But the command for wives to submit occurs three times in the New Testament (see also Col. 5:21), so the rest of the passage must imply mutual submission. I tried, for instance, to argue that in the Greek, the word translated “submit” appears only in the previous verse, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. Gospel RolesĪt first, I tried to explain the shock away. Jesus, in countercultural gospel fashion, had elevated women. This seemed to imply a hierarchy at odds with men and women’s equal status as image bearers of God. My third problem was the idea that the husband was the “head” of the wife. It is quite another to offer that kind of submission to a fallible, sinful man. It is one thing to submit to Jesus Christ, the self-sacrificing King of the universe. My second problem was with the idea that wives should submit to their husbands as to the Lord. I knew women were just as competent as men. I was now studying in a majority-male college. I came from an academically driven, equality-oriented, all-female high school. I was an undergraduate at Cambridge when I first wrestled with Paul’s instruction, in Ephesians, for wives to “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (5:22, ESV). Here’s the full list of CT’s 2020 Book Award winners. An excerpt from CT’s Beautiful Orthodoxy Book of the Year.
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