairly culture independant texts to start from; "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbour as yourself", "Love does no harm to its neighbour" etc. Irrespective of culture, murder and theft harm others. What harm is done to others if I'm not the head of my wife? Or, indeed, if someone falsely exercises headship does that harm the woman in a relationship?
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Having met Alan and having spent four days in Edinburgh once, I must say, Gordon, that your penultimate post is the most unintentionally funny thing I've read in weeks.
Hold the front page! It's true! Americans really don't have a sense of irony!
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Levor
Shipmate
# 5711
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Posted
The commands to love are located within a culture like every other command. So they can't apply directly either...
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in Christ,
Levor
Posts: 276 | From: Sydney | Registered: Apr 2004
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
If anything, the difficulty of playing around with cultural reconstruction today should warn us not to use it as a determinative interpretive tool when reading things from 2000 years ago. It's a risky methodology to muck around with, and involves a great deal of uncontrolled second-guessing.
Probably more in the field of sexual ethics and family relationships than any other.
We actually know almost nothing about how families and marriages worked in Jesus's & Saul's culture. When I say "we" I mean the churches collectively nowadays - things you'd read in Bible commentaries, or hear in sermons, or be taught by a priest - and I mean quite serious scholarly stuff sometimes.
Even worse, people think they know what went on, but are using a sort of synthetic cobbled-together knowledge that is quite likely false.
What we think we know tends to be a mixture of:
- the OT's account of the lives of the patriarchs, and the OT laws - a culture in many ways as far removed from those of 1st century Syria as ours is.
- sentimentalist 19th & early 20th-century orientalist accounts often loosely based on the lives of modern Palestianians (or even Beduin). I inwardly cringe when I read or hear a paragraph starting with the words "In the ancient East..."
- knowledge of marriage and family in Greece or Rome. The main problem with this being that about half of everythign we know anbount ancient Greek marriage comeds from books written by and for Athenians citizens three to five centuries before Christ - a strange people in a unique situation. It is as if we were to assume that 21st-century Germans had the lifestyle of 18th-century Venetian aristocrats.
- Current Orthodox Jewish laws and practices. It is probably a better clue than the other three - after all it is historically derived, more or less from Pharisaic Judaism (as of course was Christianity) - but the laws they have now were mostly codified a few centuries after NT times & in very different circumstances
So basing our interpretation of what the NT mean by headship, or anything else about marriage on how we think marriages worked in thsoe days is more or less making our reading hostages to the intellectual fashions of a few generations ago.
OK there is, I'm sure, a lot of good work being done by archaeologists and historians. But not a lot of it gets into our popular view of how men and women met, married, or lived together in those times. (Which isn't really surprising since the popular view of how we met and married and mated in our own culture's recent past is almost entirely wrong)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
OK. I'll restate the arguments as I think they currently stand.
1. I've raised two arguments against your counter arguments from the differently chronology of chapters 1 & 2 and from the fact that the woman is created after the animals:
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
The chronological argument only seems to work within things of the same kind. There's no suggestion in Scripture that an old animal takes some kind of primacy over a young human. The chronology principle only seems to work within a category - not between them. Hence the arguments to Jesus' deity: he is taking a priority that breaks the chronology principle so he must be of a different category. I think the same applies in the two Genesis accounts.
And just because there are two chronologies doesn't mean that either or both are irrelevant. Genesis 1 seems to focus on creation more in its relationship to God. Genesis 2 seems to be more interested in what it means to be human and humanity's relationshp with creation and God. In this light, I think the chronologies function the way I've suggested.
I don't think you've addressed these counter-arguments.
I'll try and briefly address these counter-arguments.
Yes, clearly, the "chronology within kinds" works. There is an explicit statement in the Genesis accounts that humanity is given dominion over the rest of creation. I'm happy to accept that that supercedes any implied chronological order in the account.
As to your second point. If the first account describes the relationship between humanity and God, then it follows that before God men and women are equal, as there is nothing within Genesis 1 to even imply any inferiority. If God views all humans as equal, why then when we get to describing human relationships that suddenly men are dominant? It's smacks of "all people are equal, some are more equal than others" (too loosely paraphrase Orwell). It's that discontinuity between the two accounts that jars. In fact I'd go as far as offering this interpretation of the Genesis 2 account; in relation to this issue, it's main point is that humanity is a communal species, it isn't good for us to be alone, and that an inferior being isn't a suitable companion, it's only when the man is introduced to an equal that he finds the ideal companion ... perhaps his naming of her was a sign of human fallibility, that even at that point the shadow of the Fall was already upon him. But that's your point 2.
quote:
2. The man doing the naming in chapter two has to be reconciled with chapter one where both are given authority. My argument above:
quote:
Genesis 1 seems to focus on creation more in its relationship to God. Genesis 2 seems to be more interested in what it means to be human and humanity's relationshp with creation and God. In this light, I think the chronologies function the way I've suggested.
Does a certain amount of work here.
To this I will now add: if we agree that both are given authority over the world in chapter one, and chapter two has the man exercising a certain kind of authority over the woman in chapter two, then I would suggest that that seems to fit fairly well with the kind of non-egalitarian position argued. Both are equals, and there is a sense in which the man has authority over the woman.
How do you reconcile it with egalitarianism without saying that chapter one overrules chapter two?
By insisting that out of these two chapters you're going to take the naming incident as normative, are you not letting chapter two overrule chapter one?
I'm sorry, but my mind still rejects the statement "Both are equals, and there is a sense in which the man has authority over the woman." There is a deep logical inconsistency there; either that or our definitions of words like "equal" and "authority" are so radically different that we may as well be speaking different languages. To me, equality means that neither has authority over the other. It's compatible with mutual submission to each other, but not authority of one over the other.
quote:
3. That the order of God-->man-->woman-->animal only applies to the Fall, not creation,
<snip>
And again, I'm not sure I've seen a reply to this argument.
I've chopped out your argument here because I agree with it (or, rather those points I disagree aren't entirely relevant here). My point, which I've made on several occasions, is that an argument that applies to the Fall rather than Creation is worth squat in a Christian environment. Christ came to redeem us from sin, to rescue us from the effects of the Fall. If the "man is head of woman" is a result of the Fall then in our churches and families we need to be involved with Christ in reversing that to bring in his Kingdom of those who are redeemed from the effects of the Fall. To state that this is a situation that results from the Fall is, to my mind, a very good reason to say it's wrong and needs to be corrected.
quote:
Finally, whether or not the passage is hard to understand, there is virtually no-one who seriously contests that Paul is grounding his ethics in 1 Tim 2 in an appeal to creation order. That bit is clear. So the Bible does appeal to creation for the position.
Again, I don't think you've responded to this, except to reassert that the passage in which the appeal occurs is unclear.
My response has been that the passage Paul refers to (Genesis 2 and 3) isn't that firm a foundation in the first place (for the reasons I've outlined in my response to your 3 strands above). Paul appealing to a creation account that is open to interpretation, to make a point of ethics that isn't entirely clear in itself, is an interesting passage to look at and explore, but it's not a good sound basis for a doctrine that affects the lives of a large number of people.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by Levor:
quote:
Certainly it is always a live option. But that argument is now used to justify pretty well any departure from historic Christianity - in sexual ethics, relationships with other religions, Christology, possibility of miracles, even the existence of God. The question is whether it is true in this case.
One can equally argue that an insistence on male headship leads women to deduce that Christianity is a patriarchal construct and therefore should be abandoned. A great deal of the historic revolt against Christianity that began in the late seventeenth century arose out of the sense that Christianity had become oppresive and obscurantist and was merely the ideology (to use the term in its proper sense) by which political and clerical power was maintained. But I have yet to hear anyone argue that we should return to the political arrangements of Luther, Louis XIV or Metternich. As Cardinal Montalembert said of the French Revolution - You made the revolution against us, yet for us. The wrath of man is transformed by the grace of God.
The heterodoxy of feminist theologians, like the heterodoxy of Voltaire and Darwin, is doubtless to be regretted. But might not they be making their revolution against us, yet for us? And might not the wrath of woman be transformed by the grace of God?
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
The commands to love are located within a culture like every other command. So they can't apply directly either...
Now you're either just being silly, or not reading what I said. I said they're relatively free of cultural baggage. They are, infact, located within more than one culture - that of nomadic former slaves, repeated by prophets within Hebrew Kingdoms, again by Christ to post-Exilic Jews under foreign occupation and by NT authors to Greek readers. And, probably more so as well. That the same phrase, more or less, is found in so many cultural contexts highlights how culture independant it actually is.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
I've chopped out your argument here because I agree with it (or, rather those points I disagree aren't entirely relevant here). My point, which I've made on several occasions, is that an argument that applies to the Fall rather than Creation is worth squat in a Christian environment. Christ came to redeem us from sin, to rescue us from the effects of the Fall. If the "man is head of woman" is a result of the Fall then in our churches and families we need to be involved with Christ in reversing that to bring in his Kingdom of those who are redeemed from the effects of the Fall. To state that this is a situation that results from the Fall is, to my mind, a very good reason to say it's wrong and needs to be corrected.
Whilst I agree with you on the substantive issue this need not be the case, in this instance. Genesis tells us that clothing is a result of the Fall. Augustine argued that political power was instituted as a result of the Fall. The point is not that we should become naturists or anarchists but that such things are instituted to protect us from our fallen nature.
The question is, why headship should come under this category? Tertullian would doubtless have argued that as daughters of Eve women were so dangerous that they needed patriarchal authority to keep them under control. C.S. Lewis would have argued that hierarchy is a natural part of human existence and that whilst equality may be necessary in public life to defend us from our fallen instincts, in marriage we are most truly ourselves. I imagine that Levor and Gordon would be swift to disassociate themselves from Tertullian and, I fear, the divine right of husbands, if not checked, can cause as much trouble as the divine right of kings.
If headship is a mercy towards our fallen state, then why should it have been instituted? If headship is our natural condition as hierarchical beings then what safeguards are apt to protect hierarchy from turning into tyranny?
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Whilst I agree with you on the substantive issue this need not be the case, in this instance. Genesis tells us that clothing is a result of the Fall. Augustine argued that political power was instituted as a result of the Fall. The point is not that we should become naturists or anarchists but that such things are instituted to protect us from our fallen nature.
Good point. I hadn't considered that basis for something being the result of the Fall ans still being valid. Though, the examples you cite also have practical support irrespective of the doctrine of the Fall - clothing protects us from the elements (keeps us warm in cold climates, cool in hot, protection from sun and wind burn etc), and I'm not to sure whether political power protects us from our fallen nature or exposes us to a different set of problems associated with our fallen nature.
quote:
If headship is a mercy towards our fallen state, then why should it have been instituted? If headship is our natural condition as hierarchical beings then what safeguards are apt to protect hierarchy from turning into tyranny?
Hmmm ... is our natural condition to be hierarchical beings? I'd say we're first and foremost communal. I'd consider hierarchical structures to be antithetical to redeemed human nature. "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you".
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by Levor to saysay:
Then I suspect there is probably a sense in which you don't submit.
I think this encapsulates my misgivings with the headship standpoint as addressed here.
Suddenly it transpires that someone who questions your understanding is not submitting somewhere. To use another well-worn phrase, they "have a problem with authority". I have to say I feel that statement is arrogant, judgemental, and closed-minded – and I think these attitudes are equally if not more serious than anything you might be seeking to protect against by upholding your concept of headship.
quote:
originally posted by Levor: I'd be keen to hear from Shipmates wanting to run this argument as to whether their concern about headship at this point is just an expression of their wider concern about authority in general.
As has been posted here, we can't escape the reality of authority. I think my concern is not with authority per se, but with authoritarianism. I think a good case could be made for authority in the Bible being as much about empowerment as about commanding others' submission. I've discovered that large swathes of the church seem to get along pretty well without endless head-scratching about authority issues of this kind.
I'd also like to reiterate that I think there is a huge difference between any authority and sumission dynamic there may be in the Godhead (including Jesus, who even if he was a man I presume you believe to be sinless) and the dynamics of authority as exercised in fallen institutions and by fallen individuals.
To my mind the cocktail of a preoccupation on our part with authority issues, plus a rationale to justify our place on the up-side of an authority relationship by a direct appeal to an order set in place by God, is a recipe for abuse, and the quote at the beginning of this post is a perfect example of how it can begin.
[ 22. April 2005, 15:02: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've discovered that large swathes of the church seem to get along pretty well without endless head-scratching about authority issues of this kind.
Who are you talking about here? Thinking of the two largest Christian groupings near me - Anglicans and Roman Catholics, they are both, as denominations, having quite serious issues about the meaning of authority and who exercises it at this precise moment.
Authority issues may not be an issue in marriage for some parts of the church - but the meaning of authority and how it should be used is AFAICT a universal discussion in Christendom.
I must lay my cards on the table here - the argument that most threatens to shake my stand on this issue, is the fact that submission is it is practiced today IS probably miles away from what Paul's readers undertsood as submission. That's been a thinker for me.
But the other arguments - that the Bible doesn't teach it (which I think involves a quite odd hermeneutic) and that it inevtably leads to abuse (which is a "slippery slope" argument of the worst kind) I'm afraid don't impress me at all.
Anyway, I will continue to read with interest, but just at the moment, I'm not sure I'll have anything more productive to add - but I'm not ignoring the discussion. Just so you know. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Having met Alan and having spent four days in Edinburgh once, I must say, Gordon, that your penultimate post is the most unintentionally funny thing I've read in weeks.
Hold the front page! It's true! Americans really don't have a sense of irony!
Either that or you entirely missed my point. In any case, despite your winking smilie I must say I find this old canard rather tiresome.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Authority issues may not be an issue in marriage for some parts of the church - but the meaning of authority and how it should be used is AFAICT a universal discussion in Christendom.
Well, it was the marriage bit which I was thinking of. And I think a lot of the arguments about women's ministry in the historic denominations don't really hinge on the headship issue.
You qualify the argument that "it inevitably leads to abuse" as "a "slippery slope" argument of the worst kind".
I think the same criticism applies to the headship argument that "we mustn't tinker with this or we will be attacking the Trinity" (in the article already quoted, here, Grudem says that the nature of God himself is at stake in the debate, and decribes headship issues as "a focal point in a vast battle for God's glory").
In addition, I keep returning to the theme of abuse because it sometimes seems to me to be almost the only distinctive feature of headship as promulgated here. Every time someone tries to flag up a distinctive, advocates distance themselves from it. Ontological superiority? Of course not. Subordination? No, no no. An end to collective decision-making? By no means. Restricting women's opportunities for careers and roles of secular authority? You must be confusing us with some other guys.
In fact, I'm beginning to notice that it's a common trait of headship-favourable literature that it carries out very thorough exegesis but inevitably stops short of any practical application at all. While some may make "soft" applications which differ little from the lifestyles of their egalitarian counterparts, there is more than enough space left for much nastier (but perhaps more internally consistent) conclusions to be drawn (see my example at the end of this post).
[ 22. April 2005, 17:36: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
I take the lead in car-buying, as I'm the one who pays for them. I won't buy her something she hates or thinks is a bad idea, such as a Mustang, which I had way too much fun with when I leased one in 2003.
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
Although she has driven one, we shan't be buying a new Corvette, not just because it has a rather stiff clutch. We just think 400 horsepower's a bit much for the daily commute, don't you?
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
FWIW, the Orthodox Christian wedding service contains no vows.
Thanks for pointing that out. I suspected as much, given the coherence of the position, but I don't know any Orthodox Christians IRL and was too lazy to google for information - especially since I was pretty sure someone around here would tell me if I was wrong. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by jlg:
quote:
If gender was given to humanity for the purpose of marriage,...
OK, I've been slogging through this thread for the past couple of days, trying to get caught up with the discussion, but where did this come from?
It's obvious - Levor's actually Jewish .
quote:
God created the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, from one body. Marriage returns us to oneness. Men and women become complete through marriage. Judaism sees marriage as a fusion of the souls, a partnership for life.
Of course, I'm not sure how he reconciles that view with Paul's instruction that it's better to remain single and celibate, but if we're not capable of doing that, we should marry.
But I'm easily confused.
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
Posts: 2943 | From: The Wire | Registered: May 2004
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
In fact, I'm beginning to notice that it's a common trait of headship-favourable literature that it carries out very thorough exegesis but inevitably stops short of any practical application at all. While some may make "soft" applications which differ little from the lifestyles of their egalitarian counterparts, there is more than enough space left for much nastier (but perhaps more internally consistent) conclusions to be drawn (see my example at the end of this post).
I am not sure that is an entirely fair example you link to! As far as I could tell it was a somewhat jokey point being made that if the husband tried to thump the wife he would be thumped himself. Which actually, would be equally a potential consequence of the egalitarian position taken out of context — that is, to ensure that the right to violence went both ways.
Of course if you reef out the idea of headship from its biblical context you can bring in all sorts of nastier conclusions. I suppose in the same way that a radiator serves a useful purpose in an car engine, but could also be pulled out, carried up a tall building and dropped onto a passerby—thus leading hostile observers to conclude that radiators were a bad thing.
To pull the doctrine of headship out and link it to domestic violence would be an example of just such a process at work. Such a link could only be made by failing to notice that the rest of the Bible contained other doctrines, such as the sacrificial nature of leadership, that undercut such mis-application.
Generally speaking, I think that concrete rule-making (as opposed to illustration) based on a biblical doctrine is a risky business for anyone who believes in genuine grace, because of the great risk of legalism. For those who believe in grace, legalism is not just unwarranted but evil.
An example: I believe that Christians should be generous with their money, and could give you all sorts of examples of what this looks like. But I would resist strongly a statement like "And this means you should give away 10% of your gross income", because of the danger of legalism. I would especially resist it if I was speaking to an audience who were hostile to the idea of generosity and would seek to use the illustration as an opportunity to show how the rule could be abused.
A second example: The bible teaches that we are to love our neighbour. This can be illustrated in various ways, but there is a pharisaical desire to define rules tightly about what this actually means. As Jesus showed in the story of the Good Samaritan, the question is not unanswerable. But the answer mainly involves an exploding of rigid thinking about how the principle ought to be applied.
So applying this to the case of headship: almost every single illustration that I can think of which may rightly portray headship in one relationship could be taken and misapplied, turned into a wooden legalism, or shown to have exceptions.
Even the relatively innocuous illustration I used earlier of being more forthcoming in my advice to my wife about her possible career options (which I believe is one consequence of belief in headship in our relationship) could be read in a hostile way as "nothing more than egalitarianism dressed up with offensive rhetorical add-ons"" or in an even more hostile way as "you're really leaving the door open for husbands to instruct their wives to stay at home and pregnant" (thankfully no-one on this thread has offered the second option, BTW).
Defining and making rules about the specifics of a relationship is a difficult enough task when two people are trying to work it out in marriage; let alone trying to generalise their experience to the rest of humanity. Even to put it in terms of "making rules" is wrongheaded. Every illustration given will have its exceptions, and what is acceptable in one relationship will be unacceptable in another. It is not just a problem of applying the doctrine of headship, it is a problem in graciously trying to apply almost anything that Christians believe to a specific situation (outside the 10 Commandments, and even there ... well let's not get started).
saysay, the advocation of singleness by Paul is based on the New Testament idea that our real marriage is to Christ in heaven, and that this new creation relationship supercedes and fulfils the old creation idea of marriage.
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Latest on blog: those were the days...; throwing up; clerical abuse; biddulph on child care
Posts: 4392 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Dec 2004
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Levor
Shipmate
# 5711
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
The commands to love are located within a culture like every other command. So they can't apply directly either...
Now you're either just being silly, or not reading what I said. I said they're relatively free of cultural baggage. They are, in fact, located within more than one culture - that of nomadic former slaves, repeated by prophets within Hebrew Kingdoms, again by Christ to post-Exilic Jews under foreign occupation and by NT authors to Greek readers. And, probably more so as well. That the same phrase, more or less, is found in so many cultural contexts highlights how culture independant it actually is.
I think I have read you, and I'm not being silly. A non-egalitarian understanding of gender relationships is also located in more than one culture within the Bible as well. It is (as you observed) the cultural norm - of both the OT and NT. That the same idea is found in so many cultural contexts highlights how culture independent it actually is.
This issue we're discussing has all these properties of the love command that you've identified. It seems that you're arguing that in the case of headship that proves it's cultural. And that in the case of love that proves it's transcultural.
And your argument was that if something is located within a culture it can't be directed applied. It doesn't matter if the love command is located in multiple cultures. It still can't be directly applied, because each instance of it is located within a culture. That might just means that it works that way in most cultural cases (as you've suggested regarding headship) - but it's a big jump to go from a handful of examples in the Bible, or even to most cultures to say that the love command applies directly to all cultures.
You have no transcultural perspective to say that it applies directly. And, you said that if it was possible to create a transcultural manual it would be dead rather than living. Aren't you doing that by extracting the love command as a transcultural principle?
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
quote:
Then I suspect there is probably a sense in which you don't submit. Submission means more than just recognising that this person is right in this instance.
Thanks. I don’t think a perfect stranger has implied that I’m not properly submissive since the last time I got suspended from high school – certainly no one who is in a position of authority over me has suggested it.
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
originally posted by Levor to saysay:[qb]Then I suspect there is probably a sense in which you don't submit.
I think this encapsulates my misgivings with the headship standpoint as addressed here.
Suddenly it transpires that someone who questions your understanding is not submitting somewhere. To use another well-worn phrase, they "have a problem with authority". I have to say I feel that statement is arrogant, judgemental, and closed-minded – and I think these attitudes are equally if not more serious than anything you might be seeking to protect against by upholding your concept of headship.
Saysay, I apologise.
This is Purgatory, not Hell. So I thought you were arguing the idea and just using yourself as an example to give it a bit more life. Reading you that way, my comment was directed to the idea - not you. The "then you don't submit" while it was formally directed at you, was an attempt to address the topic in its substance, not an attempt to have a go at you.
I have no idea whether you personally submit or not (like pretty well everyone else on this board - and it doesn't interest me that much). What you then go on to say after what I've just quoted suggests that possibly there is just a misunderstanding as to what 'submit' means --> I don't see submission as not arguing for an idea.
I was trying to argue to what seemed to be the definition of 'submit' that you had given. Saying 'you' was intended just to preserve the literary device you had used.
I apologise that I came across as having a go at you personally. It wasn't my intent.
Eutychus, I'm probably being a bit jaundiced at the moment, but having you leap down my throat over a single line in one post feels like an example of being "arrogant, judgemental, and closed minded." Even if you read that one statement as being off, I don't think it's been the overall pattern of my posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that - I'd like to know.
You criticise me because (I presume, from what you've said) it looks as though I make a personal statement about Saysay when it looks as though she put her own actions up for comment. But then you link my action (at the end of your post) to my view on headship - it is an example of how we're prone to enter into abusive relationships (no matter how much we protest our innocence - which you then seem to imply in a later post has just a whif of bad faith about it). That suggests that you expect us to be abusive. By your own words "I think these attitudes are equally if not more serious than anything you might be seeking to protect against by upholding your concept of" egalitarianism. It looks arrogant, it looks judgemental, it looks close minded.
Is there any point my discussing this if you know that I'm going to be abusive just because I hold this position? Perhaps you could ask me if I've stopped beating my wife yet.
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in Christ,
Levor
Posts: 276 | From: Sydney | Registered: Apr 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
Hosting, before things get out of hand ...
Eutychus' saying that a statement of Levor's is "arrogant, judgemental and closed minded" is as close to ascribing those qualities to Levor as makes no difference, and Levor has escalated things by ascribing the same qualities to Eutychus, not bothering with the wording about a statement rather than a person. It seems to me that all of this is rooted in saysay's and Eutychus' reading Levor's use of the word "you" as being more personal than he intended.
So I'd like to remind the parties involved of the second half of the Ship's commandment #5 (don't be easily offended) as well as #3 (attack the issue, not the person).
End of hosting
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
In fact, I'm beginning to notice that it's a common trait of headship-favourable literature that it carries out very thorough exegesis but inevitably stops short of any practical application at all.
My wife and I have been married for over 36 years and here is something which has worked very well for us for over thirty of those years. If we cannot agree on a decision, we agree to park that decision for further thought. The reason for this is we have learned to respect that our disagreements are telling us something important. Namely that "winning" or "overruling" is likely to damage our relationship. So we don't do that, reckoming that our relationship is worth a good deal more than the decision on any issue.
In practice she often says "you choose" over some decisions and I say "you choose" over others. We tend to defer to one another in areas where the other's gifts or talents have been demonstrated to be more effective. To make deference a matter of gender seems daft to both of us and a denial of the range of different skills, experiences and talents we bring to the relationship.
I'm not sure whether it has been argued already - this is a long thread - but I find something contradictory between the exercise of headship in some gender-based hierarchical way (like the Chairman of the Board's casting vote) and the ancient biblical picture of a man and a woman becoming "one flesh". I wouldn't presume to generalise on the basis of our own very happy marriage - perhaps some relationships find the traditional view of headship works for them. It would never have worked for us.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Levor
Shipmate
# 5711
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Posted
Apologies, to RuthW and to Eutychus.
Given that Eutychus had made a point for his case out of my post, I couldn't just let it go. I thought I was sitting on the margins in the way I responded - I redrafted it several times.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll try and be more careful in responding next time something like this happens.
Eutychus, I apologise for what I said about you.
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in Christ,
Levor
Posts: 276 | From: Sydney | Registered: Apr 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
Levor, you were just that little bit over the line. I thought I'd step in before things had the chance to get ugly, as I do think this is all rooted in a misunderstanding. Thanks for the apology; it is much appreciated.
RuthW
Purgatory Host
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
No apology necessary, Levor (though I do appreciate it). I read your post pretty much as you intended it, although I couldn’t help having a little fun with it. As josephine noted earlier on this thread, there are a number of Christians who, without knowing the specifics of the situation, almost always advise Christian women that their problems come from their lack of submission. Since I have RL contact with some of them, sometimes I have trouble not reacting against that view. It probably doesn’t help that I’m not particularly clear on what, exactly, your idea of male headship entails. But apologies for my part in the minor fray.
Leprechaun, most of the slippery slope arguments I see being applied to the headship argument are being applied by people in favor of male headship – (caricature) “if we lose this point, we might as well admit that the trinity is false.”
And thank you, Gordon, I am well aware of that. I brought it up because it’s part of what’s making Levor’s position theologically incoherent for me.
We’re all, male and female, supposed to have Christ as our head. However, if we must marry, men retain Christ as their head while women take on a new head (their husband). This means that a woman is supposed to have two heads (which can be inferred from the advice proponents of male headship give to women whose husbands aren’t Christian/want to prevent them from participating in church activities), at which point all of the head/body metaphors tossed around in these debates break down. Or it means that, in choosing to get married, a woman is choosing to replace Christ’s headship with her husband’s – which is a reading that might be supported if you take that guy in the New Testament who warned that you can’t serve two masters seriously.
What I find disturbing about the second option is that it implies that men can be less than ideal and yet still attain salvation through Christ, while women have yet another intermediary person placed between them and G-d. Levor’s argument of natural order from Genesis only works if Jesus failed to atone for original sin, and if that’s the case, then we are in fact still bound by the Old Testament law. If, in Christ, there is no male or female, then there is no male headship, although I understand why Paul allowed for it given the cultural conditions in which he lived.
I’m not discarding the idea because there’s the potential for abuse. I’m discarding it because I can’t get it to make any sense. Of course, given that everyone except the Orthodox seems to have discarded the idea that husbands have a responsibility to love their wives in a way that is not shared by their wives, I’d argue that the potential for abuse is much higher now than it was when Paul was writing.
Most proponents of male headship argue that there are immutable differences between the sexes, and they also argue that women are more vulnerable in the world at large than men are (men are called to protect their wives, and wives called to serve their husbands). If I take that to be true, then setting up a relationship between men and women in which women are also more vulnerable in their homes – because it is their responsibility to submit to their husbands – is moronic. I have trouble believing that Paul would have argued for it had he known that that would be a consequence.
I’d rather live under Old Testament law, in which my husband has more responsibilities towards me and G-d than be told that we have equal responsibilities towards G-d, but that I have more responsibilities towards him.
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
Posts: 2943 | From: The Wire | Registered: May 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Saysay, your position seems to not just undo male headship in marriage, but any and all leadership or hierarchy whatsoever. It seems a high price to pay.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
It seems to me that all of this is rooted in saysay's and Eutychus' reading Levor's use of the word "you" as being more personal than he intended.
Levor, I accept both your explanation and your apology.
I certainly did read the original "you" as personal, and it did push all the wrong buttons for me. Sorry about my rather virulent reaction to this.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
Leprechaun, most of the slippery slope arguments I see being applied to the headship argument are being applied by people in favor of male headship – (caricature) “if we lose this point, we might as well admit that the trinity is false.”
Well, I don't see anyone saying it as bluntly as that. But I don't think that is a slippery slope argument, or at least if it is it's a pretty well justfied one.
The trinity issue seems to be that non-headship advocates do seem to be saying that there cannot be a non-hierachical relationship where submission is involved.
Now either they deal with the trinity by saying "it's different because Jesus was sinless" which is an argument I can accept but not agree with or they say "Jesus doesn't really submit to God OR Jesus is in a hierarchical relationship with God". The links to Kevin Giles' work have shown that discussion of this issue HAVE led at least one fairly infleuntial evangelical scholar to at least re-express (if not re-assess) traditional views of the Trinity.
By contrast, the sliipery slope argument about abuse has failed to adduce any evidence at all that abuse is more likely in communities where male headship is taught than it is in society at large.
Anyway, I did just want to step back and think about this for a while, but as 2 people had said the same thing to me I thought I'd better respond.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
Is there any point my discussing this if you know that I'm going to be abusive just because I hold this position? Perhaps you could ask me if I've stopped beating my wife yet.
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon:
As far as I could tell it was a somewhat jokey point being made that if the husband tried to thump the wife he would be thumped himself...
To pull the doctrine of headship out and link it to domestic violence would be an example of just such a process at work.
I think I've made this point before, but I think it's so important that I'll make it again. Eutychus has been talking about the abuse resulting from the teaching on headship as he has seen it.
Levor and Gordon, above are examples showing that you have taken the term abuse to mean physical violence perpetrated by a husband on his wife. (I think Leprechaun has understood it in the same way but it's a little less clear in his posts.)
I hope Eutychus will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's talking about physical violence.
In my personal experience, my husband has never been violent with me, but I most certainly have been the victim of the kind of abuse I think he's talking about. You can see my earlier posts for examples of this, but to sum up in general I have been made to feel a lesser human being than men in general. I think it would be fair to say that there is a basic lack of respect there. In contexts where this doctrine is not taught, including secular professional ones, I have never had this problem.
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
In contexts where this doctrine is not taught, including secular professional ones, I have never had this problem.
This is interesting, and dare I say it you are lucky in this respect. Most of the inclusion literature I read at the moment says that the problem of sex discrimination in the workplace is still a huge problem. Nearly every woman I have worked with in the recent past has expressed they have suffered from it at one point or another in their working life. Not from me I should add. At least that's not why they were telling me.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
Lep you stagger me sometimes - you are arguing that we should discriminate between the two sexes in terms of their role in the home? You also as far as I understand it, believe in hierarchy in the home. So why are these bad when they occur in the workplace work?
Also much of this thread has avoided the whole women are more easily deceived than men as shown in the fall:
11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
It seems to me that whoever wrote Timothy did have a more negative view of women than men. If women are more prone to deception as is implied here, then it isn’t loving for them to get their own way, they should submit to those who are less easily deceived. They should be protected from their own weaknesses. The problem I have isn’t so much with interpreting the passage as some are doing here to argue for a largely hollow concept. The problem I have is with the original passage.
I actually don't believe in a literal fall, and therefore to use the fall to make this point is ignorant or naive in my view.
I am curious how those I largely agree with, (Eutcycus, Seeker963, and Alan) deal with this as I think the thrust of this passage shouldn't be explained away, I think we can come to the conclusion that the writer was wrong.
I don't think this is entirely tangential, but I've often wondered how Alan accepts a largely evangelical view of scripture and accepts evolution. Don't get me wrong, I think the evidence strongly suggests that we evolved - but I don't think reading Genesis metaphorically resolves all the tensions that subsequently emerge. And Timothy does exemplify this issue.
Why are so many unwilling to ‘go against the text’?
Luigi
[ 24. April 2005, 16:49: Message edited by: Luigi ]
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Lep you stagger me sometimes - you are arguing that we should discriminate between the two sexes in terms of their role in the home? You also as far as I understand it, believe in hierarchy in the home. So why are these bad when they occur in the workplace work?
2 things on this - I am in a rush.
1) I do believe Christian men and women have responsibilites to model the order of creation and Christ and the church in the home and the church. Of course I don't expect people who aren't Christians to show these principles in the workplace - that would be putting the cart before the horse.
2) Second - the discrimination I referred to was much more in the form of sexist comments, lewd jokes, pressure into inappropriate relationships and stuff. That is, of course, inappropriate in work and the church. And seems to me to be far more prevalent in the workplace than in any headship teaching church I have attended, despite the lip service paid to egalitarianism (largely) in the workplace.
So - no need to feel too staggered I hope.
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
Lep - you seem to be talking about sexual harassment not discrimination. They are very different. However, IME, sexual harassment is largely dished out by those who think that women should know their place. And that is, in their view, in some sort of submissive role. Not those who believe in equality.
On the other hand, the very thought that women can't be trusted to take the initiative in a marriage is a way of disenfranchising women, leaving them relatively powerless, relatively passive. But then that is clearly a good thing according to some on this thread.
After all it is the man's role to initiate in the marriage relationship. And presumably if the woman initiates, she is then not being submissive.
If you are right, then I am glad I wasn't born female.
Luigi
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
This is interesting, and dare I say it you are lucky in this respect. Most of the inclusion literature I read at the moment says that the problem of sex discrimination in the workplace is still a huge problem. Nearly every woman I have worked with in the recent past has expressed they have suffered from it at one point or another in their working life. Not from me I should add. At least that's not why they were telling me.
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi
Lep - you seem to be talking about sexual harassment not discrimination. They are very different. However, IME, sexual harassment is largely dished out by those who think that women should know their place. And that is, in their view, in some sort of submissive role. Not those who believe in equality.
Thank you, Luigi, for highlighting this difference. I was trying to think of a way to reply when you posted.
I can't remember having ever been the victim of sexual harassment in any context at all, but that does not invalidate everything I have said so far about the emotional abuse and oppression coming from people with a certain angle on headship teaching.
Luigi may be glad he wasn't born female, but where does that leave those of us who were?
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by Luigi
I am curious how those I largely agree with, (Eutcycus, Seeker963, and Alan) deal with this as I think the thrust of this passage [1 T 2:12-15] shouldn't be explained away, I think we can come to the conclusion that the writer was wrong.
Firstly, just to get it out of my system, I'd like to summarize the problems I have with the traditional interpretation of 1 T 2:9-15.
I've referred previously to the book Women in the Church which to my mind is an extremely thorough and rigourous examination of this passage, commended by evangelical heavyweights (all references in this post). I think it would be difficult to find a better defence of the traditional position on exegetical and hermeneutical grounds.
My reservations stem from the place this rigourous scholarship ends up. For instance, in a section on p191 entitled "summary reflections on a "progressive" hermeneutic" (the position they are rejecting) the authors assert:
quote:
[the fate of women] in "emancipated" America hardly argues for the biblical sanction of social developments that have brought their woes into being and promise to extend them for the next generation, if not longer. For the cycle will not be easy to break
and goes on to qualify the traditional role of wives (p193) as
quote:
the cross of subordination
In an attempt to explain the grounds for the traditional exegesis of this passage the chapter "a dialogue with scholarship" asserts (p145) that
quote:
Women are less prone than men to see the importance of doctrinal formulations, especially when it comes to the issue of identifying heresy and making a stand for the truth…
I cannot escape the implication of these quotes that the authors conclude from their exegesis that women's place is subordinate and in the home because that is where God made them to belong, and that given the opportunity they would seek to overturn 'un-biblical' social developments to return things to that state.
The headship proponents on this thread strenuoulsy deny that they reach similar conclusions, but to my mind they have so far failed to say what alternative conclusions they do reach and on what exegetical grounds.
To my mind this book at least has the courage to state its convictions openly. And they are very closely argued from their exegesis.
I find this exegesis has to be called into question because:
a) its logical conclusions are so out of synch with what I understand the overall message of the Bible to be
b) it creates (I do not say it inevitably leads to - for one thing, thank God, few of us apply our exegesis on any one subject 100%) conditions for abuse (as Gracie has pointed out, not necessarily physical) both by giving a divine right of superiority to males, and, by implication, the divine right to discount any objections by women on the basis of gender alone.
c) a lot of the proponents of the traditional exegesis refuse to be drawn on what they see to be the practical applications of this position. Their position is perhaps in danger, because if they have backed away from the sort of positions quoted above, they have already made cultural concessions – in which case their whole argument that these are to be avoided at all costs collapses.
Personally, I haven't got a settled understanding of 1 Tim 2 yet, but I think there are at least two ways of understanding it which go some way do doing justice to the text and which don't end up in the same place. Mindful of the exhortations to avoid over-long posts, I won't extend this one further, but hopefully develop what I've already summarized about these here in a subsequent post. In the mean time, I don't feel comfortable about laying down principles which affect so many of my fellow-humans on what I perceive to be shaky grounds.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
But my point, Eutychus, is that whilst I agree with where you are at, I can't shoehorn that particular Bible verse into saying something I want it to say. For me, I can't see how it can be done without being to some degree intellectually dishonest.
However as I don't believe in a literal fall, the plainest reading of the verse is nonsensical. The writer of Timothy was making all sorts of assumptions that are wrong, in my view.
I know that the Bible can be harmonised if we are determined enough - where there's a will there's a way. However, once I started to think of the Bible as a journey, one that isn't completed I no longer felt the need to agree with it all.
I really think your conclusions are right, but I can't see how the Timothy text can be made into an equal opportunities text without doing significant violence to the text.
On the other hand, you are right, there are other passages that would back up your POV. I just believe we have got to have good reasons for rejecting the basic premise of the Timothy text, rather than doing the intellectual ducking and diving required to get the text to say what we want it to say.
Of course I am not ruling out the possibility that you could come up with a way of reading the text that throws radically new light on this text and that doesn't smack of desperation. It is just I have heard it defended so often from people whose instincts I agree with and yet even though I want to be persuaded I have never found the circle has been squared.
Sometimes we should just accept - that there are circles in the Biblical text, and not squares that happen to look like circles.
Luigi
[ 24. April 2005, 21:34: Message edited by: Luigi ]
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Siena
Ship's Bluestocking
# 5574
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Posted
One question I've seen raised briefly, but not answered (unless I missed it) is what do the headship proponents advise a Christian wife married to a non-Christian husband (which is my situation) do for headship, if in fact it is the duty of the husband to provide spiritual leadership? All possible answers I can think of seem problematic:
1. Seek headship within the church community. However, if I go outside my marriage for something Scripture says should exist in my marriage, is this not problematic on several levels? Would I not be putting someone else in the place of my husband?
2. Do as a single woman, and only accept Christ as my head. The problem here, as I understand the current headship teaching, is that my marriage will somehow always be second-rate, and I will always be a disadvantaged wife, lacking the spiritual guidance of a husband.
3. Follow my husband's spiritual lead and abandon Christianity as an acknowledgement of his headship. The problems here are obvious.
Any other models suggested? I'm familiar with the "pray for his conversion" advice - I'm asking about practical application in the here and now.
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The lives of Christ's poor people are starved and stunted; their wages are low; their houses often bad and insanitary and their minds full of darkness and despair. These are the real disorders of the Church. Charles Marson
Posts: 709 | From: San Diego, California, USA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
I really think your conclusions are right, but I can't see how the Timothy text can be made into an equal opportunities text without doing significant violence to the text.
Here are two ways I see.
Option a) "let the women learn"
I could go into more detail on the verse-by-verse exegesis of this view, but I'm aiming for brevity. If anyone wants to call me on specific points then please do so.
This basically reads the relevant part of 1 Tim 2 thus:
"let the women learn (in all quietness and full submission). (I'm not permitting a woman to abusively dominate a man in teaching though). For Adam was formed first, then Eve… and it was the woman who was deceived [arguably, a justification for her learning better now]…"
I think this reading abides by evangelical standards of exegesis, although it does require some special pleading in places.
Option b) a handy illustration that should not be overblown
As I said, I'm not completely settled on how I understand this passage, but if I had to stand up and preach on it tomorrow, this is probably the way I'd go right now.
This interpretation reads Paul's "I do not" a little like his "I, not the Lord" in 1 Corinthans 7:12; he is expressing a personal option. This arguably carries less weight than what we see Jesus teaching, or what Paul claims he has received elsewhere as definitive revelation.
Paul explains his (perhaps temporary) practice of forbidding women from "teaching or having authority" – but bear in mind this is a hapax legomen, a unique phrase in the NT, which means its precise meaning is open to debate (see above for one interpretation).
To back up his practice, he makes an illustrative allusion to the events of creation and the fall. There is basic agreement with headship proponents here – as on the lack of exact logical sequence of thought in v13-14, which apparently nobody on any side of the argument can explain adequately (everyone has a preferred 'main point' and effectively places the other verses in brackets).
The point of difference is that headship proponents use this as a basis for a "creational order" (while they may argue this is implicit elsewhere, Lever admits that quote:
it is one of the few places where the rationale is stated explicitly
and does not state where else he thinks it's explicit).
I think it's possible to accept that Paul used a not particularly well-thought-out illustration, without going so far as to say that he was plain wrong (which is perhaps as extreme a reaction to this text as to say that he was setting down a Creational Order). One might compare Jude 8-9 for a similar allusion not without its difficulties.
Even my less extreme statement is probably enough to qualify me for some as no longer evangelical in my approach to Scripture, but let me add a little more food for thought from 1 Cor 11:7-9:
quote:
…the woman is the glory of man… woman (was created) for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head
ISTM that that by the same logic headship proponents apply to 1 Tim 2:12ff, they should be arguing for signs of authority on the heads of women or at least wives on the basis of this passage.
These verses make no allowances for cultural variations or dilutions to the effect that "the main thing, is that men and women are seen to be different" (a cultural concession if ever there was one). They are very specific indeed: the need for a "sign of authority" (please note, not some vague gender distinction) on the woman's head is directly linked to her place in creation.
So… headship proponents, why aren't you keen on wives having signs of authority on their heads?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
So… headship proponents, why aren't you keen on wives having signs of authority on their heads?
Haven't you read anything on this thread that's been said about headship not being about telling one's wife what to do? ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif) ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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