Ship of Fools: Dead Horses: Headship

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Thread: Dead Horses: Headship

Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

(I'm also awaiting your response to my claim that 1 Tim 2:12, on the reading these guys gives it, looks like pretty strong evidence for submission on the basis of inferiority (see here).)

What are you asking for Eutychus? An interpretation of this verse that allows it not to be about inferiority (which I'm sure you must have heard before)?

If you follow the links, you'll recall that Gordon Cheng was making a case for submission not necessarily implying inferiority, and calling for examples of this. I think it's difficult to read 1 Tim 2:12-14 (sorry, I didn't make the reference very clear initially) in the way headship proponents do, and not come away with the feeling that woman should be submitted because she is spiritually inferior (something I have heard some people actually claim in so many words). How do you read this passage?

Custard.:

Thanks for taking the time to look at 1 Cor 11:3. To my mind,

quote:
When "aner" is used in conjunction with "gunaikos", it tends to mean "husband"

is a plausible argument in favour of using "husband" and "wife" in this verse.

The difficulty I see with this interpretation is that it's hard to see how the relationship between husband and wife supports the context, I think we agree, is about differences between men in general and women in general.

This leads on to another difficulty to which you allude:

quote:
Originally posted by Custard.:
I can't find any verse in the NT where both words are used without the implication of marriage (except for possibly 1 Cor 11, which is what this discussion is about and 1 Tim 2:12, which would make me think that "husband" and "wife" would be the preferred translation there too).

I suspect that the reason "husband" and "wife" is not used in 1 Tim 2:12 by, for example, the translators of the ESV, is that to do so would undermine the Danvers argument that the differences between men and women in general (not husbands and wives) are grounded in a "Creational hierarchy": the immediate context of 1 Tim 2:13 is the lynchpin of this argument.

This suggests to me that on exegetical grounds, headshippers are attempting to have their cake in 1 Cor 11:3 and eat it in 1 Tim 2:12-13.

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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 | IP: Logged

Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:
Prior to Jesus, the message of salvation was - in effect - "Only Jews (converts included, but conversion required) can be saved".
Slightly off-topic but lots of the prophets talk of God redeeming the Gentiles. Especially Isaiah who rather seems to like the Egyptians and Persians.

Yep, I agree with you. There is quite a lot of that in the Old Testament. As I understand it, some Progressive Jews today even believe that it is the mission of the Jewish people to bring ethical monotheism to the world.

To me, it is A Good Thing that the message of the New Testament and the message of the Old Testament align. Given the continuity of the message that God's love is equally available to all and that God is not a respector of human status/"sociological fences", how would we read passages written in a male-dominated society that basically say "Look, your relationship with women is to be like Christ's relationship to the church"? The way I see it, the of headship as practiced by protestants in the 20th century doesn't come into it.

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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)

Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001 | IP: Logged

Esmeralda

Ship's token UK Mennonite
# 582

Posted

Our sermon last Sunday was on Mark 7:24-30 - the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman. Here we see Jesus being corrected on God's will by a Gentile woman, and submitting to her interpretation.

In what sense is Jesus exercising 'headship' here? And don't tell me 'he was only testing her faith' - that is eisegesis - reading into the text what your presuppositions make you want to see there.

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I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

http://reversedstandard.wordpress.com/

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Laura
General nuisance
# 10

Posted

Esmerelda: You're still focusing on headship as "not listening to women's ideas" or "thinking that women can't contradict a man", when what I hear Josephine saying is that what Jesus does with the Syro-phoenician woman is loving listening of the sort that a husband is supposed to do. And at least here, I haven't seen anyone say it means women can't correct men). As far as I can tell, the Orthodox (but not Dobson et al.) have genuinely written any superiority or power out of the "headship" equation. Why they still call it "headship" is perplexing, because as I think I noted earlier, it hardly seems like any headship we (and possibly Paul) would recognize, being rather more about mutual sacrificial love.

[ 13. April 2005, 14:33: Message edited by: Laura ]

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Such difficulties are one of the reasons I no longer subscribe to this view. I'm open to being convinced back again, but so far, it ain't happening.

Not aimed particularly at you Eutychus, but this does make me wonder what life is like for women whose husbands change their minds about headship, whether they give up on the idea or embrace it after having already gotten married. Marriage is a crapshoot, to be sure, as there's no way of knowing ahead of time how one's spouse will change, but it seems to me that change on this issue could be especially problematic.

Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Not aimed particularly at you Eutychus, but this does make me wonder what life is like for women whose husbands change their minds about headship, whether they give up on the idea or embrace it after having already gotten married.

I'll happily give my take on this (Mrs. E may have a different view!).

Yes, Mrs. E promised to obey in our wedding vows (she is constantly reminding me that I promised to cherish, and 20 years on I'm still not sure I've worked out what that means [Biased]

). The nature of what we've done with our lives has indeed meant that as things stand, her life is pretty well bound up with mine, to the extent that she sacrificed her career prospects, independent pension rights, and so on, to join me in what we both felt we were called to do.

On a day-to-day level, I would like to think our relationship has mostly been one of those "diet headship" ones where really most things get decided by mutual consent.

(I think Mrs. E holds that notwithstanding this, I still tend to think, like Custard, that my decision should prevail in the end...)

As a corollary, I think I do aim to carry the can for those decisions. As a practical example of this, in the company we've recently set up, Mrs E does as much work as me but because of the way we are set up (which was really a financial consideration at the time) it's my name on the bills and everything else. This means that if someone were to sue for malpractice, for instance, it's entirely my responsibility even if the mistake was hers, and I fully accept that.

This thread has sparked off a lot of discussion in the Euty couple. For my part, I think it's fair to say that even if I pride myself on being very egalitarian-minded, I keep stumbling across huge blind spots of prejudice in my worldview, which is a humbling experience.

I think we have a good marriage, we are certainly grateful for the relationship we have when it's so hard for so many. But as our children grow up and we consider what kind of relationships they might embark on, neither of us would recommend the sacrificing of independence which Mrs E has made for the sake of our marriage, and which I think grew out of our views of headship at the time.

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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 | IP: Logged

Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032

Posted

Being ummarried (and headless?) I've always been intrigued to see how different Christian couples, who believe in the headship of the man in the family, work it out.

For one couple it meant that the father decided which schools the kids went to; which church everyone attended; where holidays were spent (big expenditure of money, so therefore a decision for the head of the family); what kind of clothes the teenage daughter wore (because she was living under his roof).

For a couple who held the same Biblical belief in Paul's teaching it was so different. Anything to do with children - including schools - was the mother's decision (woman's work). Church concerns were also down to the mother because it was 'traditional' to follow the mother's denomination. And managing the finances, especially anything budgeted for the house was also her job, because the household was her domain and responsibility.

Yet, both couples believed absolutely that the father was the head of the household in a properly prescribed Biblical fashion.

Had the second husband sinfully abdicated his rightful headship over his family in allowing a woman to run the household and make such big decisions; or had he wisely delegated authority to his spouse? Or had he even recognized that she was better at those things than he was and simply had the common sense to let her get on with it?

Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002 | IP: Logged

Weed
Shipmate
# 4402

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Of course, this is where the inferiority monster rears it's head in the discussion, because ISTM some people here think that one cannot give up some of one's rights for the purpose of modelling something higher without acknowlegding or admitting some sort of inferiority. That, to me, seems to be much more a cultural assupmtion (of a supposedly "rights" based Western liberal democracy, in this case) than that of male headship at the time Paul was writing.

May I have another attempt at tackling this but this time from a different perspective?

One husband, one wife. Both well-brought up, educated, and who freely choose to implement the scriptures as understood by modern conservative evangelicals at the beginning of the 21st century. He will be the provider, protector, lover and he will make all the decisions in the modern manly way as described by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. She will submit to his authority, call him lord and master and dress demurely in a clearly feminine way so as not to bring disgrace upon him. They love each other dearly and would give their lives for each other.

As I've said before, that in itself is not a problem for me. If two adults choose to arrange their lives like that, fine. It's a marriage of equals in all but name. But what happens if every couple in society behave like that? What are the consequences in the culture?

First, men are going to begin to ask themselves why women who are already provided for by a husband should be given jobs when there are other husbands out of work. They will say this is greedy and unchristian. It's an argument I had constantly levelled at me in the early days of my working life when there was considerable unemployment and I was a married woman doing a job traditionally done by men.

If women accede to that argument from all the husbands, they won't go out to work, or they'll have a small part-time job for "pin money". This will be seen as good because it demonstrates that their husbands really are fulfilling their role as head of the household. But being out of work being a home-maker bringing up children also means that you can't get back into your intended career at the level you would have expected. Does it matter? Well no, unless you feel your brain has turned into wallpaper paste and you get a bit frustrated when the highlight of your day is bringing your husband his slippers every night. You still feel you're doing your Christian duty but in the dark watches of the night it occurs to you that you are now financially dependent on your husband and you couldn't leave him if you wanted to.

As far as the house they live in is concerned, if the husband is providing all the money and is the one who makes all the decisions about the property itself, there's not much point in putting it in joint names, in fact that would probably give the wrong impression altogether about whether they were truly following the headship principle, so having the house owned solely by the man is a demonstration to the world of his covenantal responsibility.

Then the men begin to say there's not much point in spending money educating women in the same way as we educate men. Everything she needs to know to live a Christian life she can learn from her husband. And her main function in God's creation is to be a wife and mother and she can learn that from the other women in the family. So men are given preference in public education and by the time the daughters of this family come to an age where they would have gone to college there are very few places for women, so they have to fall back on the only things they know how. They've been taught how to be feminine girls and that they will be fulfilling God's plan for them if they marry and have children, so education doesn't matter. That's for husbands.

And then men begin to wonder whether it's such a good idea for women to have the vote. After all, they'll vote as instructed by their husbands anyway, which is a duplication, and they haven't the education or experience of the world outside the home to make a rational, informed decision, so it's probably more in line with the doctrine of headship that they don't have the right to vote.

Fathers start to get a bit worried about what's going to happen to their adolescent daughters. They know they have to make sure their girls contract a good Christian marriage as their whole lives will depend on it, in which case it would be far more sensible for the father to arrange the marriage and for it to be a sound, rational decision of his rather than a flighty, emotional decision of hers. Better to put it on a proper commercial basis. Surely the most Christian thing is for one husband to hand over authority to another man who will take all the right decisions. As long as he's Christian and she submits to his authority everything will be fine.

Except it isn't fine. You have generations of uneducated women who are stuck with a husband they haven't chosen and who have no option but to obey him whether they want to or not because they have nowhere else to go. Why should the husband consult his wife on decisions? She doesn't know anything except how to run a house and look after children. He's responsible for her entire life and he's been given the function of running it for her. Any dissent on her part and it's his Christian duty to correct her, lovingly of course, as he corrects the children saying, as he slaps her around, that he is doing it for the sake of her immortal soul. If she complains, she is rejecting not just her husband but God himself.

Now you may accuse me of over-dramatising but all I've done is put history into reverse. In the world of the epistle-writers, very broadly, speaking, men in the eastern Mediterranean lands had the power of life or death over their wives and their slaves. Women couldn't own property except for personal possessions. If their husband died they would expect to have a guardian appointed for them who would quite often be a much younger male relative. Of course for the poor who had to eke out a living as best as they could, they weren't troubled by the laws on property and throughout history there are examples of men and women who both had to work in order to stay alive but they were still affected by the culture of the time in which it the woman was seen as a shadow of her husband by society.

Consider a woman who is passed as a chattel from a father to a husband, who is economically tied to him however he behaves, who can't leave without having to beg on the streets, who has no political status to change the culture, and tell me that isn't treating her as an inferior creature, of less worth than men in society. It's not the individual couple who work out headship in 2005 in such a way that it is loving equality in all but name who are worrying some on this thread. It's the cultural effect on society of this idea of headship. It's the fact that it has taken millennia for women (and men, because they've been strait-jacketed too) to be liberated from the old stereotypes and that some appear to want to put history in reverse without any idea of the possible consequences.

Those advocating headship seem to want to revert to a rose-tinted view of a small town, pre-1963 life that never actually existed. All the men are to be manly authority figures and all the women feminine and submissive. The children are quiet, well-behaved and obedient. Man has his little microcosm of the universe in which he is God and he may have only three or four subjects but when the crunch comes they do as he says, unquestioning, because that's how it is. It's stasis. No room for unrest or change or growth because that threatens to upset the order. It's good-mannered Christianity that's always under control. It has forgotten that great theme of the bible which is bringing people out of exile and setting people, whoever they are, free to be the best they can be for God.

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Weed

Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003 | IP: Logged

Levor
Shipmate
# 5711

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
There's a limit to how far even the most brilliant of thinkers can go and still have an audience listening to them. Even today visionaries for equal rights for homosexuals are painted as dangerous liberals by many parts of society. If Jesus or Paul had preached a message of equality for all in the way we'd like to see it today (ie: in more practical terms than generic platitudes about there being no differences for we are one in Christ) then they'd have lost almost all their followers (if not all of them) with them being decried as lunatics.

Are you suggesting that claiming to Greeks that there was to be a resurrection of the body would have been less outrageous? Or to Jews that God's plan was for his Messiah was to be hung on a tree?

I think this is a really long bow, Alan. When Jesus said that Moses permitted divorce because their hearts were hard (Matt 19:1-12) and then reasserted the original Genesis 2 intention for marriage I don't think he was simply indicating that culture had shifted enough to enable a 'no divorce' marriage to be intellectually entertainable. He was indicating a fundamental shift in ethics that was taking place as a result of his ministry. What Jesus did has opened up the way for God's people to be good in a way that wasn't possible before.

I don't think the Bible encourages the view that the NT is just another point along the way in humanity's growth in wisdom. There is something definitive about the ethical teaching of the NT because it is linked to the ministry of Christ Jesus.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Interestingly the Genesis accounts don't seem to imply any subservience in the relationship between Adam and Eve. At least, not until after the Fall where God imposes such a subservient role of the woman as a penalty for her sin - and I wouldn't want to define practice between Christians based on a penalty for sin that Christ has paid for us.

Actually, I think they do. 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'.

quote:
Originally posted by Emma.:
Inferiority - not allowed to do certain things that men are simply because of gender. thats inferiority.

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
That people have different roles in marriage is unexceptionable. To have those roles determined by sex is sexism.

This is what has encouraged the appeal to the Trinity. There is nothing inferior about the Son. He is as powerful, 'intelligent', knowing, wise etc. as the Father. Yet there is an order where the Son works from the Father and the actions of the Godhead have their source in the Father. It has nothing to do with 'ability' in that raw sense, for the Son is everything the Father is without being Father. It has to do with the nature of the relationship of the Father and the Son.

The Trinity gets pulled in precisely to bring clarity to these kind of absolute statements by Emma and RuthW. It shows that it isn't neccessarily the case that role has to be linked to being - it can be linked to personhood and so both sides in an authority relationship can be equal, even if the relationship has more to do with their personhood than their 'merit'.

quote:
Originally posted by Emma.:
My huge problem with it is that *in context* the passages would have been hugely liberating for women....He was suggesting those in authority actually had a responsibilty to those they are in authority over....In total, it is those teaching that women should have lesser roles than men in todays society that have missed the point of the passages and arent taking them seriously. IMHO.

This is a great point. And it is part of what bothers me about a lot of what I hear about headship at a popular level. It feels oppresive and authoratarian and so, while it reiterates the content of what was said, it doesn't feel as though it captures the impact of it.

The two points I'd say is that:
1. The same truth can have a very different impact in different contexts. I know people for whom the idea that salvation is by grace rather than merit is one of the most awful things they have ever heard - it is a standing rejection of the self-righteousness with which they have built their lives on. I know others for whom it is the most wonderful thing they've heard - for they've given up any hope that they can be right.

In an authoratarian culture the "bite" is going to be in the idea of the fundamental equality and the servant nature of the one with the authority.

In an egalitarian culture the "bite" is going to be in the idea of a fundamental "order" to relationships that isn't simply voluntary arrangements based on ideas of abstract "merit".

In other words, your argument presupposes that the NT was endorsing a particular kind of challenge (e.g. pro-women) that then has to reiterated in every context from then on. I suspect that the NT is instead articulating a certain kind of set of ordered relationships that are going to feel 'wrong' in different places in different cultures.

2. Often when something starts to be denied, only that part of the debate gets affirmed in response. So, when all the stress is on mutuality and marriage is seen as having no particular order to it except what the couple works out for themselves, then 'headship' is affirmed only in its authoratarian dimension - because it is felt that that is the bit under attack.

It is a tendency towards reductionism that I find problematic.

quote:
Originally posted by Rat:
I apologise in advance if this is a simplistic or stupid question.

If Paul gives us guidelines for managing the relationship between slaves and masters alongside guidelines for managing the relationship between husbands and wives, why do we not interperet that as indicating that we ought to keep (or be) slaves? Why is the lack of (legal) slavery in the UK not considered another sign of fallenness (as someone described uppity women)?

Or rather - even if we decide slavery is inappropriate for us, it's not compulsory after all any more than marriage! - by what authority would we assume the right to stop others from doing it?

If the social and political morality of slavery can be rethought without violating Paul, why can't the same rethinking apply to male\female relationships?

This is a great point, Rat. My quick answer would be:

1. Marriage is given in creation and slavery isn't. Slavery is never linked to our fundamental human nature in the same way that marriage is linked to our being male and female (and this is not an argument that married people are more human than single people). So slavery, like democracy, monarchy, meritocracies and the like, is far more able to introduced or removed. Marriage is a bit more 'built in' to what it means for the human race to continue.
2. No-one has to be married, so there is no problem with a certain kind of relationship not existing (either master-slave or husband-wife).
3. There are a few indications in the Bible of slavery not being the ideal. And so Christian practice, in the main, hasn't been strongly opposed to slavery per se but has tended to transform it from within (with some very bad exceptions where it has not done that) by affirming the brotherhood of the master with the slave and having slaves as church leaders. It has enabled the elimination of slavery, but hasn't required it.

As we're moving into a post-Christian world, I suspect we'll see slavery return sometime over the next century or two, so we may have to return to a closer lining up with the NT again. We will lost the moral framework that made the elimination of slavery possible.

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
Carys points out, rightly, that when people talk about headship, they immediately start talking about whether or not a woman has to submit to her husband, what that entails, and so on and so forth. But that's the wrong place to start.
<snip>

Headship is not about submissive wives. It is about loving husbands.

Josephine, and the other Orthodox people who have contributed to the thread so far, can I say how much I've loved the Orthodox presentation of headship.

I think it is starting in a much better place than talk about 'who calls the shots'. And it is putting the spotlight on about 90% of what has to be said - the 90% that often isn't said in this kind of debate.

My only quibble is the absolute negation "it is not about submissive wives". If it is about loving husbands, it may also be about submissive wives. Because in the Bible love and authority are often welded together and submission is the reception of both.

All authority is God's. And God is Father, is love. Christian authority is not raw power but loving responsibility and so submission is quite a different thing than being lorded over like 'among the Gentiles'. If being a 'leader' and being a slave is the same thing for Christians, after the model of Christ, then it has a radical different quality.

And if the stress on headship is on the husband loving the wife as Christ loved the church, then the parallel suggests some kind of authority being in the mix, doesn't it?

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in Christ,
Levor

Posts: 276 | From: Sydney | Registered: Apr 2004 | IP: Logged

sanc
Shipmate
# 6355

Posted

As marriage is a partnership it has to function from the decision of that partnership. And that decision should proceed out of love and not from coersion from the strong or dominant party. Some things can be mutually decided, some deffered for future judgement when heads are cooler. But for certain things where each party is thoroughly convinced about his or her decision and both are well fortified to maintain that decision, and it is imperative that the family should take a course of action, I think this is where Paul's admonishion on submission comes in.

I think submission like respect or courtesy should be given and not solicited. To me, Paul's appeal is one sided. It is addreessed to the women. Men are not at liberty to exact it from women. When women begin to assert their decisions on issues like what I have illustrated above where there is an impasse and men begin to impose their will quoting Paul, then both are totally wrong about their marriage partnership.

The family has to function as a unit to interact with the world. It is my opinion that the father should have the tie breaking vote so that this unit will function as a united whole and not a fractured one. It is unseemly for the family to offer two contradicting platforms to confront the world, especially when the argument is done in public.

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I am, therefore I think.

Posts: 358 | From: Philippines | Registered: May 2004 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
Headship is not about submissive wives. It is about loving husbands.

quote:
My only quibble is the absolute negation "it is not about submissive wives". If it is about loving husbands, it may also be about submissive wives. Because in the Bible love and authority are often welded together and submission is the reception of both.

I'll admit I may have overstated the negation, and here's why.

In Orthodoxy, our liturgies and services are not just things we do, they are also the means by which the Holy Spirit reveals to us what it is that we're doing, they tell us what it means. And so it's important to note, I think, what we do in the marriage service.

In the first part of the service, the betrothal, the priest takes the bride's ring, and blesses the groom with it, and places it on the groom's finger, betrothing the groom to the bride. Then the priest takes the groom's ring, and blesses the bride with it, and places the ring on the bride's finger, betrothing the bride to the groom. The bride and groom then exchange rings.

Then, when they are crowned, the groom is blessed with a crown, and the priest says "The servant of God, N., is crowned unto the handmaid of God, N." and then places the crown on his head. And likewise, the bride is blessed with a crown, and she is crowned unto her groom, and the crown is placed on her head. And then the priest exchanges the crowns three times. And the crowns are tied together with ribbons.

quote:
If being a 'leader' and being a slave is the same thing for Christians, after the model of Christ, then it has a radical different quality.

Exactly.

quote:
And if the stress on headship is on the husband loving the wife as Christ loved the church, then the parallel suggests some kind of authority being in the mix, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. But the authority, and the submission, have, as you note, a radically different quality from that which is normally understood by those words. So, as is so often the case in Orthodox theology, we find it necessary to say what we mean by saying what it is not before we can say what it is.

[ 14. April 2005, 04:45: Message edited by: josephine ]

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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 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

Sorry for the messed up code in the last post! [Help]

The new security upgrades are preventing popup windows from working at all, so I can't preview posts from this machine. If a kindly host can fix it, that would be wonderful. And if not, I'll just be embarrassed. [Hot and Hormonal]

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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 | IP: Logged

Levor
Shipmate
# 5711

Posted

Josephine, thank you for the extra insight. I think then that I would pretty well unreservedly sign off on what you're saying as what I think my understanding of Scripture is too. Can you see any differences in what I'm saying that you'd want me to rethink carefuly from your perspective?

I'm going away for a few days, so I'll add in my thoughts on the next couple of pages of the discussion now as my window is shrinking.

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
And would you like to respond to the view also posted earlier in which somemone gives the example of Miss Smith, acknowledged by an office manager 'who makes everything work round here and who I would be lost without', and who despite this verbal accolade is in actual fact treated as an inferior, 'subordinate' in every practical sense of the term? She may have an equal status in principle, but in practice she does not.

I don't think an employer-employee relationship is a good model to think about husband-wife relationships. The former is primarily focused on accomplishing tasks and the relationship is simply a means to that end. The latter is more to do with a relationship that is an end in itself (here I'm thinking of Josephine's point that there is a sense in which marriage is a path of salvation - salvation is worked out in marriage).

I think that the sort of language of the illustration is patronising and I don't engage in it myself. Miss Smith may be truly essential to the running of the place, she may have every legal and ontological property of the CEO, but she isn't his equal in that context. There is a genuine sense in which she is a subordinate and that should be acknowledged. My query would be whether that is the right model to think about household relationships - parent child, or husband wife.

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
But that takes us back to the ascripted authority bit. Blair's authority doesn't rest on the fact that he is white, male, straight or middle class (although being realistic none of them hurt)but because he has a mandate from the British people and is first Minister of HM Queen Elizabeth II.

What Weed is objecting to is an institutionalised ascripted role for people based on their gender. All societies have people in authority, even the church. Generally, however, in industrial society, that authority derives, at least ostensibly, from merit in some kind of form. If Tony Blair continues to have the same authority on May 6 this will be because he has persuaded a large part of the electorate that this is a desirable outcome.

However the next Archbishop of Sidney, we can predict with a high degree of certainty, will be male. As will the next Dean. As will, unless a miracle happens, the clergy in that diocese be. Now, like the Order of the Garter, this privileging of maleness as a necessary ground for wielding authority has no damn merit in it. It is arbitrary. We know that men are not intrinsically wiser, kinder, more holy, cleverer, better at liturgy, better at pastoral care etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.

So why male headship unless females are somehow ontologically inferior?

I think this reflects just how different our starting point has become from that of Scripture. I see the headship issue less as closely related to being CEO or elected head of state, and more like the relationship of parents and children.

Parents aren't necessarily wiser or smarter or more knowledgable than their adult children. And yet the Bible holds up a honour that the children owe their parents that is not reciprocated in the same way. I owe my father and mother honour in a way that they don't owe me. Even now, there is a way that they can disagree with me that is not there for me to do in how I indicate my disagreement with them. It has to do with something about what it means to be a in a parent-child relationship and it has little to do with merit.

I think this is a better starting analogy then the ones you are putting forward, Callan. Is there something about the nature of familial relationships that mean that children honour parents, irrespective of relative merits, and that husbands love wives (which includes an authority component) while wives receive that love (drawing on Josephine's posts again)? That is more where I think the question should start.

While you are getting off tangent with another swipe at Sydney [Smile]

one might then argue that as the Church is the household of God, then Church roles might then parallel family dynamics, rather than business or country ones.

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
3): The Godhead as an example of submission

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but after reading the Trinity and Subordinationism thread, it would appear, somewhat to my surprise, that even the most headship-favourable Shipmates are loth to draw a direct parallel between the submission of the Son to the Father and a wife's submission to her husband <snip>:

quote:
the point of contact as regards our image-hood means that we (humans) are fundamentally relational in nature, and that relationship is ultimate reality. That's about as far as I'd want to take it with confidence[/url]
Gordon goes on to suggest that 1 Cor 11:3 might go beyond this, but so far the consensus seems to be that the Trinity is just too far beyond our understanding to form a reliable basis on which to extrapolate anything very meaningful in terms of husband/wife relationships.

I think rather, most of us have been saying it isn't direct and has to be done very cautiously. I don't think Gordo's statement above is probably the best thing he's said in the debate so far - although that is what most people in Sydney tend to say, from what I've observed. I think the Trinity tells us more than just what Gordo has stopped at in that statement.

I think the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is simply incompatible with an egalitarian understanding of either:

leadership must be based on merit

or

submission is inferiority

Whether we can say more than that from the Trinity is tricky. (Although I might try a thought experiment at some stage to argue that the Trinity, in light of the eternal begetting, shows us that this isn't primarily a question about how gets to call the shots but more to do with whether giving is mutual or whether there is a giving which is received and then responded to.) But at least that can be said, I think.

quote:

In addition, don't we need to bear in mind that the Son and the Father are sinless, and we aren't? Submitting to someone perfect is a whole different deal to submitting to someone who's not – and surely that should suggest caution in using a trinity-based argument in favour of headship in marriage?

Well, only if it is argued that we submit in the same way. If it is simply used to argue that certain claims about 'submission' and 'authority' are inconsistent with our knowledge of God then that still leaves a fair bit of room to indicate what sort of submission is appropriate from one creature to another, and from one sinner to another.

quote:
4) Submission and equality

The headshipmates insist that submission does not compromise equality. Given that appeals to the Trinity seem to have been put on the back burner, doesn't that run into trouble right here:

quote:
Ephesians 5:24:
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Would it not follow in this case that the Church is equal to Christ?

No. Because it also doesn't compromise inequality either. I submit to God and I'm unequal to God. Animals are subject to me, and they are unequal to me.

It also doesn't necessarily apply to the relationship between Christ and the Church. This is where it gets into some very tricky (and potentially very fruitful) Christological questions about the relationships of the two nature and one person of Christ - the sorts of things that I suspect led to the Orthodox view of divinisation.

Christ is head over the church because of his humanity not his divinity (at least primarily). It is become we are united to him in his humanity that he is our head - otherwise the Father and Spirit would be head of the Church too. And Christ's humanity is exactly the same as ours. So Ephesians 5 doesn't necessarily indicate any inferiority of the Church to Christ as its primary reference. (Except that the statements are attributed to the person, not just the nature, so it gets complicated - and that may have to be qualified a bit).

quote:
2) What difference does headship make?

After having read the whole of this thread, I'm with those who say that I can see very little practical difference between the "egalitarians" and the "headshipmates" in terms of how their marriages work.

Partly that may be because when Matthew 20:25-28 is your model of leadership, it all looks very topsy-turvy anyway.

I think it does make a very profound difference - but you mightn't see it if you are primarily looking at who gets to overrule whose will in which circumstances. Josephine's posts have, I thought indicated a profoundly different view of marriage than an egalitarian one. Add a bit of explicit authority into the mix and I think the difference is quite significant.

quote:
1) What's the biblical evidence for this concept?

I think it's fairly safe to say we're mainly talking about Paul's writings in 1 Cor 11, Eph 5, and perhaps 1 Tim 2.

They are the more explicit passages that speak directly to the issue. But I think they are simply crystalising a lot of what is implicit throughout the OT and NT. The Bible sees the fact that 'male and female he created them' as quite foundational to what it means to be human, and teaching on human behaviour often has a gender dimension to it in both Testaments.

Moving to the exegetical points you raise:

quote:

...but what do you make of Paul suddenly going back on himself in the verses 11-12?

quote:
In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

I think Paul is indicating some very important qualifications to the point he's just established. It is similar to the arguments that Athanasius and others used to show how the Father's begettig of the Son is different from ours and so the homoousious is different from a creaturely one. The way in which the man is the source of the woman is, in very important ways, fundamentally different from the way in which the Father is the source of the Son. It is the source that befits a creature - with a dependence on the woman for existence in return, and with an ultimate dependence on God.

I fail to see how this undercuts his first point.

quote:
and then throwing appeals to eternal principles to the winds with an exasperated verse 13

quote:
Judge for yourselves

I think that sort of language is fairly common with Paul and in line with the Bible's tendency to persuade rather than simply require an unthinking submission. Seeing it as exasperated seems a bit unnecessarily 'hermeneutic of suspicion' to me. And to see it as a putting to one side of everything he's said so far also doesn't seem warranted.

quote:
before finishing with an almost sulky verse 16

quote:
If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice–nor do the churches of God.

Again, I'm not sure how this is sulky. It is only sulky if you think Paul wasn't committted to a principle of catholicity. If he saw these issues as related to key points of Christian affirmation (as at points you're suggesting he does) then the sort of conviction expressed in Eph 4:1-6 would lead to this sort of supporting argument.

quote:
Just to make things worse before I leave this passage, doesn't the argument specifically in favour of head coverings in verses 9-10

quote:
neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.
sound suspiciously like a "creational argument" of precisely the thought headshipmates think should not be discarded as merely "cultural"?

I think so. My issue is about the symbolic nature of clothing. Different types of dress indicate different things in different contexts. Head covering is hardly a visible expression of the point these days. If it was, then it might well be appropriate. If not, then maybe there is another way that the relationship can be seen to be in place.

The principle is transcultural, 'cause of its linking to symbolism it may be expressed quite differently.

quote:
To conclude: I was once a staunch Grudem/Piper man on these issues. The whole story of how I came to call that into question will have to wait, but suffice it to say that I now think that to attempt build such immutable principles on such difficult passages, given the attested historical abuse of such positions by men, and a whole load of other evidence, is surely the last kind of area in which we should presume to advance with dogmatism.

The problem for me with how you've outlined this is two fold.

Some passages are always difficult (baptism for the dead). Some passages seem to be difficult at particular times and places (like these ones are now). In the latter case it is often because of fundamental shifts in our cultural logic. In these cases I think we have to strive for a bold (and humble) reception of what the texts are saying - because either our cultural logic has put us in a much better position to understand them and the Christian tradition needs to be overhauled, or our cultural logic needs to radically overhauled. That is, this is a really important debate for our situation precisely because these passages have become difficult for us. And so we have to move towards boldness, not back away from it.

On the other side, it is part of the nature of humanity's sinfulness that we pervert every good gift God gives us. To show that something has been abused does not tell us whether there is truth there or not. It can go either way - either it's a sign of a fundamentally wrong idea, or it's a sign of an abused right idea. The same argument is used against the truth of the whole Christian faith - every generation has misused Christianity somewhere or other, does that mean that Christianity isn't true?

As I look at our predominantly egalitarian society I don't think we are necessarily doing that much better overall than we were beforehand. I much prefer now to what I see of 40+ years ago, but I don't think women are safer from violence, I don't think men and women are all that better at living happy (let alone godly) lives together.

And, if anything, I think our society now has less room for children than it did before these big changes came through. As Father Gregory has stated in his The Father and Feminism webpage, there is an anti-life element that seems to be connected to egalitarianism. So I think the argument from the real world cuts both ways.

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in Christ,
Levor

Posts: 276 | From: Sydney | Registered: Apr 2004 | IP: Logged

Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Levor:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
There's a limit to how far even the most brilliant of thinkers can go and still have an audience listening to them. Even today visionaries for equal rights for homosexuals are painted as dangerous liberals by many parts of society. If Jesus or Paul had preached a message of equality for all in the way we'd like to see it today (ie: in more practical terms than generic platitudes about there being no differences for we are one in Christ) then they'd have lost almost all their followers (if not all of them) with them being decried as lunatics.
Are you suggesting that claiming to Greeks that there was to be a resurrection of the body would have been less outrageous? Or to Jews that God's plan was for his Messiah was to be hung on a tree?

No, I think those were also outrageous claims. And, I'm sure that the Church lost many potential converts because they simply couldn't accept those claims. But, they're claims which are supported by evidence - Jesus was crucified, and did rise (or, at least, there's sufficient data to support the claim), and his disciples did experience renewal and a chance for a fresh start because of it. When Jesus and his followers started to treat women differently from others in that culture there was no corresponding event to point to and say "that happened, so this is OK".

quote:
I think this is a really long bow, Alan. When Jesus said that Moses permitted divorce because their hearts were hard (Matt 19:1-12) and then reasserted the original Genesis 2 intention for marriage I don't think he was simply indicating that culture had shifted enough to enable a 'no divorce' marriage to be intellectually entertainable. He was indicating a fundamental shift in ethics that was taking place as a result of his ministry. What Jesus did has opened up the way for God's people to be good in a way that wasn't possible before.

I largely agree (not about the low blow, which to me seems a perfectly reasonable approach to the Scriptures, but the rest of it). I think there was probably a similar shift in ethics in many areas not just divorce. Not least in the whole of inter-human relationships. There is something fundamentally different about a first century Rabbi who has long theological discussions with a woman (a Samaritan, and woman of questionable domestic relationships, at that) or encourages a woman to sit at his feet listening to his teaching even though there are important chores to be done. Yes, there is a fundamental shift here - a shift from women being mere property of their fathers or husbands to their being individual, valuable people in their own right. A shift so fundamental that it's taken the rest of society two millenia to catch up.

Was this a result of Jesus ministry? I believe so. Just as he "opened up the way for God's people to be good in a way that wasn't possible before", so he also opened up the way for God's people to view each other, and those outside the Church, in a renewed way, the way God sees us, the way he created us, as men and women both in his image, both equally valued and loved by him. "There is neither male nor female ... for we are all one in Christ".

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Interestingly the Genesis accounts don't seem to imply any subservience in the relationship between Adam and Eve. At least, not until after the Fall where God imposes such a subservient role of the woman as a penalty for her sin - and I wouldn't want to define practice between Christians based on a penalty for sin that Christ has paid for us.
Actually, I think they do. There are three strands of evidence in the way the narrative works in Genesis 2-3.

Strands that don't seem to appear in the Genesis 1 version, where we are told that God created humans, male and female, in his own image. Nothing there about anything different about men and women in the sight of God. But, nevertheless, lets have a look at your three strands ...

quote:
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.

Well, creation order doesn't seem all that relevant. After all, humanity is created last - does that mean we're inferior to the rest of creation that came first? Though, of course, you first need to reconcile Genesis 1 (humanity created last) with Genesis 2 (the man created first, then the animals, then woman). Taking Genesis 2 to its logical conclusion following your argument from order, women are inferior to the cattle of the field.

Or, there's a good argument that as men are born of women that women are the source of men - does that make them superior? Of course not. The argument simply doesn't work.

quote:
2. The man names the animals and the woman. Naming in the Bible does have an authority component to it

Yes, this argument has potential. Though, again, the Genesis 1 account simply has God giving humanity, male and female, authority over everything else. Unless you can satisfactorily reconcile the Genesis 1 and 2 accounts, any argument from one chapter will be very weak.

quote:
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.

Which is my original point, the suggestion of superiority of man over woman comes in with the account of the Fall. It relates to sin, not the original order.

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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 | IP: Logged

Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
Parents aren't necessarily wiser or smarter or more knowledgable than their adult children. And yet the Bible holds up a honour that the children owe their parents that is not reciprocated in the same way.

What does it mean to "honour your father and your mother"? I agree with you that it's a commandment about adult children and their parents, rather than the "little children obey your parents" that it is too commonly reduced to (though there is an element of that there too). But, does it really mean that as adults we can't ever disagree with our parents? Seeing as when his mum came to visit Jesus and tell him to come home and stop being a silly boy (my paraphrase of some Gospel passage or other) he wasn't inclined to just obey her I'd say adults obeying their children isn't the best interpretation of this passage. And, if it's not that simple for parent-child relationships then I'd hesitate to apply that to husband-wife.

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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 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
But, does it really mean that as adults we can't ever disagree with our parents?

Of course not.

quote:
Seeing as when his mum came to visit Jesus and tell him to come home and stop being a silly boy (my paraphrase of some Gospel passage or other) he wasn't inclined to just obey her I'd say adults obeying their children isn't the best interpretation of this passage. And, if it's not that simple f. or parent-child relationships then I'd hesitate to apply that to husband-wife.

You're right, absolutely. Neither honoring your parents nor respecting your husband is about unthinking, or unwilling, obedience. That's what I've been saying, and Levor, too, as far as I can tell. It's not that at all.

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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 | IP: Logged

ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
Neither honoring your parents nor respecting your husband is about unthinking, or unwilling, obedience.

Which is why "submission" is the wrong English word to use for those relationships.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002 | IP: Logged

Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
You're right, absolutely. Neither honoring your parents nor respecting your husband is about unthinking, or unwilling, obedience. That's what I've been saying, and Levor, too, as far as I can tell. It's not that at all.

I was well aware that you were syaing something different. The impression I got from what Levor posted was that children honouring parents and wives submitting to husbands were analogous, and that honouring parents involved not disagreeing or disobeying (which would, as ken noted, correspond to the normal english usage of the word "submit"). I don't actually agree that hnouring of parents means obedience to them or not disagreeing with them. And, I also think that parent-child and husband-wife relationships have sufficient differences that the analogy doesn't work anyway.

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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 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The impression I got from what Levor posted was that children honouring parents and wives submitting to husbands were analogous, and that honouring parents involved not disagreeing or disobeying

That's not how I read it at all. He said:

quote:
And yet the Bible holds up a honour that the children owe their parents that is not reciprocated in the same way. I owe my father and mother honour in a way that they don't owe me. Even now, there is a way that they can disagree with me that is not there for me to do in how I indicate my disagreement with them.

The italics are mine, not his -- it reads to me like he's saying that a grown child would express his disagreement with his parents in one way, and the parents would express their disagreement with their grown child in a different way. Not that the grown child is obliged not to disagree or disobey. Bill Gothard would say that -- but I don't think Levor did. I don't see that at all.

quote:
I don't actually agree that hnouring of parents means obedience to them or not disagreeing with them.

Nor do I. Nor, I think, does Levor. It's not there in what he said, as I read it, anyway.

As for the word submission not meaning, when we use it, what it ordinarily means in English, and the word head carrying unwanted connotations, I'll confess freely the truth of that complaint. I think in Greek, the word head is less problematic, because it's clearly "your head that's part of your body" and not "the top person in the organization" -- they have another word for head that means that.

There's also the point that, in Jewish thought, many of the things that we think of as proper to the physical head, to the brain, were properties of the body, the heart. From the Jewish Encyclopedia:

quote:
The three special functions, knowing, feeling, and willing, ascribed by modern psychologists to the mind, were attributed to the heart by the Biblical writers (comp. Assyrian "libbu" = "heart," in Delitzsch, "Assyrisches Handwörterb." p. 367). In the Book of Daniel intellectual functions are ascribed not to the head only (Dan. ii. 28; iv. 2, 7, 10 [A. V. 5, 10, 13]; vii. 1, 15), but also to the heart (ib. ii. 30).

So, putting the man as the head of his wife does not mean he's the one thinking for both of them. Given that Paul was Jewish, I think if you were to push that, you'd end up saying that the wife did the thinking for them both. But clearly, given what was meant by the heart, the head can't mean what some modern conservative evangelical Christians think it means.

Maybe we need a different word in modern English, but I think we're stuck with the word, since it's the one in Holy Scriptures. We just have to explain what we mean by it. And, as this discussion clearly shows, that isn't easy.

--------------------
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 | IP: Logged

Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

Posted

It wouldn't be the first time I've totally misread what someone has said. Apologies to Levor for reading something into his post that wasn't there.

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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 | IP: Logged

Leprechaun

Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
But clearly, given what was meant by the heart, the head can't mean what some modern conservative evangelical Christians think it means.

Who are these people, and what do they think it means? I went and looksed at James Dobson's site, and I searched for head and headship, and couldn't find it, and the only reference to submission (apart from "how do i submit my huge gift to this organisation"? [Roll Eyes]

) was with regard to parents and children.

Laura asserted earlier that what "Dobson et al" believe about headship is different from the Orthodox as Josephine described it. I'm not disputing it, but I would like to read for myself what they teach on the issue. Can anyone find me a summary? All I can find are people disagreeing with him.

Or Josephine, are you talking about Piper/Grudem who we discussed above?

[ 14. April 2005, 14:45: Message edited by: Leprechaun ]

Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004 | IP: Logged

Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Laura asserted earlier that what "Dobson et al" believe about headship is different from the Orthodox as Josephine described it. I'm not disputing it, but I would like to read for myself what they teach on the issue. Can anyone find me a summary? All I can find are people disagreeing with him.

Try, for example, this article (I know, it's part of a larger series of articles addressing some problems common in marriages rather than directly teaching about headship) in which Dobson writes

quote:
Hardly a day passes when the traditional values of the Judeo-Christian heritage are not blatantly mocked and undermined

and goes on to list some of those attacks on traditional values, such as

quote:
And the idea that wives should yield to the leadership of their husbands, as commanded in Ephesians 5:21-33 is considered almost medieval in its stupidity

(implying, it seems to me, that Dobson considers that wives "should yield to the leadership of their husbands, as commanded in Ephesians 5:21-33")

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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 | IP: Logged

Leprechaun

Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
implying, it seems to me, that Dobson considers that wives "should yield to the leadership of their husbands, as commanded in Ephesians 5:21-33")

Which, if you accept the definition of yield or submit that Jospehine and Levor have been furnishing us with, doesn't define his position as against theirs at all.

In fact later in the article he actually encourages wives to rebel against their husbands authority if they are not putting their wives interests first:

quote:
To the wives of all the world’s punkin eaters, I say, “Go to the Bible study class anyway!” Submission to masculine leadership does not extend, in my opinion, to behaviors that will be unhealthy for the husband, the wife and the marriage. Nor should a woman tolerate child abuse, child molestation or wife-beating.

Thee's other stuff in the last para extended to the man that I don't want to quite in case I breach copyright.

I'm not trying to be facetious, but I just want to know what it is that people are disagreeing with here - because it seems like it may be the caricature of a position. I have seen little, if anything in Josephine's description of headship that Piper/Grudem (and now add Dobson) would seem to disagree with.

Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004 | IP: Logged

Laura
General nuisance
# 10

Posted

Well, he's pretty clear that traditional gender roles are the way to go (if you look at the stuff on the site, including the page from which yours and Alan's quotes come) -- and I don't hear that from the Orthodox. As the Orthodox view is stated, it doesn't have anything to do with having the traditional working man/stay at home wife model. I read each of the marriage articles on the Dobson site and they all assume or encourage traditional gender roles as if that were a key part of how God wants marrried men & women to be.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
I read each of the marriage articles on the Dobson site and they all assume or encourage traditional gender roles as if that were a key part of how God wants marrried men & women to be.

God's favourite sitcom was "Leave it to Beaver" because the gender roles were so proper and right. [Roll Eyes]

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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...

Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I'm not trying to be facetious, but I just want to know what it is that people are disagreeing with here - because it seems like it may be the caricature of a position. I have seen little, if anything in Josephine's description of headship that Piper/Grudem (and now add Dobson) would seem to disagree with.

I'm not familiar with Piper/Grudem, and I'll have to be honest and say I haven't read anything by Dobson since I got rid of all his books years ago, so I may be mis-remembering his position.

But I'm not mis-remembering the position of Bill Gothard. I don't think you can get his writings online, but you can certainly find out what he teaches. For example,
a news report on a "character curriculum" in public schools in Detroit says this:

quote:
The minister behind Character First! is Bill Gothard, 65, whose Institute for Basic Life Principles is based in Chicago. Gothard says more than 2.5 million people nationwide have attended his seminars.
Gothard has centered his teachings on the aspect of authority. He instructs his followers to obey all authority figures -- parents, bosses and political leaders -- because those figures are ordained by Christ.

And, of course, if you attend one of his seminars or talk to those who have, he explicitly teaches that husbands are one of those authorities who must be obeyed, no matter what.

You can find similar teachings in a variety of books about marriage that were widely read and taught from in the Assembly of God church I attended years ago. Look up "Me? Obey Him?" on Amazon, and follow the links to similar books, and you'll get the idea.

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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 | IP: Logged

scoticanus
Shipmate
# 5140

Posted

quote:
He instructs his followers to obey all authority figures -- parents, bosses and political leaders -- because those figures are ordained by Christ.

Ah yes! Romans 13, 1-7! I remember spending many undergraduate hours on that, in a course on the History of Political Thought. We dealt with Duplessis-Mornay's Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos of 1579, a remarkable bit of special pleading which justified the Calvinists in rebelling against the King (whom they didn't like) under the leadership of the inferior magistrates (whom they did like).

I remember not being impressed at the time. First decide what you want to do, then show from Scripture that it's God's command . . .

Posts: 491 | From: Edinburgh, Scotland | Registered: Nov 2003 | IP: Logged

Custard
Shipmate
# 5402

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
As the Orthodox view is stated, it doesn't have anything to do with having the traditional working man/stay at home wife model.

As a male evangelical, I don't know any men who hold (and say they hold) the traditional "working man / stay at home wife" model. I cannot recall ever having heard it taught. We tend to read Proverbs 31 too often...

I do know quite a few (Oxbridge educated) evangelical women who really do want to be housewives.

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blog
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.

Posts: 4523 | From: Snot's Place | Registered: Jan 2004 | IP: Logged

Laura
General nuisance
# 10

Posted

Custard: I'm not addressing your views, but Dobson's, who states quite clearly that that's the desirable model. Because you asked about him. What the heck does the fact that some liberal women wish to be homemakers have to do with it?? I'm not even addressing the merits of that position. I was simply saying that I hear Dobson saying that this is the correct model and I don't hear the Orthodox saying this. That's all.

[ 14. April 2005, 17:05: Message edited by: Laura ]

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Leprechaun

Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
Custard: I'm not addressing your views, but Dobson's, who states quite clearly that that's the desirable model.

I think that was me? (who asked about Dobson, not who said that this was a desirable model) Anyway, I'd just never been aware of Dobbo before, but by searching around found he does have an article on submission here Addressed to husbands though, not commanding wives. It doesn't sound that different to what Levor and Josephine described to my uneducated ear, but I agree about the "traditional model" stuff - I hadn't noted that earlier.

[ 14. April 2005, 17:41: Message edited by: Leprechaun ]

Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004 | IP: Logged

Custard
Shipmate
# 5402

Posted

Having located a copy of Dr Dobson's book Life on the Edge in a neglected corner of a bookshelf, I thought I'd summarise the chapter on marriage, etc. He describes the book as "my lifework"...

Divorce is messy and bad, especially for the kids.
Pray about stuff.
Be careful - don't rush into marriage. Lots of refs to Desmond Morris (not exactly a pro-headship person).
Emotional "bonding" is important during courtship.
Stages of intimacy in relationship (with some guidelines as to what is appropriate pre-marriage).
Importance of taking time over relationships.
Suggestions for how to decide who to marry (if anyone)
Importance of deciding beforehand to keep marriage vows (but still no mention of headship or obedience).

I was surprised. I was genuinely expecting something about gender roles in relationships, but there was absolutely nothing....

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blog
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.

Posts: 4523 | From: Snot's Place | Registered: Jan 2004 | IP: Logged

Emma Louise

Storm in a teapot
# 3571

Posted

er - so not only do I agree with custard... but agree with dobson too?!! [Eek!]

Posts: 12719 | From: Enid Blyton territory. | Registered: Nov 2002 | IP: Logged

Laura
General nuisance
# 10

Posted

Custard:

I really don't understand the argument you're making. I think anyone can agree with that summary you got from Dobson's other book. But that's not all that Dobson has written about the subject. I'm referring to the articles on the website linked to on this thread. They are clear that the traditional model is assumed. And that's all I'm saying.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Levor:

quote:
Originally posted by Emma.:
Inferiority - not allowed to do certain things that men are simply because of gender. thats inferiority.

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
That people have different roles in marriage is unexceptionable. To have those roles determined by sex is sexism.
This is what has encouraged the appeal to the Trinity. There is nothing inferior about the Son. He is as powerful, 'intelligent', knowing, wise etc. as the Father. Yet there is an order where the Son works from the Father and the actions of the Godhead have their source in the Father. It has nothing to do with 'ability' in that raw sense, for the Son is everything the Father is without being Father. It has to do with the nature of the relationship of the Father and the Son.

The Trinity gets pulled in precisely to bring clarity to these kind of absolute statements by Emma and RuthW. It shows that it isn't neccessarily the case that role has to be linked to being - it can be linked to personhood and so both sides in an authority relationship can be equal, even if the relationship has more to do with their personhood than their 'merit'.

Sorry, but bringing the Trinity into it doesn't help, IMO, because it doesn't justify assigning roles based on sex alone, whether you're going to call it "being" or "personhood".

quote:
Originally posted by Levor:
I see the headship issue less as closely related to being CEO or elected head of state, and more like the relationship of parents and children.

Parents aren't necessarily wiser or smarter or more knowledgable than their adult children. And yet the Bible holds up a honour that the children owe their parents that is not reciprocated in the same way. I owe my father and mother honour in a way that they don't owe me. Even now, there is a way that they can disagree with me that is not there for me to do in how I indicate my disagreement with them. It has to do with something about what it means to be a in a parent-child relationship and it has little to do with merit.

This is an awful analogy--the implied infantalization of women is appalling. When you disagree with your parents about how you should live your life, do you defer to their judgement? Parents start out wiser, smarter, and more knowledgeable than their children, but eventually children grow up and become self-determining adults. I honor my parents, but I don't submit to them or consider them to have any kind of leadership role in my life.

Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Weed
Shipmate
# 4402

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
As the Orthodox view is stated, it doesn't have anything to do with having the traditional working man/stay at home wife model.

And yet from what little I know of modern Greece - an overwhelmingly Orthodox country - the man is treated as a god and a king first by his mother and then by his wife (on the insistence of his mother). The home is firmly a woman's domain and everything else belongs to men. I don't know whether there's been a shift away from this in recent years or in the cities but my impression is that there has been a very strong emphasis on traditional roles.

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Weed

Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003 | IP: Logged

Laura
General nuisance
# 10

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Weed:

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
As the Orthodox view is stated, it doesn't have anything to do with having the traditional working man/stay at home wife model.
And yet from what little I know of modern Greece - an overwhelmingly Orthodox country - the man is treated as a god and a king first by his mother and then by his wife (on the insistence of his mother). The home is firmly a woman's domain and everything else belongs to men. I don't know whether there's been a shift away from this in recent years or in the cities but my impression is that there has been a very strong emphasis on traditional roles.

I suspect this is as much a cultural phenomenon as a religious one. As I said before, it seems to me based on what's been said here that the traditional roles are not inherent in the Orthodox understanding. They may not be inherent in the Right-Wing Nutjob Version(TM) either, but I'm just going on what's been posted here and some small amount of stuff read offline about what Dobson teaches and what the OCA teaches.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Weed:
And yet from what little I know of modern Greece - an overwhelmingly Orthodox country - the man is treated as a god and a king first by his mother and then by his wife (on the insistence of his mother). The home is firmly a woman's domain and everything else belongs to men. I don't know whether there's been a shift away from this in recent years or in the cities but my impression is that there has been a very strong emphasis on traditional roles.

Rural Greece is still very much an agrarian community, and clearly defined and prescribed roles are common in agrarian societies, and for good reason. If everyone knows who does what, and does it, it's more likely that everyone will have enough to eat.

But the roles are cultural and social, not theological. To learn what the Church teaches about marriage, you have to look where the Church expresses her thoughts on it -- in the liturgies, and in the lives of the saints. There's a wonderful book of called Marriage as a Path to Holiness by John and Mary Ford, which is a collection of lives of married saints. That's where you see what Orthodox marriage, lived out, looks like.

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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 | IP: Logged

Weed
Shipmate
# 4402

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
I suspect this is as much a cultural phenomenon as a religious one. As I said before, it seems to me based on what's been said here that the traditional roles are not inherent in the Orthodox understanding.

But if you are talking about a country where approaching 100% of the people are Orthodox Christians you would expect the Church to be the main factor in determining the culture, wouldn't you?

By the way, I wouldn't want it to be thought that I think any less of people who choose traditional roles because I don't at all. (Personally I've always loved being at home just as much as going out to work.) What I am quibbling about is the idea that it is God's will that everybody sticks to an eternally-ordered role. Mrs Alexander, who wrote

"Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as he."

also wrote

"The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate."

That's what this discussion reminds me of. The verses may be very much of their culture and times but both were eagerly adopted by the church. They didn't have to because these ideas aren't inherent in Christianity but they were glad to because it suited them.

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Weed

Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003 | IP: Logged

Custard
Shipmate
# 5402

Posted

Don't worry Emma - I don't agree entirely with Dobson. I have found him helpful in the past, especially an interview he published with a serial killer and rapist. But that's another story...

OTOH, he tends to write primarily for a large, not especially educated, American audience, so most of what he writes is to be understood in that light.

quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
I really don't understand the argument you're making. I think anyone can agree with that summary you got from Dobson's other book.

My point is that, when Dobson is writing in "his lifework" a 22 page summary of what he thinks is important in romantic relationships and marriage, he does not mention headship issues once. Nor are they mentioned in the addendum "Thirty-eight values to live by". He clearly does not think they are anywhere near the most important thing in male / female relationships.

I therefore strongly suspect that what he writes about headship, he writes from the point of view either of defending the subculture against (for example) radical feminism, or from the position of having it as a largely unquestioned cultural assumption. If pushed, would he defend the right of women to work (e.g. Proverbs 31 style)? I bet he would.

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blog
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.

Posts: 4523 | From: Snot's Place | Registered: Jan 2004 | IP: Logged

Weed
Shipmate
# 4402

Posted

Sorry, josephine. I wasn't ignoring your post but simply hadn't seen it before I replied to Laura. As always, the way you describe Orthodoxy is beautiful but the way it gets interpreted by some societies isn't always as pretty. If the Church (any Church) feels that the culture is unfair on women one would expect it to speak out.

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Weed

Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003 | IP: Logged

RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13

Posted

And in regards to being referred to the lives of the saints or any other book, written works are not where we find anything lived out. When roles are assigned solely on the basis of sex, women generally get the short end of the stick. It doesn't matter how lovely the theory is if it almost never works out well in practice.

Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Weed:
But if you are talking about a country where approaching 100% of the people are Orthodox Christians you would expect the Church to be the main factor in determining the culture, wouldn't you?

I don't think so. I would expect the Church to influence everything about the culture, but not to determine it. I mean, in some places, you eat out of communal dishes, using your right hand. No implements allowed. In other places, you eat sitting at a table, with your own plate, your own knife and fork and spoon. Those are cultural matters. The Church isn't the main factor in determining it. The Church would tell you to bless the food and give thanks for it, and to share it with the poor. But what you eat, and how you eat it, the Church doesn't say.

It's the same way with who does what in a marriage. The Church doesn't say who washes the dishes, or who cooks the vegetables, or who balances the checkbook. Those may be culturally determined, or they may be personally determined. It doesn't matter. What the Church does say is for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, sacrificing themselves for their wives, and for wives to return their husbands love.

quote:
"The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate."

That's what this discussion reminds me of. The verses may be very much of their culture and times but both were eagerly adopted by the church. They didn't have to because these ideas aren't inherent in Christianity but they were glad to because it suited them.

The Church adopted these little rhymes? What do you mean by that? From an Orthodox POV, that would have to mean that the Church began using them liturgically, and that's clearly nonsense. You can't mean that, but I'm not sure what you do mean.

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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 | IP: Logged

Weed
Shipmate
# 4402

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:
It's the same way with who does what in a marriage. The Church doesn't say who washes the dishes, or who cooks the vegetables, or who balances the checkbook. Those may be culturally determined, or they may be personally determined. It doesn't matter. What the Church does say is for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, sacrificing themselves for their wives, and for wives to return their husbands love.

Well I wasn't exactly thinking that a church would tell people who was to cook the vegetables. I have, however, heard many an instruction to husbands to help their wives with the housework as an example and that sends out the message that it's her duty to do the housework which he puts himself out to help her with. Maybe spiritual directors in the Orthodox Church don't go into the practical application of the church's teaching in the way I'm familiar with.

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:

quote:
Originally posted by Weed:
"The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate."

That's what this discussion reminds me of. The verses may be very much of their culture and times but both were eagerly adopted by the church. They didn't have to because these ideas aren't inherent in Christianity but they were glad to because it suited them.
The Church adopted these little rhymes? What do you mean by that? From an Orthodox POV, that would have to mean that the Church began using them liturgically, and that's clearly nonsense. You can't mean that, but I'm not sure what you do mean.

OK. Point taken. Use of the word church in a response to an Episcopalian without specifying which church, although I did deliberately give it a lower case "c". I have slapped my wrists.

The first quote comes from Once, in Royal David's City, the second from All things bright and beautiful which I would have thought were common across many churches and cultures.

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Weed

Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Weed:
Maybe spiritual directors in the Orthodox Church don't go into the practical application of the church's teaching in the way I'm familiar with.

Spiritual directors do go into the practical application of our teaching, but it might not be the way you're familiar with. It's often in the context of sacramental confession, or in other one-on-one situations. In the homily, we tend to get a discussion of the Gospel appointed for the day, or the significance of whatever feast or saint is commemorated that day, not personal spiritual direction.

Personal spiritual direction tends to be very specifically tailored -- not what husbands need to do, or what wives need to do, but what you need to do.

quote:
The first quote comes from Once, in Royal David's City, the second from All things bright and beautiful which I would have thought were common across many churches and cultures.

I'm familiar with them, certainly, but I'd hardly consider them common across many churches and cultures. And I'd be loathe even to say they were adopted by the Anglican Church -- they may have been popular among Victorian Anglicans, but they are not doctrinal or theological works. They are works of popular culture. Vapid and sweet, but hardly the teaching of any church.

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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 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
And in regards to being referred to the lives of the saints or any other book, written works are not where we find anything lived out.

Sorry, RuthW, I didn't mean to ignore you; I just missed seeing your post.

You're right, of course, that it's not on the pages of the Lives of the Saints that we see the Christian life lived out -- it's in the real lives of real people. But I can't point you to real people around you and say, "Look, see? That's what a Christian marriage looks like!" I don't know the people you know; I don't have any way of making that judgment in the first place, or of pointing it out to you if I did.

So I turn to the written records of the lives of saints, which give us a glimpse, even if from a distance, of what those lives looked like. It's a pale image, granted, just as photos of the Grand Canyonn can't possibly catch what it's like to be there. But if you can't be there, it gives the idea as well as anything else I can think of.

quote:
When roles are assigned solely on the basis of sex, women generally get the short end of the stick. It doesn't matter how lovely the theory is if it almost never works out well in practice.

I'm not arguing that social roles should be assigned solely on the basis of sex, though. I don't think anyone here is. People like Bill Gothard argue that, but people like him are just plain wrong.

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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 | IP: Logged

RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13

Posted

My understanding is the advocates of headship on this thread are saying the role of leader belongs to the husband. And I'm saying that once you assign headship or leadership to men just because they are men, women are bound to suffer. It may not be what's intended, but these things become cultural, and when they do, women get the lesser, more tightly restricted roles.

Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Duo Seraphim*
Sea lawyer
# 3251

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
My understanding is the advocates of headship on this thread are saying the role of leader belongs to the husband. And I'm saying that once you assign headship or leadership to men just because they are men, women are bound to suffer. It may not be what's intended, but these things become cultural, and when they do, women get the lesser, more tightly restricted roles.

I'd be interested to hear what those advocates also have to say about single women. Are single women leaderless - or are they leaders of themselves by default? And if they are leaderless, by virtue of not having a husband, doesn't that imply some lesser state of being, which grounds the cultural assumptions that lead to those "lesser, more tightly restricted roles"?n drive

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2^8, eight bits to a byte

Posts: 3967 | From: Sydney Australia | Registered: Aug 2002 | IP: Logged

Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
My understanding is the advocates of headship on this thread are saying the role of leader belongs to the husband.

I suppose I'm an advocate of headship, but I have not said that the role of leader belongs to the husband. In fact, I've said as plainly as I know how (which is clearly not plainly enough) that marriage is not about who's in charge. Let me try one more time.

husband is to wife as head is to body

husband is to wife as lover is to beloved

husband is NOT to wife as CEO is to corporation

husband is NOT to wife as general is to army

husband is NOT to wife as leader is to follower

husband is NOT to wife as owner is to property

husband is NOT to wife as master is to slave

It is true that in some places and at some times, wives have been regarded as property, as little more than slaves. But that isn't what it means to say that the husband is the head of his wife.

In the Orthodox marriage service, the bride is not veiled, her head is not covered, and she is not given away. She comes to her wedding much as a queen comes to her coronation.

At the very beginning, she and her groom are asked the same question: Have you a good, free, and unconstrained will and a firm intention to take this man (woman) to yourself, to be your husband (wife)? In the service, both bride and groom are given rings, both bride and groom are crowned. The rings and the crowns are exchanged. They share a common cup.

Whatever marriage is, the service makes it clear that they're in it together.

quote:
Originally posted by Duo Seraphim:
I'd be interested to hear what those advocates also have to say about single women. Are single women leaderless - or are they leaders of themselves by default?

Single women are husbandless. That's what it means to be single. But they are only leaderless if the only possible leader a woman can have is her husband -- which is nonsense. In fact, the one whom we regularly address as the Champion Leader is a woman, the Theotokos:

quote:
To Thee, the Champion Leader, we Thy servants dedicate a feast of victory and of thanksgiving as ones rescued out of sufferings, O Theotokos: but as Thou art one with might which is invincible, from all dangers that can be do Thou deliver us, that we may cry to Thee: Rejoice, O Unwedded Bride!

quote:
And if they are leaderless, by virtue of not having a husband, doesn't that imply some lesser state of being,

No.

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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 | IP: Logged

duchess

Ship's Blue Blooded Lady
# 2764

Posted

quote:
Age old question asked by: Duo Seraphim
I'd be interested to hear what those advocates also have to say about single women. Are single women leaderless - or are they leaders of themselves by default? And if they are leaderless, by virtue of not having a husband, doesn't that imply some lesser state of being, which grounds the cultural assumptions that lead to those "lesser, more tightly restricted roles"?n drive

I wrote on this thread some years ago (wow how time flies!) and kind of cringe remembering how I upset RuthW and we had our exchanging of our views. I kind of shut up after that but then ahhhh, Duo just put forth in big neon lights that age old question...What to do? A woman without a head?

Opening my steel-plated bible *THUMP!* I might add before I pontificate about the headless single woman...that the word "Helpmeet" came up in the 1600s according to one Genesis 2:18. Nowadays this might be translated more as "adequate helper", not assistant or slave. God said he created a suitable helper for the man is a more the gist of it.
She is not his competition, she is more his completor! A little bit on this word click here

Now to answer that age old question...
What is a woman without a head supposed to do?

I will now gladly use my own life as an example since I am strong-willed single woman.

I would submit to my father's guidance gladly expect that he is totally uninterested in that role. I once brought a man to my father who wanted to ask my dad if he could marry me. My father hid out, refused to speak with him. Later on, my dad admitted he was not interested in that, that I could make my own decisions. This ironically was the turning point of a very baaad relationship that went South...anyone interested in reading that saga? Nope...didn't think so...moving on...

My mom...could I submit to her will for my life? NOPE. I love my mom...and try to respect her. But well...

My mother's approval is good to have however she is just happy if the guy looks like he won't abuse me and looks like he would make her some good grandkids. So she's out.

So I picked my church elders. Yes, I filled out my membership packet with a paragraph that says "I have no discernment when it comes to men. When I see a pair of pretty blue eyes, I am a stark raving stupid idiot, so please help me by making sure the young man would get your blessings first." Yes, I did write that. They accepted this responsibility.

I also have asked my pastor how to handle things in my life and other elders. I have been given a lot of caring advice from an elder's wife in my church, Carol. And she has kicked me in the hiney when needed...my tongue is sometimes out of control and she forced me to go through a lesson plan on the tongue (in the bible). I was pretty humbled when I learned babbling is sinful much as gossip. Idle talk, trash talk etc...anyway, I disgress.

You have met me Duo and know I am a pretty strong personality in person. I earn a living, I own my place (thank God! No roomate to scream at me for eating hot dogs or as some of you all may remember, get on me for having tempting ice cream in the house). I choose to submit since I trust these people and hold them in very high regard. They aren't perfect but they are very dear to my heart and very smart.

I think I am a better person than I was years ago but there is a lot of room for improvement. To say I am a Proverbs 31 woman would be laughable right now to myself but at least I have people looking out for me and I have people who can also help me with accountability (like I think you ought to apologize for that).

I am grieved that our society has a lot of stupid people in it who are swollen up with pride and consequently, these views look pretty bad with great reason. Redneck men and bitchy women both have ruined it.

"Go get me a beer and submit beetch!"
[*fart* *belch*] "Then give me some sugar baby..."
"Why Billy Joe Bob, kiss my grits and go to hell butthead! The only sugar you'll be getting is mah fist, jackass!"
[*snap finger* muttering...slam slam, neighbor cusses at them through wall...in the background, baby cries and dog barks...]

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Ship of Fools-World Party

Posts: 11197 | From: Do you know the way? | Registered: May 2002 | IP: Logged

Duo Seraphim*
Sea lawyer
# 3251

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by josephine:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
My understanding is the advocates of headship on this thread are saying the role of leader belongs to the husband.
I suppose I'm an advocate of headship, but I have not said that the role of leader belongs to the husband. In fact, I've said as plainly as I know how (which is clearly not plainly enough) that marriage is not about who's in charge. Let me try one more time.

husband is to wife as head is to body

husband is to wife as lover is to beloved

husband is NOT to wife as CEO is to corporation

husband is NOT to wife as general is to army

husband is NOT to wife as leader is to follower

husband is NOT to wife as owner is to property

husband is NOT to wife as master is to slave

It is true that in some places and at some times, wives have been regarded as property, as little more than slaves. But that isn't what it means to say that the husband is the head of his wife.

In the Orthodox marriage service, the bride is not veiled, her head is not covered, and she is not given away. She comes to her wedding much as a queen comes to her coronation.

At the very beginning, she and her groom are asked the same question: Have you a good, free, and unconstrained will and a firm intention to take this man (woman) to yourself, to be your husband (wife)? In the service, both bride and groom are given rings, both bride and groom are crowned. The rings and the crowns are exchanged. They share a common cup.

Whatever marriage is, the service makes it clear that they're in it together.

quote:
Originally posted by Duo Seraphim:
I'd be interested to hear what those advocates also have to say about single women. Are single women leaderless - or are they leaders of themselves by default?

Single women are husbandless. That's what it means to be single. But they are only leaderless if the only possible leader a woman can have is her husband -- which is nonsense.

As has been observed elsewhere on this thread - the Orthodox position on headship appears to be different.

So let me put it more simply: Why does a single woman need a leader in any sense? Surely if you are without a "head" in the head-body sense, you are accepting that single women are incomplete?

duchess - sister, I don't need a man in order to exercise headship. I'll take advice or guidance from those whose opinion I respect and after prayer - I'll make up my own mind.

Pardon me, all, for saying this - but the cultural assumptions about how women are meant to live their lives are coming through loud and clear.

[ 15. April 2005, 04:48: Message edited by: Duo Seraphim ]

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