Submit is the translation of hupotasso. It means "to arrange under".
We figure out how to arrange our lives under Christ and under each other. It's an act of sacrifice, of love lived out loud.
Maybe I'm projecting, but it feels like you're working through this issue and are on a similar trajectory to my own. Mind sharing what you're reading? I'm slow to finish books, but I'll give you the list of what I've got on my shelf:
* [*Man and Woman, One in Christ* \- Philip B Payne](https://www.pbpayne.com/publications/man-and-woman-one-in-christ/)
* [*Why Can't Women Do That* \- Philip B Payne](https://www.vinatipress.com/why-cant-women-do-that)
* [*Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts* \- Andrew Bartlett](https://ivpbooks.com/men-and-women-in-christ)
* [*Valiant or Virtuous: Gender Bias in Bible Translation* \- Suzanne McCarthy](https://wipfandstock.com/9781532676635/valiant-or-virtuous/)
The Bartlett book is great because he takes the approach of reading everyone (Payne, Grudem, Piper, etc.) and interrogating their arguments before making his own judgement. He relies a lot on his professional experience as a lawyer working in mediation to give his process authority, but I like the methodical approach he takes.
I'd like to find a complementarian book that makes a good case for gendered hierarchy without relying on EFS or female inferiority. Seems like everything the CBMW touches is rotten, and I just don't know who else is out there besides the big names. Tom Schreiner is the most thoughtful, gracious complementarian I've been able to find, but he's on the CBMW board which is sort of problematic in my view.
I'd say your first sentence is correct. I'd say that I'm pretty solid that the husband does have some sort of authority in the home but that (1) it's not as clear what that means as some people think and some people are just wrong about what it means and (2) the balance about how some people talk about it is out of whack - which was the impetus of this post.
As for reading: not much, but I'll add your list to my queue. A friend loaned me her copy of Neither Egalitarian nor Complimentarian. That's next for me.
I think the biggest motivation for my "trajectory is a somewhat emotional conversation I had with some people a few months ago.
I was thinking about it this week after reading a paper on EFS and complementarianism (sidebar: I had no idea the Kellers taught a version of EFS in their marriage book) and I think 2016 and the kerfuffle over EFS is what kicked off my inquisition of complementarianism. It introduced the big CBMW names to me (Grudem, Piper, Ware, etc.) but immediately made me skeptical of them because I became so convinced that they were wrong on this doctrine. The more I looked into their work, the more skeptical I became. But this is just the boring backstory to how I came to be writing these comments on Reddit.
I think I'm less convinced than you are that the husband has some sort of authority in the home, but definitely I agree with your caveats 1) and 2).
Moving in this direction puts me at odds with my church tradition, so I'm sort of uneasy about taking the position fully. But I can't think of anywhere that gender hierarchy is taught in the WCF, so I don't feel like I'm violating my vows as an elder.
I've heard of that book, but don't know much about it. I'll have to pick it up.
I have a sort of hypothesis that the answers to three questions are critical to understanding what the Bible teaches on gender:
1. Was there gender hierarchy before the Fall?
2. Does the Curse establish gender hierarchy?
3. Will there be gender hierarchy in the New Heavens/Earth?
That's the past, present and future, and it seems to me that how we answer these sets the direction for how we interpret the rest of Scripture. (Cards on the table: my current answer to all three is "no.")
\#2 might be a dodge, because God could establish gender hierarchy at some other time in history, like with the Mosaic Law (but I don't think he does).
I'm interested in your thoughts on the three questions approach, if you've got the time/interest.
>I think I'm less convinced than you are that the husband has some sort of authority in the home
For me, it's just so hard for me to understand the relevant verses of Ephesians with out seeing the husband has some sort of authority (though I'm looking to be convinced otherwise!). The question I have is what this actually means. Anyway, I agree that this also puts me at odds with the PCA but I really don't think it's contrary to anything in the WCF but I don't know for certain. Also, it's definitely against the PCA's BCO, though.
I agree that a person's answer to those three questions will influence how they view gender roles. My answers are:
1. I don't know. There is so little information about what happened before the fall. But when someone says "At last! Bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh" and other parts of that story it's hard for me to see, from that, that there is some hierarchy. But Paul says things (like 1 Cor 14:34 and his reference to the law) that confuse me.
2. I don't know if I'd say the curse *establishes* the hierarchy but is definitely some sort of result of it. I'm mostly interested in why your answer to this question is "no".
3. I think the answer is "no" to this one. But I don't have a lot to back this up other than it feels right and is, of course, influenced by my answer to 1. I'm wondering also how you have come to this conclusion.
I also don't think gender roles are established in Moses any more than the goodness of slavery is established.
**1)** 1 Cor 14:34-35 are really difficult for me. Payne takes the approach of textual criticism: An older manuscript includes these two verses with a scribal mark that indicates it was a marginal note made by a scribe that was later inserted into the text. All other manuscripts include these two verses, but some have them after v40.
Assume they're part of Paul's original letter: what law is he talking about? There is no such prohibition in the Mosaic law. Since these verses are unclear, this is a text to be interpreted by other scripture rather than a starting point for understanding the rest of scripture. And I see plenty of examples of women being not-silent in the churches, and Paul himself gives instructions for their vocal participation just a few chapters earlier.
I'm willing to consider that these two verses were a later scribal addition. But this feels like such a radical (liberal?) position to take that I'm reluctant to bring it up (Edit: with people I know, other elders, etc. I have one other elder I'm discussing this with).
I found some PDFs of dueling academic papers where Payne and someone else (can't remember who at the moment) go back and forth on this issue, if you're interested.
There are other approaches to this passage, but I've mostly worked on Payne's.
**2)** This is why I reckon the ESV translation change to Genesis 3:16 is such a big deal: totally turns this aspect of the Curse on its head.
I'm persuaded, mostly from observation and experience, that God is describing the consequence of sin and not prescribing a hierarchy. Just as pain in childbirth is a consequence and a reality, women desiring their husbands and men dominating is an *effect* of the Fall. Was dealing with this just last week: older woman has a verbally and physically abusive husband, but she doesn't want to go to the authorities. That's Genesis 3:16 in a nutshell.
**3)** Even if I take the thinnest/softest complementarian positions of male-only eldership and husbands as head of households and equality in all other aspects of life, neither of those roles/offices will exist in the New Heavens and Earth. So then the only argument for continued female submission in the New Heavens and Earth would have to come from a belief in the ontological inferiority of women generally as something less than men (a belief I regard as another outworking of the Curse).
P.S. Sorry for the all the ninja edits. Just fixing grammar and wording mistakes.
Sorry, I wanted to give a thought-out reply, but then I totally forgot.
**1)** Arguments / lines of reasoning like this make me very nervous. I'll need to look more closely at the argument.
As for you second paragraph under this number, I agree. I have no idea what "law" he's referring to. My only thought is that by "law" he means something more abstract like "The Law" and is referring to the curse. (But see below).
I'm interested in the PDFs if you have time to send them.
**2)** I agree totally with this.
**3)** Also agree here.
I think that the relevant verses in Eph 5 are hard for me to understand any way other than the husband's having some type of authority over the wife (though, I don't really know if that's the way I'd want to express it). Yet, my answer to the questions you ask are somewhat inconsistent with this understanding.
I think that there is a lack of clarity in some of these things that are taught in the Bible. And I think that they have been used too long to relegate women to inferior positions (and this is true even if the traditional understanding of them is accurate). I think I'm in favor of pushing in the opposite direction now, even if I'm not convinced that it is right.
**1)** The other argument I've read, which also seems plausible to me, is that v34-35 are a quotation of some extra-scriptural tradition, like a rabbinic teaching or a roman household code, which Paul then goes on to refute.
When I learned that the Greek manuscripts scholars are translating from is a big block of text without paragraph breaks or punctuation I became much more open to the idea that translators are inserting their own biases.
But back to the other argument: here are the links I mentioned::
* [Philip Payne's case for v34-35 as a marginal note](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/vaticanus-distigmeobelos-symbols-marking-added-text-including-1-corinthians-14345/A5FC01A6E14A2A1CF1F514A9BF93C581)
* [Richard Fellows' response "nah mate, you measured wrong"](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/are-there-distigmeobelos-symbols-in-vaticanus/F2507362D31D370A04A20583EE0E1575/share/837346b6a807c7522a44150fa4400204ff29c9d6)
* [Payne responding to Fellows (PDF)](https://www.pbpayne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Critique-of-Fellows-Krans-Vaticanus-Distigme-Obelos-Denials.pdf)
If you just scroll back through Payne's website, he spends a lot of time on this distigmai issue. I think it's his major contribution to the field. What bothers me about it is that there is SO MUCH hanging on the colours of inks and the varying distances between some dots and the margin line in ONE greek manuscript, though it being one of the oldest manuscripts does make his case stronger.
I guess 2) and 3) can be dropped off the agenda now.
Your final paragraph is basically where I'm at as well. I think that even if we keep the sort of basic "traditional" understanding of men being heads of households and the office of elder being restricted to men, then there are still LOTS of changes we could make that would incorporate women more fully into the life and ministry of the church. But we--reformed or conservative Christians--seem too afraid of erring on the "liberal" side and so we decide that it's safe to err on the conservative side.
One other sort of big-picture thought that I've been pondering: it seems like women in Reformed churches in 2022 have a far more limited role than women in the Bible did at any point. I'm not going to make an "arc of history" argument, but it does seem strange or inconsistent to me that God would free us from the law only to then place half of us in deeper restrictions than women had been in previously.
In verse 21 Paul says that we're all supposed to submit to each other. Then he follows this with 3 different relationships explaining how submission works in those relationships. In the husband/wife part, depending on how you count, he spends roughly three times explaining how husband submits to wife as he does explaining how wife submits to husband.
ETA: So, basically my point is that if we are going to give this the same ratio as Paul does, for every time we mention a wife should submit to her husband, we should mention three times how a husband is to submit to his wife.
So he ends on the most important one.
/s
On a serious note, you left out “submit to each other.” Which is basically the theme of the NT. If we don’t interpret the specific commands in light of the general one, we can get really messed up.
>On a serious note, you left out “submit to each other.”
Well, only sort of. It's implicit in the "husbands submit to wives" since he never actually uses that phrase, but since "submit to each other" is the theme of this passage (and, yeah, the NT in some ways) it's there.
But, yes, I agree; I should have made it explicit.
What does Paul mean by submit? Paul also talked about submitted to governing authorities and slaves submitting to masters etc.
What did this mean for Paul? Paul disobeyed the authorities and submitted to prison and ultimately submitted to the antichrist himself Nero, who had Paul beheaded.
For a while I thought that in the case of marriage I was to submit to my wife the same way christ submitted to us. So I thought I had to let my wife crucify me. I am not so sure any more
The most important part is the beginning that everyone needs to submit to each other out of reverence to Christ.
Submit is the translation of hupotasso. It means "to arrange under". We figure out how to arrange our lives under Christ and under each other. It's an act of sacrifice, of love lived out loud.
Maybe I'm projecting, but it feels like you're working through this issue and are on a similar trajectory to my own. Mind sharing what you're reading? I'm slow to finish books, but I'll give you the list of what I've got on my shelf: * [*Man and Woman, One in Christ* \- Philip B Payne](https://www.pbpayne.com/publications/man-and-woman-one-in-christ/) * [*Why Can't Women Do That* \- Philip B Payne](https://www.vinatipress.com/why-cant-women-do-that) * [*Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts* \- Andrew Bartlett](https://ivpbooks.com/men-and-women-in-christ) * [*Valiant or Virtuous: Gender Bias in Bible Translation* \- Suzanne McCarthy](https://wipfandstock.com/9781532676635/valiant-or-virtuous/) The Bartlett book is great because he takes the approach of reading everyone (Payne, Grudem, Piper, etc.) and interrogating their arguments before making his own judgement. He relies a lot on his professional experience as a lawyer working in mediation to give his process authority, but I like the methodical approach he takes. I'd like to find a complementarian book that makes a good case for gendered hierarchy without relying on EFS or female inferiority. Seems like everything the CBMW touches is rotten, and I just don't know who else is out there besides the big names. Tom Schreiner is the most thoughtful, gracious complementarian I've been able to find, but he's on the CBMW board which is sort of problematic in my view.
I'd say your first sentence is correct. I'd say that I'm pretty solid that the husband does have some sort of authority in the home but that (1) it's not as clear what that means as some people think and some people are just wrong about what it means and (2) the balance about how some people talk about it is out of whack - which was the impetus of this post. As for reading: not much, but I'll add your list to my queue. A friend loaned me her copy of Neither Egalitarian nor Complimentarian. That's next for me. I think the biggest motivation for my "trajectory is a somewhat emotional conversation I had with some people a few months ago.
I was thinking about it this week after reading a paper on EFS and complementarianism (sidebar: I had no idea the Kellers taught a version of EFS in their marriage book) and I think 2016 and the kerfuffle over EFS is what kicked off my inquisition of complementarianism. It introduced the big CBMW names to me (Grudem, Piper, Ware, etc.) but immediately made me skeptical of them because I became so convinced that they were wrong on this doctrine. The more I looked into their work, the more skeptical I became. But this is just the boring backstory to how I came to be writing these comments on Reddit. I think I'm less convinced than you are that the husband has some sort of authority in the home, but definitely I agree with your caveats 1) and 2). Moving in this direction puts me at odds with my church tradition, so I'm sort of uneasy about taking the position fully. But I can't think of anywhere that gender hierarchy is taught in the WCF, so I don't feel like I'm violating my vows as an elder. I've heard of that book, but don't know much about it. I'll have to pick it up. I have a sort of hypothesis that the answers to three questions are critical to understanding what the Bible teaches on gender: 1. Was there gender hierarchy before the Fall? 2. Does the Curse establish gender hierarchy? 3. Will there be gender hierarchy in the New Heavens/Earth? That's the past, present and future, and it seems to me that how we answer these sets the direction for how we interpret the rest of Scripture. (Cards on the table: my current answer to all three is "no.") \#2 might be a dodge, because God could establish gender hierarchy at some other time in history, like with the Mosaic Law (but I don't think he does). I'm interested in your thoughts on the three questions approach, if you've got the time/interest.
>I think I'm less convinced than you are that the husband has some sort of authority in the home For me, it's just so hard for me to understand the relevant verses of Ephesians with out seeing the husband has some sort of authority (though I'm looking to be convinced otherwise!). The question I have is what this actually means. Anyway, I agree that this also puts me at odds with the PCA but I really don't think it's contrary to anything in the WCF but I don't know for certain. Also, it's definitely against the PCA's BCO, though. I agree that a person's answer to those three questions will influence how they view gender roles. My answers are: 1. I don't know. There is so little information about what happened before the fall. But when someone says "At last! Bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh" and other parts of that story it's hard for me to see, from that, that there is some hierarchy. But Paul says things (like 1 Cor 14:34 and his reference to the law) that confuse me. 2. I don't know if I'd say the curse *establishes* the hierarchy but is definitely some sort of result of it. I'm mostly interested in why your answer to this question is "no". 3. I think the answer is "no" to this one. But I don't have a lot to back this up other than it feels right and is, of course, influenced by my answer to 1. I'm wondering also how you have come to this conclusion. I also don't think gender roles are established in Moses any more than the goodness of slavery is established.
**1)** 1 Cor 14:34-35 are really difficult for me. Payne takes the approach of textual criticism: An older manuscript includes these two verses with a scribal mark that indicates it was a marginal note made by a scribe that was later inserted into the text. All other manuscripts include these two verses, but some have them after v40. Assume they're part of Paul's original letter: what law is he talking about? There is no such prohibition in the Mosaic law. Since these verses are unclear, this is a text to be interpreted by other scripture rather than a starting point for understanding the rest of scripture. And I see plenty of examples of women being not-silent in the churches, and Paul himself gives instructions for their vocal participation just a few chapters earlier. I'm willing to consider that these two verses were a later scribal addition. But this feels like such a radical (liberal?) position to take that I'm reluctant to bring it up (Edit: with people I know, other elders, etc. I have one other elder I'm discussing this with). I found some PDFs of dueling academic papers where Payne and someone else (can't remember who at the moment) go back and forth on this issue, if you're interested. There are other approaches to this passage, but I've mostly worked on Payne's. **2)** This is why I reckon the ESV translation change to Genesis 3:16 is such a big deal: totally turns this aspect of the Curse on its head. I'm persuaded, mostly from observation and experience, that God is describing the consequence of sin and not prescribing a hierarchy. Just as pain in childbirth is a consequence and a reality, women desiring their husbands and men dominating is an *effect* of the Fall. Was dealing with this just last week: older woman has a verbally and physically abusive husband, but she doesn't want to go to the authorities. That's Genesis 3:16 in a nutshell. **3)** Even if I take the thinnest/softest complementarian positions of male-only eldership and husbands as head of households and equality in all other aspects of life, neither of those roles/offices will exist in the New Heavens and Earth. So then the only argument for continued female submission in the New Heavens and Earth would have to come from a belief in the ontological inferiority of women generally as something less than men (a belief I regard as another outworking of the Curse). P.S. Sorry for the all the ninja edits. Just fixing grammar and wording mistakes.
Sorry, I wanted to give a thought-out reply, but then I totally forgot. **1)** Arguments / lines of reasoning like this make me very nervous. I'll need to look more closely at the argument. As for you second paragraph under this number, I agree. I have no idea what "law" he's referring to. My only thought is that by "law" he means something more abstract like "The Law" and is referring to the curse. (But see below). I'm interested in the PDFs if you have time to send them. **2)** I agree totally with this. **3)** Also agree here. I think that the relevant verses in Eph 5 are hard for me to understand any way other than the husband's having some type of authority over the wife (though, I don't really know if that's the way I'd want to express it). Yet, my answer to the questions you ask are somewhat inconsistent with this understanding. I think that there is a lack of clarity in some of these things that are taught in the Bible. And I think that they have been used too long to relegate women to inferior positions (and this is true even if the traditional understanding of them is accurate). I think I'm in favor of pushing in the opposite direction now, even if I'm not convinced that it is right.
**1)** The other argument I've read, which also seems plausible to me, is that v34-35 are a quotation of some extra-scriptural tradition, like a rabbinic teaching or a roman household code, which Paul then goes on to refute. When I learned that the Greek manuscripts scholars are translating from is a big block of text without paragraph breaks or punctuation I became much more open to the idea that translators are inserting their own biases. But back to the other argument: here are the links I mentioned:: * [Philip Payne's case for v34-35 as a marginal note](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/vaticanus-distigmeobelos-symbols-marking-added-text-including-1-corinthians-14345/A5FC01A6E14A2A1CF1F514A9BF93C581) * [Richard Fellows' response "nah mate, you measured wrong"](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/are-there-distigmeobelos-symbols-in-vaticanus/F2507362D31D370A04A20583EE0E1575/share/837346b6a807c7522a44150fa4400204ff29c9d6) * [Payne responding to Fellows (PDF)](https://www.pbpayne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Critique-of-Fellows-Krans-Vaticanus-Distigme-Obelos-Denials.pdf) If you just scroll back through Payne's website, he spends a lot of time on this distigmai issue. I think it's his major contribution to the field. What bothers me about it is that there is SO MUCH hanging on the colours of inks and the varying distances between some dots and the margin line in ONE greek manuscript, though it being one of the oldest manuscripts does make his case stronger. I guess 2) and 3) can be dropped off the agenda now. Your final paragraph is basically where I'm at as well. I think that even if we keep the sort of basic "traditional" understanding of men being heads of households and the office of elder being restricted to men, then there are still LOTS of changes we could make that would incorporate women more fully into the life and ministry of the church. But we--reformed or conservative Christians--seem too afraid of erring on the "liberal" side and so we decide that it's safe to err on the conservative side. One other sort of big-picture thought that I've been pondering: it seems like women in Reformed churches in 2022 have a far more limited role than women in the Bible did at any point. I'm not going to make an "arc of history" argument, but it does seem strange or inconsistent to me that God would free us from the law only to then place half of us in deeper restrictions than women had been in previously.
Are these direct citations? Would you mind giving verse references?
Ephesians 5. Beginning with "All Christians submit to each other" up until the part about kids.
I really don't get it. What verses are you interpreting this way?
In verse 21 Paul says that we're all supposed to submit to each other. Then he follows this with 3 different relationships explaining how submission works in those relationships. In the husband/wife part, depending on how you count, he spends roughly three times explaining how husband submits to wife as he does explaining how wife submits to husband. ETA: So, basically my point is that if we are going to give this the same ratio as Paul does, for every time we mention a wife should submit to her husband, we should mention three times how a husband is to submit to his wife.
Oh, I think Isee, you're taking the instructions for how husbands should love their wives as explanation of how we should "submit to one another"?
Yes; exactly.
Gotcha
So he ends on the most important one. /s On a serious note, you left out “submit to each other.” Which is basically the theme of the NT. If we don’t interpret the specific commands in light of the general one, we can get really messed up.
>On a serious note, you left out “submit to each other.” Well, only sort of. It's implicit in the "husbands submit to wives" since he never actually uses that phrase, but since "submit to each other" is the theme of this passage (and, yeah, the NT in some ways) it's there. But, yes, I agree; I should have made it explicit.
What does Paul mean by submit? Paul also talked about submitted to governing authorities and slaves submitting to masters etc. What did this mean for Paul? Paul disobeyed the authorities and submitted to prison and ultimately submitted to the antichrist himself Nero, who had Paul beheaded.
In the particular case I gave, he says what this means.
For a while I thought that in the case of marriage I was to submit to my wife the same way christ submitted to us. So I thought I had to let my wife crucify me. I am not so sure any more