Wives, Obey Your Husbands?

Why Egalitarians and Complementarians Are Wrong About Marriage

With the recent release of Rachel Held Evan's book, "A Year of Biblical Womanhood", the fires of debate over women in marriage have been stoked. However, today, I want to refer to her blog post "Submission in Context: Christ and the Greco-Roman Household Codes". In her post, she argues that since our culture is not the ancient culture of that time, Paul's commandments don't apply to marriages today:

The question modern readers have to answer is whether the Greco-Roman household codes reflected upon in Ephesians, Colossians, and 1 Peter are in and of themselves holy and divinely instituted, or if their appearance in Scripture represents the early church’s attempt to blend Christianity and culture in such a way that it would preserve the dignity of adherents while honoring prevailing social and legal norms of the day.

But I think she's missing something...

It's not about culture or commandments, it's about a contract

On my Ephesians Revealed blog, I write about "Honoring the Contract":

Marriages in ancient times were different than they are today. They were usually based on written contracts that both families agreed to before the marriage took place. The most common Roman marriage contract was called "Conventio in Manum" and it made the wife subject to the husband. This is most likely the type of marriages that Paul was dealing with in Ephesus. We no longer have written contracts in marriages today and so Paul's words no longer apply to marriages in that respect.

Although the contracts were part of that culture, the issue is not centered on the culture but on keeping one's word and not breaking the contract.

Of course, we don't have marriage contracts today. We have "vows" spoken verbally. Check out these "wedding vows that everyone is talking about":



They're in love. The vows express that love. I get it. But those vows don't address the conflict that may arise when they have to make hard financial decisions or when they disagree on an aspect of raising their children. In the ancient world that was resolved by putting the husband in charge of everything. The problem is most marriages haven't replaced that system with anything else. I know two business owners that share a business and each owns 50%. When they disagree, things get ugly. Wise business owners know that they need to establish a conflict resolution process or specify a mediator in writing before going into business together. How much more important is a marriage than a business? I think it would be prudent to counsel those about to be married to talk about how they will resolve conflicts. It doesn't have to be a contract but it might be a good idea to write it down.

Now there are those that might say a marriage isn't a contract but a unconditional covenant. Well, I would say that covenants are NOT unconditional and are very similar to contracts.

Why Weren't They Submitting?

I think most would assume that the wives in the New Testament weren't submitting because they simply wanted equality (egalitarian) or that they simply being sinful (complimentarian). However, I believe the context suggests that false teachings were causing them to not submit for theological reasons, specifically dealing with Lordship. In other words, in some instances, the authority of Christ was trumping the authority of their husband. Paul responds by saying they are both "Lord" in different senses and in a way that doesn't conflict with each other. We see hints of the master/slave relationships having the same problem in the New Testament e.g. "no man can serve two masters".