In the previous two essays, I argued that Ephesians 5:21-23 should be understood as advocating “mutual submission” rather than an “ordered hierarchy.” What follows will respond to objections to this interpretation.

Objection 1

The meaning of “submission” must come from verse 21, not from verse 22. Since wives are told to “submit” to their husbands in verse 22, this submission of subordinates to superiors is what “submission” means.

In the previous essay, I pointed out that in his commentary on Ephesians, Peter O’Brien denies that the pronoun allēlois (“to one another”) is “reciprocal,” claiming rather that verse 21 is calling for a submission of subordinates to those in authority over them. O’Brien recognizes that there is no imperative “submit” in verse 22, and that any command to submit must be implied as carried over from the participial phrase in verse 21 – “submitting to one another.” Nonetheless, he claims that the “flow of the argument” in verse 21 is “a programmatic statement which introduces the topic of ‘submission,’ and thus is developed in the household table of 5:22-6:9.” Since there is no verb in verse 22, the idea of submission must be “unpacked”: “It is as though the apostle is saying: ‘Submit to one another, and what I mean is wives submit to your husbands, children to your parents, and slaves to your master.’” Any other reading would be [t]o interpret v. 21 by abstracting it from the context . . .”¹

In its “Response” to the essay “Women n Holy Orders,” written by myself and TSM NT Professor and ACNA Bishop Grant LeMarquand, the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word takes a similar approach. At first, the writers of the “Response” seem to disagree with O’Brien (as well as a review of my book Icons of Christ by Matthew Colvin) in acknowledging that the “submission” in verse 21 is indeed mutual: “It is true that the word’ translated ‘submit’ in Ephesians 5:22 is borrowed from the previous verse. . .” They also acknowledge that the word translated “submit” in verse 21 “should be carried over to 5:22. If Paul intended otherwise he would have needed to supply a verb for 5:22.” They continue to write: “It is also true that Ephesians 5:21 establishes a general principle: that all Christians must humble themselves, submit to, and serve one another” (Response, 55). So far, I would be in complete agreement.

They continue, however: “How does this principle play itself out in various contexts: husbands and wives, children and parents, slaves and masters? Paul does not answer that question by suggesting there are no more hierarchies. . . . Paul does not do away with the role distinctions or hierarchy in marriages, in family, in labor. Rather, the gospel transforms these hierarchies so that they are no longer exploitative. The leaders and those led are also brothers and sisters, equals before Christ. The one who takes the leadership role, therefore, must seek to give himself over for the good of those he leads, just as Christ came to serve rather than be served. And those who are in subordinates roles serve as if they are serving Christ himself” (“Response,” 55).

It is clear then that the “Response” understands the leader of the household to be playing the role of Christ as one who who rules over subordinates. This becomes even more clear on the next page, when the “Response” claims that the “typological witness” between marriage and Christ and the church “itself militates against Drs. LeMarquand and Witt’s egalitarin reading”: “Does Jesus submit to the Church? No. Does he serve and give himself up for her? Yes. Does the Church submit to Jesus? Yes. Is Jesus’ rule tyrannical. No. Is the Church’s submission coerced? By no means” (“Response,” 56).

Although not stated explicitly, the implications are clear: Does the husband submit to the wife? No. Does the wife submit to the husband? Yes. Is the husband’s rule tyrannical? No. Is the wife’s submission coerced? By no means. In a previous essay, I addressed the error of importing into the comparison between the metaphor of Christ as “head” and the male or husband as “head” aspects of Jesus Christ’s identity that are not actually mentioned in the context. Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior of the church. However, the husband does not occupy that place in marriage. Rather, the example that Jesus provides for all the members of the household in Ephesians 5 and 6 is found in Ephesians 5:2: “Walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling offering.” Despite their earlier apparent acknowledgment that “all Christians submit to one another,” the “Response” makes clear that while husbands seek the good of their wives, they do not submit to them, and thus the submission is not actually mutual. Thus the model that Christ provides for husbands is not the model of self-sacrifice that Paul actually mentions in Ephesians 5, but the role of “authority over” that he does not. While the rule of the husband over the wife is not “tyrannical,” the husband does indeed rule the wife as Christ rules the church, and the wife submits to the husband. Never the reverse.

To the contrary, there are three reasons why interpreting the meaning of verse 21 through verse 22 rather than the reverse is mistaken. (more…)

In the previous essay, I laid down the preliminary background for addressing the question of whether in Paul’s discussion of relations between husbands and wives in Ephesians 5 he was advocating “mutual submission” or rather an “ordered hierarchy.” In this essay, I move from preliminaries to address the specific claim that Paul is not advocating “mutual submission” between husbands and wives, but rather an “ordered hierarchy” in which husbands exercise a hierarchical authority over wives – wives submit to husbands in marriage, but never the reverse.

Is “Submitting to One Another” in the Middle Voice?

In “Chapter 7: Mutual Submission” of Icons of Christ (Baylor University Press, 2020), I make the argument in pages 99-112 that Paul is advocating “mutual submission” in Ephesians 5:21-32. Toward the end of that discussion, I have a two-paragraph summary of Paul’s use of the two words ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις (hypotassomenoi allēlois, “submitting yourselves to one another”), which I identify as the “two key words” in verse 21. The next two sentences read: “The root word υποτάσσομαι (hypotassomai) is in the middle voice. It literally means ‘to place oneself under.’” At the end of the paragraph, I write “Hypotassomai does not mean ‘obey; and it is neither in the active voice (a command given) nor in the passive (a command received). Paul is not urging Christians to exercise power over other Christians or asking Christians to submit to those in power. Rather, he is calling for them to voluntarily subject themselves to one another, to ‘opt out of the power struggle’”(Icons, 110).

Earlier, I had written: “The Greek words translated ‘submit’ or ‘submission’ in the New Testament are usually ὑποταγη (hypotagē) or ὑποτάσσω (hypotassō). Generally, the words simply mean the ordering of one thing under another. Sometimes the words mean what ‘submission’ normally means in English, the involuntary obedience to an external authority. . . . However, when used with the middle voice (which has to do with actions that one does to oneself), the term can take on the sense of a voluntary submission to another person out of love, humility, or compassion” (Icons, 92).

This is the full extent of my discussion of the “middle voice” in Icons of Christ. Note that only two sentences actually use the words “middle voice,” while a third states that hypotassomai is neither in the active voice nor the passive voice– a total of three sentences out of a book of 439 pages. My comments about “middle voice” have some relevance to the discussion, but they serve to provide support for my main argument. Those sentences could be entirely omitted from the book, and nothing would be lost.

One of my favorite internet memes shows a person with a smug look on his face accompanied by the following tagline: “That moment when someone hits you with the impeccable argument but you realize they misspelled one word at the beginning.” In my initial response to Matthew Colvin’s review of my book, I noted that “Colvin regularly cites isolated passages from my book, writes as if this single statement were my entire position, and then quibbles about some detail in the isolated passage.” I would add that Colvin substitutes pedantry for argument several times in his review.¹

Colvin’s discussion of my chapter on “Mutual Submission” is just such an example of focusing on isolated sentences, while ignoring the surrounding context and argument. Colvin states that “philology, while opaque to a reader with no Greek, is very near the fulcrum of theology: the determination of what the words of Scripture actually mean is prior to the task of building theology on those words. Small changes close to the philological fulcrum can then turn into huge changes when they are traced out on the theological perimeter.” Colvin then turns to my three sentences on “middle voice”: “Following Alan Padgett, Witt claims that the verb υποτάσσομαι in Eph. 5:21-22 . . . has a distinct voluntary meaning in the middle (92, 110). But in the first place, the middle voice in Greek cannot be equated with a reflexive self-determined action. Second, contrary to Witt’s assertion that ‘Hypotassomai does not mean’ obey’ and it is neither in the active voice (a command given) nor in the passive (a command received), we must note that the participle in Eph. 5:21 could very well be morphologically passive, and that the passive of this verb does in fact mean ‘obey.’”

Colvin engages in a bit of misdirection for the uninformed reader here. If by his statement “the middle voice in Greek cannot be equated with a reflexive self-determined action,” Colvin means that this is not always the case, he is correct. However, if he means that the middle voice is never reflexive, this is not correct. My old Greek grammar lists four uses of the middle voice. The first “refers to the results of the action directly to the agent, with a reflexive force.” The third use “represent[s] the agent as voluntarily yielding himself to the results of the action, or seeking to secure the results of the action in his own interest.”² Both of these are reflexive. They are actions done by the agent either to the self or on behalf of the self.

Likewise, as I point out on page 92, hypotassō literally means the “ordering of one thing under another,” and that sometimes it can mean the “involuntary obedience to an external authority.” I don’t state that the “verb has a distinct voluntary meaning in the middle,” but that when used in the middle, the “term can take on the sense of a voluntary submission” (emphasis added) That does not mean that the term has a “distinct voluntary meaning in the middle” (emphasis added), but that context would indicate whether the submission is voluntary.

Again, Colvin is correct when he states that “the passive and middle voices are not morphologically distinguished in the present tense of Greek verbs.” However, again, as my old Greek grammar states: “Since the middle and passive have in several tenses forms alike, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. The matter must be determined by the context and the meaning of the verbal idea.”³ A glance back to page 110 where I had used the expression “middle voice” shows that I followed this with: “Context determines meaning. The verb can mean involuntary submission to an authority . . . . However, the context of Ephesians is quite different from the military or political context associated with [involuntary submission]. The entire context of the passage understands submission as the voluntatry taking on the role of a servant . . . .” (emphasis added).

Given that only context can determine whether hypotassomenoi allēlois is middle voice or passive, does Colvin actually claim that it is passive, and on what grounds? Alternatively, what do NT scholars themselves say? Colvin does not actually make an argument for the passive, nor does he indicate how he would translate the verse except to say that if it is passive, it would mean “obey.” However, since passive voice would demand a subject performing the action which is passively received, the only subject supplied by the text would have to be allēlois – “one another.” But this just gets us back to where we started from. If everyone is obeying “one another,” then the submission would be both mutual and voluntary. (more…)

Ephesians 5 has been crucial to the debate on women’s ordination because of the English translations of Ephesians 5:22-24, translated as does the ESV: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”

At first read, the passage seems to teach that women should submit to their husbands, and that this submission is unqualified and universal: “submit in everything to their husbands.” The submission also seems to be absolute. As Christ is “head” of the church and has absolute authority over the church, so the husband is the “head” of his wife. As Christ’s authority over the church is absolute, so, it might seem, is the husband’s authority over his wife.

In the essay “Women in Holy Orders,” written by myself and NT Professor and ACNA Bishop Grant LeMarquand at the request of the ACNA College of Bishops, we devoted only three pages to this passage (because of requested page-length limitation), and only an additional paragraph to the controverted interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:2-15, the other NT passage where Paul uses the metaphor of “head” to describe relationships between men and women. However, in my book Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination (Baylor University Press, 2020), I devoted two full chapters (Chapters 7 and 8, pages 99-144) to discussing these two passages.

“Complementarian” Protestant evangelical opponents of women’s ordination have made this passage a centerpiece of their argument, as may be seen in the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word’s Response to our original essay. In addition, Matthew Colvin echoes complementarian arguments in his negative review of my book.

In each case, the “Response” (and Colvin) repeat standard complementarian talking points.

First, following Complementarian author Wayne Grudem, the Response insists that kephalē (the Greek word translated “head”) when used by Paul as a metaphor in Ephesians 5:23 and 1 Corinthians 11:3 must mean “authority over” (“Response,” 59-67). The “Response” devotes more space to this claim than to almost any other topic in their essay. Similarly, Colvin dismisses the discussion of kephalē in my book as “commit[ing] errors of lexicographical method.” Colvin defends Grudem: “If Grudem has Philo and the LXX from before the NT on his side, then he has the main texts of Judaic Greek on his side.” Because of its centrality to the discussion, I have already devoted three essays to the question of whether Paul’s use of the metaphor kephalē means “authority over.” Contrary to Colvin, Grudem does not have the “main texts of Judaic Greek on his side.” See my essays:

“Response to the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word: Does ‘head’ mean ‘authority’ in Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11? Part One”

“Response to the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word: Does ‘head’ mean ‘authority’ in Ephesians 5? Part Two”

“Response to the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word: Does “head” mean authority over in 1 Corinthians 11? Part Three”

Second, the “Response” claims that Paul’s use of the word that the ESV translates as the imperative “submit” indicates a hierarchy of authority: “Obey your parents, [Paul] tells the children. Obey your masters, he tells the slaves. Paul does not do away with role distinctions or hierarchy in marriage, in families, or in labor. Rather, the Gospel transforms these hierarchies so that they are no longer exploitative” (“Response,” 55). Similarly, Colvin insists that Ephesians 6 “gives the lie to the reciprocal and mutual submission that Padgett and Witt claim: slaves are commanded to obey masters, and children obey parents, but no reciprocal obedience or submission is enjoined upon masters and parents.”

Third, the “Response” draws on the parallel that Paul makes between Christ as the “head” of the church and the husband as the “head” of the wife to claim that as Christ exercises authority over the church, so the husband necessarily has authority over his wife: “For Paul, marriage is a living typological witness to the Gospel. It ‘refers’ to Christ and his Church. . . . . This typology itself militates against Drs. LeMarquand and Witt’s egalitarian reading. Does Jesus submit to his Church? No. Does he serve her and give himself up for her? Yes. Does the Church submit to Jesus? Yes. Is Jesus’ rule tyrannical? No. Is the Church’s submission coerced? By no means” (“Response,” 56).

I had already addressed this conflation of Christ’s authority with the husband’s authority here: “Throughout the Response, the authors regularly conflate the issue of Christ’s authority as God incarnate and Redeemer of sinful humanity with the authority husbands exercise over wives without regard to the actual language Paul uses or the context in which he uses it.”

Given that I have already addressed the issue of Paul’s use of the kephalē metaphor at length and conflation of the husband’s authority with Christ’s authority, the following three essays will focus rather on the question of hierarchy and authority in marriage. Specifically, in Ephesians 5, does Paul understand the relationship in marriage between husbands and wives as one of reciprocity and “mutual submission,” or does Paul rather advocate what P. T. O’Brien, in a commentary cited by Colvin in his criticism of my book, calls an “ordered hierarchy” of top-down ruling over and being ruled?¹

(more…)