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.

As evidence for “passive voice,” Colvin refers to Liddel Scott and Jones, who cite it as passive, but he does not elaborate beyond the mere reference. Colvin also refers approvingly for “helpful exegesis” to P. T. O’Brien’s commentary on Ephesians as well as an “excellent review of Padgett” by John K. Nordling. However, although O’Brien has a footnote in which he states that G. W. Dawes “interprets these instances . . . as passives rather than examples of the middle voice,” in the main text, O’Brien follows Markus Barth, whom he cites as identifying the voice as middle. Elsewhere, O’Brien specifically identifies the voice as “middle” and “voluntary.”⁴ Nordling states, in what Colvin calls his “excellent review,” “After all, the present participle ὑποτασσόμενοι does indeed occur in the middle voice (“submitting yourselves”) . . .”

In the book cited by O’Brien, Dawes does think that the construction is passive, although he acknowledges that middle is a possibility, in which case the construction would be “reflexive.” Dawes’ objection against the middle voice is that Greek more normally uses active voice plus a reflexive pronoun to express the reflexive, but as noted above, standard grammars indicate that at least two uses of the middle are reflexive. More important, Dawes does not at all draw from this the conclusion that Colvin wants. Dawes claims that in conjunction with allēlois, the meaning must be reciprocal, that is “mutual subordination.”⁵

A helpful essay on the topic occurs in G. Delling’s article on ὑποτασσω in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 8. (Given this multiple-volume dictionary occurred decades before the current disagreements, it cannot be accused of having been biased by current discussions.)⁶ Delling states concerning ὑποτασσω that “its considerable range of meaning should be noted, especially in the middle,” and that “the subordination expressed may be either compulsory or voluntary” (41). The middle occurs only once in the NT in the sense of compulsion (Lk. 10:17). The middle is used in describing Christ’s subjection to God in 1 Cor. 15:28, and to Jesus “subordinat[ing]” himself to his parents (Luke 2:52). Delling recognizes a parallel here to Ephesians 5:22-24, which he places in the “middle voice.”

Delling concludes that throughout the NT, the use of the word in exhortations suggests a “readiness to renounce one’s own will for the sake of others” – that is, the submission is voluntary. A word that formerly belonged to world order is “filled with new content”: “In exhortation the middle embraces a whole series of meanings from subjection to authority on the one side to considerate submission to others on the other,” that is, what I have called “mutual submission.” Detailed meaning can only be determined by “material context,” but there is now a “specific Christian basis,” as “the community is subject to Christ” (45).

Is hypotassomenoi allēlois in the “middle voice”? Colvin’s claim that “Witt repeats the errors of Padgett” could leave the impression that I am echoing a single lone author, but In addition to Delling’s TDNT article and Padgett, prominent NT scholar Ben Witherington, III also claims that the voice is middle.⁷ Only context can decide the outcome, but the general context of Ephesians 5 is that of following Christ’s example in self-sacrifice to others, not that of some ruling over others. In that context, “middle voice” makes more sense than passive. However, as Dawes’ book makes clear, reading hypotassomenoi as passive still leads irrevocably to “mutual submission.” Moreover, other scholars do not address the question of middle or passive voice at all, but still argue for “mutual submission” in Ephesians 5, for example, Craig S. Keener and Philip Payne.⁸

I mentioned above that Colvin’s review often focuses on isolated passages in my book. This would be another example in which Colvin places too much weight on three sentences in my book. Whether hypotassomenoi is middle voice or passive is not a hill on which I am willing to die, nor do I need to. I am still willing to align myself with biblical scholars like Witherington, who are certainly more competent in this area than am I, a Systematic Theologian. But in the end, it does not matter. Crucial to Paul’s context is the meaning of the joined word allēlois, translated in English “to one another,” and that does matter.

Submitting to One Another, or Some Submitting to Others?

As will become clear in what follows, the crucial issue in the discussion of the two words hypotassomenoi allēlois is not whether hypotassomenoi is in the middle voice, but the meaning of allēlois. Here we discover an intractable disagreement. Does the expression “submitting to one another” mean that in a reciprocal manner Person A and Person B mutually submit to one another, or, rather, does it mean that Person B always and consistently submits to Person A, who is in a position of hierarchical authority over Person B? In other words, is Paul in Ephesians talking about “mutual submission” or what complementarians regularly refer to as top-down submission within an “ordered hierarchy”?

In Icons of Christ, I wrote that allēlois “means not that some Christians submit to others, but that all Christians submit to one another. . . . Paul is asking not for a submission of some Christians to others, but of all Christians to one another. Paul is deliberately challenging the traditional top-down hierarchy of the ancient ‘house-hold codes’” (111).

Against this, Colvin claims that “[b]oth Witt and Padgett also stress the dative ἀλλήλοις (“submitting to one another”) as though it proved mutuality and reciprocity; it does not.” Colvin appeals to a passage in the 6^th century BC philosopher Xenophanes who claimed that the gods engaged in the shameful behavior of “stealing, committing adultery, and deceiving one another.” Writes Colvin: “Xenophanes does not mean that whenever one of the gods tricked another, the second also deceived the first. He means, as does Paul . . . that within the collective group, some are doing the action in question to others.” Colvin does not actually prove his point here. Did Xenophanes mean that Zeus always deceives Hera, but Hera never deceives Zeus? While each god might not consistently deceive every other god on every occasion, the most plausible reading of the passage would be that each one of the gods were regularly engaged in deception of other gods, so that, on any given occasion, the same god might be either deceiver or deceived. Nothing in the context would suggest that Xenophanes believed that one particular group of gods was routinely deceiving another particular group, and that there was no reciprocity in the deception. Rather, the deception would indeed be mutual, just not that of every god on every occasion.

Complementarians regularly use this claim that allēlous (nominative, “one another”) means not reciprocal behavior, but that some in a group perform an action to others in a group, to argue that Paul was not referring to mutual submission, but to subordinates in the family submitting to the head of the family. For example, Peter O’Brien claims that Rev. 6:4 (“men slay one another”) cannot be reciprocal because not every single person slew every other person.⁹ Against this, Dawes points out correctly that in any cases where allēlous would not be mutual, there is something about the context that makes plain that it demands a more restrictive sense. There is nothing in the context of Ephesians 5 that would suggest such restriction. In addition, concerning Rev. 6:4, Philip Payne points out correctly that uses of the reciprocal pronoun allēlous always refers to some reciprocal situation involving the group: “wherever there is a reciprocal pronoun there is a reciprocity.”¹⁰ Not every individual in Rev. 6:4 killed every other individual, but the reciprocal pronoun means that collectively (as a whole) each of the individuals were involved in killing other individuals in the group, not that some specific members of the group were killing other specified members of the group.

More important, one determines what an author means by a word or expression by how the same author uses it elsewhere, not how it was used by Xenophanes centuries earlier, or how it was used in Rev. 6:4.. Paul’s meaning is determined by his parallel use of a word or expression. I pointed this out in Icons in the sentence immediately following my initial claim that “all Christians submit to one another,” pointing out that Paul uses the word allēlous in Eph. 4:2 (“bearing one another’s burdens”), 4:25 (“we are members of one another”), and 4:32 (“Be kind to one another.”). “In each case,” I wrote, “the context makes clear that the behavior is mutual, and that the context is the ‘servant love’ and ‘mutual submission’ that all Christians exercise toward one another, and which is modeled on Christ’s own self-sacrificial giving to the church” (Icons, 110). Paul does not mean that only some members of the church should always bear the burden of other members, and this is never reciprocated. Paul cannot mean that only some Christians should be kind to other Christians, and that only some Christians should love other Christians. As Payne points out, “Every occurrence of ἀλλήλων in Paul’s letters fits its identification . . . as ‘the reciprocal pronoun’ with the English equivalents, ‘each other, one another, mutually’” (Payne, 279, emphasis added). See Rom. 1:12, 27; 2:15; 12:5, 10 (twice), 16; 13:8; 14:13, 19; 15:5, 7, 14; 16:16; 1 Cor. 7:5; 11:33; 12:25; 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; Gal. 5:13, 15 (twice), 17, 26 (twice),; Eph. 4:2, 25, 32; Phil. 2:3; Col. 3:9, 13; 1 Thess. 3:12, 4:9, 18; 5:11, 15; 2 Thess. 1:3; Tit. 3:3. Given Paul’s consistent use not only in Ephesians, but throughout his writings, “submitting to one another” must have the same universality as the commands to love and serve one another. To claim otherwise is question-begging.

Against any reading of “mutual submission,” and responding to Dawes’ insistence that any restriction of the meaning of allēlois must be demonstrated from context, O’Brien claims the meaning must rather be determined by “the semantic range” of hypotassomai, which he insists, always refers to a “hierarchical order in relationships,” and that the term “should not be assigned a meaning that is outside its semantic range.” Crucial for O’Brien is the “meaning of the verb rendered ‘submit’ . . . . The word does not describe a ‘symmetrical’ relationship since it always has to do with an ordered relationship in which one person is ‘over’ and another ‘under’” (emphasis added). O’Brien claims that v. 21 is a “general heading urging Spirit-filled believers to be submissive or subordinate. The particular ways in which Christians are to submit to others are then specified in the household table for wives, children, and servants (sic). It is not mutual submission that is in view . . . but submission to appropriate authorities” (O’Brien, 403, 401-402).

In the initial paragraph of this section, I pointed to an “intractable disagreement.” Those advocating for “mutual submission” point to the ordinary meaning of the pronoun allēlous, and its reciprocal nature, and to Paul’s use of the term in other contexts, to make the case that in Eph. 5:21, the submission to which Paul appeals must be reciprocal. To the contrary, complementarians (such as O’Brien) point to the necessarily “hierarchical” meaning of the corresponding participle hypotassomenoi to make the claim that the submission cannot be reciprocal. If this disagreement is to be resolved, it cannot be done simply by appealing to the lexical meaning of the words simply in themselves, but must look to the context in which the words are used.

Does hypotassō always refer to an ordered hierarchy?

The Greek word hypotassō literally means to “place under something,” or to add to something. Plutarch writes that the letters of Ignatius “are appended [hypottetagmenai] to this letter.”¹¹ Particularly in military or political contexts, it can mean an involuntary obedience to an exterrnal authority. The Greek LXX translation of the Old Testament uses hypotassō to speak of “the tribute of those who were subject to King Solomon” (1 Kings 10:15).¹²

Biblical scholars like O’Brien (and those evangelical complementarians who follow them) claim this is the only meaning the word can have – that it always implies some kind of relationship to an authority figure in a hierarchical relationship of superiority to inferiority. In the context of Ephesians 5:21, the question concerns whether this is always the case.

Egalitarian scholars point to counter-examples. For example, 2 Maccabees 13:23 states that Antiochus V “yielded” (hypetagē) to the army of Judas Maccabeus. Antiochus would not have recognized this as submitting to the higher authority of Jacobus Maccabeus (Payne, 40). The following three examples from the NT show that hypotassō cannot always mean “submitting to a higher authority”:

1) 1 Cor. 14:32 states that the “spirits of the prophets are subject (ὑποτάσσεται) to the control of the prophets.”

2) The brothers in Corinth are urged to submit (ὑποτάσσησθε) themselves to the household of Stephanas. Payne points out that there must have been at least one slave or other person in the household of Stephanas who was in a lower position of authority than other church members (See Payne, 282).

3) Romans 8:20 states that as a result of sin, the creation was subjected (ὑπετάγη) to vanity by the will of the one (God) subjecting (ὑποτάξαντα) it in hope. The creation is not, however, in a state of hierarchical obedience or subordination to “vanity.”

Delling and Marcus Barth¹³ point out that in the NT, when used in the active voice, the power of ὑποτάσσω is “attributed to God alone,” and with the exception of Rom. 8:20, the passages are Christological (1 Cor. 15:26-28; Rom. 8:20; Phil. 3:21; Eph. 1:21-22). In all these cases, there is indeed a hierarchical relation. However, Barth points out that there is never any promise of the gospel to those thus subordinated, and there is nothing voluntary about it (Delling, 41; Barth, 709-10).

Both Delling and Barth contrast this use of the active voice in the NT with its use in the middle (or passive). Delling points out that the middle (as a passive aorist) is used only once in the sense of compulsion (Luke 10:17): “Elsewhere it denotes voluntary subordination in a rich development of non-biblical beginnings” (Delling, 42). Barth contrasts the active statements about involuntary subordination with “middle or passive indicatives, participles or imperatives of the verb ‘subordinate.’” These, he writes, “are entirely different when they concern the subordination of Christ, all members of the church, saints with prophetic gifts, or wives, children and slaves.” The submission here is “voluntary,” and Paul “expects this kind of subordination only of Christ and of persons who are ‘in Christ,’ . . . . who know how faith, hope, and love qualify the fear of the Lord” (Barth, 710).

Such voluntary subordination appears in Jesus, who submitted himself to his parents (Luke 15:21), and to God the Father (1 Cor. 15:28), and in the church, where those who are young submit (ὑποτάγητε) to the elders, but the elders in turn act as shepherds to God’s flock, and all submit themselves to one another (πάντες δὲ ἀλλήλοις), clothed with humility (τὴν ταπεινοφροσύνην ἐγκομβώσασθε) (1 Pet. 5:5,KJV).

There is then, in the NT, an active use of hypotassō, in which those who are the enemies of either God or Christ, involuntarily submit to their authority. In contrast, when used in the middle or passive voice, the term has a voluntary sense, and refers to either Christ or to those Christians who submit themselves to Christ or one another in love.

Given this distinction, what would be the argument that hypotassomenoi allēlois in Ephesians 5:21 refers not to a submission of a particular group of subordinates (wives, children, and slves) to those in a position of hierarchical authority over them (husbands, fathers, and slave owners), but a mutual and voluntary subordination of all to one another?

Where does hypotassomai fit into the context of Ephesians 5?

Crucial to the interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 is that it is a transitional verse directed to all members of the audience. This is shown in that the participle is masculine plural, and is dependent on the preceding verb “be filled” (verse 18, Witherington, 316). In its context, verse 21 is the last of a series of participles (verses 18-21), each of which is unrestricted. As the last of that series of participles, allēlois would have the same extent as the other participles. As I wrote in Icons: “All Christians are to be filled with the Spirit (by) singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, (2) by giving thank to God the Father, and (3) by being subject to one another. Wives are not uniquely to submit to husbands any more than only some Christians should sing psalms and hymns or give thanks to God the Father. The submission that is asked for in verse 21 is a mutual submission of all Christians” (Icons, p. 109).

As noted in the previous essay, the context of the entire passage is Christological, following from the exhortation in 5:1-2. Repeating my translation from the previous essay: “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as also Christ loved (ἠγάπησεν, ēgapēsen) you and gave himself up on our behalf, a sacrifice to God as a sweet-smelling offering . . . [B]e filled with the Spirit, by (1) speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord, (2) giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father, (3) being subject/subjecting yourselves (ὑποτασσόμενοι, hypotassomenoi)to one another . . .” Again, some Christians are not to submit uniquely to others any more than only some Christians would walk in love, be filled with the Spirit, sing psalms and hymns, and give thanks to the Father. Witherington points out that “The verse calls for mutual submission of all Christian to each other, and is not specifically directed to marital partners, but certainly includes them.” Since there is no verb in 22, the meaning of 22 can only be found from 21, which would mean it is not a gender-specific activity (Witheringon, 316-317).

Moreover, given that every other example of Paul’s use of allēlōn is reciprocal and unrestricted, this would have to be the meaning here. The extent of hypotassomenoi would be determined by allēlois, not the reverse. Witherington responds to the position of those like O’Brien who claim that verse 21 means that one should submit to those to whom one ought to submit, that is, to those in authority: “But this is surely wrong. Paul could easily have said to submit to those in charge of the congregation, but he does not do so. He says ‘submit yourselves’ (no limitation as to who is involved) ‘to one another’ (no limitation as to who is involved)” (Witherington, n173, 316).

Concerning the issue of mutuality, Witherington writes that O’Brien “engages in special pleading.” Meaning must be determined by context, and nothing in the context suggests that anyone is exempt from submitting or that anyone is not someone to submit to. Witherington states that O’Brien “fails to come to grips” with the dependence of the participle on “be filled”: “All the actions from singing to to giving thanks to submitting are called for by Paul of all the audience, not just some” (Witherington n173, 317).

Of final significance in this regard is the crucial observation from Michael Gorman, in his book Cruciformity that the principle verbs addressed to husbands and wives in verses 5:21-5:25 are drawn from the general imperatives earlier addressed to everyone earlier in the passage.¹⁴ I include the following chart, based on Gorman, and included in page 111 of Icons:

Wives

5:21 All must be subject to one another in the respect (fear) of Christ (ἐν φόβῳ Χριστοῦ, in phobō Christou).

5:22, 24 Wives, [being subject] to your husbands as to the Lord . . . Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives [are to be subject] to their husbands in all things.

5:33 . . . a wife should respect (φοβῆται, phobētai) her husband.

Husbands

5:2 All must walk in love (περιπατεῖτε ἐν ἀγάπῃ, peripateite in agapē) as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

5:25 Husbands must love (ἀγαπᾶτε, agapate) their wives as Christ loved the church by giving himself up for it.

In each case, what is being asked of husbands and wives is not different from what is being asked of all Christians. Wives are subject to their husbands in the same manner as all Christians are subject to one another. Wives respect their husbands in the same manner as all Christians respect Christ. Husbands love their wives in the same manner as all Christians walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. Wives are not to submit to their husbands in an exclusive manner without husbands returning that submission any more than husbands should love their wives without expecting mutual love from their wives. As Gorman writes, “[W]ives and husbands alike are being called to act out in marriage the same type of self-sacrificing, respectful, submissive love they would in any and all relationships within the believing community” (Gorman, Cruciformity, 265).

Finally, as pointed out above, Paul provides a Christological model as the paradigm for all Christians to follow, and it is not the model of Christ as ruler, but the model of the crucified Jesus Christ who voluntarily became a servant, who loved the church and gave himself up for it (Eph. 5:1-2). All Christians “submit themselves” to one another by imitating Christ’s example of servanthood. Wives take up Christ’s example of servanthood in relation to their husbands. Husbands take up Christ’s example by loving their wives “as Christ loved the church,” by giving himself to death. Children obey their parents “in the Lord.” Fathers do not provoke their children, and bring them up in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Slaves obey their masters “as servants of Christ,” while masters must recognize that they too are servants who have a common master. More shocking given Paul’s first-century context, is the reciprocal behavior Paul expects from masters to servants: “Masters, do the same things to them” (literal translation).

This last point is one of the more serious oversights of hierarchalists who draw conclusions from Paul’s parallel between husbands and wives and Christ and the church. In their “Response,” the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word wrote: “Jesus never relinquished his role as Lord and Master. . . . While the Son may not be eternally subordinate to the Father, the Church will be eternally subordinate to Christ. . . . Cruciform spirituality, whether we speak of the relationship between husband and wife, father and children, or master and servant, does not undo hierarchy and subordination, it defines, sanctifies, and heals it” (53). Later, they state: “What is odd, however, is that for Drs LeMarquand and Witt, as opposed to Paul who commands their wives to submits to husbands just as Christ submits to the Church, such notions are antithetical to hierarchy and subordination” (65). Finally, concerning Christ’s sacrifice, they ask: “Does Jesus submit to the 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. The relationship between Christ and his Church is one of mutual self-giving sacrifice and cruciform spirituality, but it is also marked by Christ’s kingship and our willing submission” (56).

Key to the above quotations is that the “Response” draws on Paul’s metaphorical comparison between husband and wife and Christ and the church to conclude that because Christ necessarily has a hierarchical relationship to and is an authority over the church that the husband must necessarily have a similar relationship to his wife. I have already addressed this in an earlier essay as “the mistake of conflating the authority and tasks that Jesus Christ exercises as the exalted Lord and Redeemer of the church, and the tasks that husbands play in relation to their wives.” In that essay, I wrote: “Husbands are indeed like Christ in loving their wives; however, husbands are not like Christ in redeeming their wives from sin; nor does Paul say that husbands are like Christ in ruling over their wives. Noting not only the similarities, but also the differences in the analogy between Christ and the church and husbands and wives is crucial for interpreting Paul’s language correctly.”

Failing to note not only the similarities, but also the differences between husband and wife and Christ and the church is to read the passages directly contrary to the way in which Paul develops his argument. All members of the church are expected to follow Christ’s example (not just husbands), but the way that they do so is through cruciform imitation.

Paradoxically, as Alan Padgett has noted, there is indeed a way in which Christ “submits” to the church: “If Paul is calling for a mutual submission between husband and wife, and if there is a clear and profound analogy drawn with Christ and his bride, the church, it follows that Christ must also submit to the church.” The statement is certainly provocative, but Padgett qualifies it: “I am not arguing that Christ submits to the church in a permanent role-hierarchy but rather that Jesus took up freely and lovingily the role of a servant during his earthly ministry for the benefit of all who believe on his name.”¹⁵

Padgett further qualifies what he means: “Jesus submits to the church by freely becoming a servant in his earthly ministry, especially in his passion and death for us. This is a mutual subordination, not a permanent and external subordination. . . . The consistent teaching of the New Testament is that Jesus has indeed taken up the role of a servant out of love for us. A relationship of mutual subordination exists between Christ and his bride, the church; therefore we should now love and serve one another out of reverence for the Lord who is also a servant. I thus conclude that mutual submission is the proper interpretation of the submission of wives to their husbands enjoined in Ephesians 5:21-33” (Padgett, 65).

Despite the deliberately paradoxical sound of Padgett’s claim, the point that he is making is that any discussion of a Christological pattern in Ephesians 5 must come from Ephesians 5:2: “Walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” The pattern of Christ’s sacrifice is the pattern for all those addressed in Ephesians 5, including not only women, children, and slaves, but also husbands. At no point are husbands compared to Christ as Lord, but only to Christ as servant. Husbands are not told to command their wives, and wives are not commanded to obey their husbands. The submission expected of wives to husbands follows the same pattern as the mutual submission expected of all Christians to one another. The pattern of husbands in respect to wives is the pattern of Christ’s self-sacrificial love: Christ gave himself up for the church. Following Christ’s cruciform example, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies, to feed them and care for them. The husband must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife is to respect her husband as she respects Christ. The relation that Paul describes between husband and wife are examples of mutual love, nurture, and reciprocal giving of one to another, examples of “mutual submission,” not of “ordered hierarchy.”

Appendix

I wrote the original draft for what became “Chapter 7: Mutual Submission” in Icons of Christ before the publication of Cynthia Long Westfall’s book Paul and Gender.¹⁶ Westfall notes that the “wife’s submission is inextricably linked with mutual submission.” She also makes the interesting contribution to the discussion that “headship” in the passage is defined as “patronage,” linked to the wife’s dependence in “traditional marriage” in Roman culture upon her husband for life’s necessities. As Christ provides for the church, so the husband provides for the wife. Since the patronage system provides the context, Paul’s argument is based on benefits received, not on creation order or any basic nature of masculinity or femininity. Moreover, Christ is not only benefactor, but also servant (Westfall, 100-101).

Westfall argues that this transforms the relationship between husband and wife. The wife responds with a reciprocity of submission and gratitude, while the husband serves his wife by doing “low-status work typical of women and slaves.” Accordingly, “in Paul’s theology of marriage, mutual submission is expressed in mutual service.” While wives, children, and slaves maintain behavior acceptable to the surrounding culture, “the directions to the husbands, parents, and masters are revolutionary” (Westfall, 102). While nothing in what Westfall writes conflicts with what I wrote in Icons of Christ, the discussion of patronage adds another historical and cultural dimension to the discussion beyond my own discussion of Mediterranean honor culture.