I also think it is important for a person’s stated position to be declared. Osiek has a position and it doesn’t help to obscure that. I don’t believe that having a position deprives one of the right to speak on a subject.

For my readers in general – I would suggest generally that it is better to debate details of the comp-egal debate over at Complegalitarian, simply because there are representatives there of all sides. I’m using my position on egalitarianism as an example, and of course I understand it will be debated, and I don’t mind how much it is debated in the comments, but I don’t think we have a fully representative group here to debate all the details.

Again, please let nobody misunderstand. All the comments in this thread are welcome here. I’m just providing a link to a place where these issues will receive fuller treatment for those who want to go that way. With my next post this series is going to be moving back toward the creation-evolution debate which is where it started.

Ephesians 5 tempers patriarchy with both the golden rule and the higher standard of Christ’s own self-sacrifice. Comps and egals who do not do likewise are sub-Christian.

Taking the newness out of the new commandment is a move feminists sometimes make, on the principle that, when followed by women, it leads to their oppression. Nietzsche saw the problem, too, and regarded the new commandment as an ethic of unreconstructed slaves. Both men and women should be warned away from it.

Fine, but let’s be clear: there are anti-Christian positions. There are versions of feminism which are incompatible with Christianity, just as there are versions of patriarchalism which are incompatible with Christianity. Additionally, followers of Nietzsche who see Christianity as dehumanizing at its core cannot also be Christians.

A Christian patriarchalist marriage was and is, since there are plenty of cultures in the world today in which a form of patriarchy is in place, a humaner arrangement than a loveless egal marriage. Some of the best marriages I have witnessed are inscribed within the love-obey framework. To compare the generations upon generations of Christian women who lived out their marriage in consequence of a vow of obedience or still do as equivalent to slaves is demeaning to them, an act of moral arrogance. For example, if someone were to suggest that someone like Monica the mother of Augustine who voluntarily suffered the abuse of her godless husband was anything other than a free person, even though she had no legal rights, that would only prove that that person is incapable of making even the simplest of distinctions.

Modern feminism and the legal changes it has wrought are a gift to be received from God’s hand I believe, but are replete as well with negative unintended consequences. Both aspects need to be subject to review. Otherwise egalism has become a new religion, a fundamentalist one to boot.

Complementarianism or non-egalism of the kind taught by, for example, Emerson Eggerichs, Gary Thomas, and Sarah Sumner is practiced by millions of couples today within an egal legal framework. It is a chosen framework and cannot be compared to slavery. On a site like compegal, Marilyn Johnson, Letitia Wong, David Lang, and David McKay exemplify this kind of complementarianism. Comps of this kind are in some cases recovering egals, or were brought up by egal parents and found that unsuitable to them. Those who do not treat people who make such choices with respect are guilty of violating the golden rule.

I do not agree with Carolyn Osiek insofar as she suggests that Peter made an illegitimate comparison, with regard to either the employer-employee or the husband-wife relationship. From a counseling point of view, how much scope to allow the comparison is always a delicate matter. To be sure, there are idiot counselors who tell women and sometimes men to put up with an abusive spouse no matter what. That goes beyond the contextually plausible intent of the author of 1 Peter.

There are many men and women today – both genders – who suffer considerable abuse in the workplace, marriage, or elsewhere, endure it in the spirit 1 Peter suggests, and redeem their own lives and the lives of others in the process.

There are other men and women who suffer abuse and learn to give it back according to the means at their disposal. This is understandable but is often self-defeating. Ultimately, it may lead to a twisted personality. The movie V for Vendetta develops this theme brilliantly.

There are still other men and women who suffer abuse and endure it and have nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it. The traditional response to this kind of suffering in Judaism and Christianity is to view it as a kind of martyrdom. These are very hard questions. We just had St. Stephen’s. Religions who hold up people like Stephen as examples are not for everyone.

In the space of this comment, which is already too long, I fail to give sufficient clarificatory examples of what I mean. On the threads of compegal, I have written much more in this vein, and in more detail.

“In the Second Testament, 1 Peter 2:18-25 does something very similar to Ephesians 5:21-33 in that it holds up the unjust suffering of slaves as a mirror of the suffering of Christ, and enjoins slaves therefore to submit even to cruel masters. We have long ago rejected that comparison as illegitimate. It is time to acknowledge the same dangers in the wedding of the bride of Christ.”

In my experience a woman who pledges obedience to the authority of her husband risks being deprived of living in a relationship of mutual consent. She has forfeited consent in her vows. This is how an authority – submission relationship is lived by some today. Therefore we ought to reject the rightness of this kind of relationship because it contravenes our understanding of what it means to be human.

If we invoke 1 Cor. 13, then why not invoke the golden rule. Why not ask that a man treat the one next to him as he would be treated? Is this impossible?

I believe that it does matter who we are and what we believe. To accept the stated complementarian position that the one in authority never submits and the one in submission always submits, may be to accept the deconstruction of someone else’s mental and physical health.

But perhaps the non-Christian is in the best position to play the good samaritan in this case. A non-Christian is not confused by the apparent “plain sense” of scripture. Just as we don’t want a scientific establishment which believes in a 6 day creation 6000 years ago, we also don’t want marriage counsellors who are hampered by this verse,

“But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”

I don’t think most complementarians would apply this verse literally either, so I am not implicating them as a group. I am just pointing out that we have to have a basis for how we treat people, for deciding which verses we use literally and which we don’t. We simply cannot say that everything that can possibly be derived from the scripture text is correct or morally right.

For the rest, Carolyn Osiek, as I’ve summarized in a couple of posts, describes early Christianity as upholding a kind of love patriarchy.

The historian in me feels that she is right.

The believer in me does not think that I must be for or against complementarian marriage arrangements today. The New Testament offers many passages, 1 Cor 13 and Rom 12 for example, which make excellent touchstones to any marriage, egal or comp or compegal in style. I have friends and family who construe their marriage along a broad continuum of frameworks. The key to a healthy marriage is not framework. It is the degree to which passages like 1 Cor 13 and Rom 12 are practiced.

This deserves wide reading.