Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

How does this verse agree with granting a woman her freedom and equality with man?

Introduction: the two aspects of the Word of God

There are two aspects for divine speech: a divine aspect and a cultural aspect. The prophets and apostles speak in the language of the specific era; their divine revelation is with resect to the cultural context that they belong.. Therefore, we cannot consider their words to be purely divine, nor can we consider them a clear cultural manifestation. Instead, they are a lively interaction of both, whereby God respects man’s current situation and illuminates him from within without abolishing or ignoring him.

1. The cultural aspect in the words of the apostle Paul

a. Reflects the Jewish cultural view

On one hand, the aforementioned words of the apostle Paul reflect the Jewish perspective of the woman as a minor who goes from her father’s guardianship to that of her husband’s. This view originates from the belittling of a woman. As we have mentioned before, this disparagement was expressed by the Jewish man through his prayer where he used to thank God for not being born a gentile or a woman.

b. Reflects the general patriarchal cultural view

Or even more, it reflects the patriarchal culture in general, a culture that prevailed in the old world. Greeks, for example, believed that the sanction for tyrannous and tremulous men is to be reincarnated as women after their death. Keeping in mind that this patriarchal culture and the underestimation of women it entails still, and to a large extent continues to prevail in our time regardless of all that is said about the liberation of women and despite all what has been accomplished in this field..

c. A reaction towards the “femininity” of the Romanian civilization

On the other hand, the apostle’s stand represents a reaction towards the “femininity” of the Roman civilization, the prevailing civilization at that time. A woman used to, unwillingly of course, practice extreme profligacy which was widespread in this culture. It seems as if the apostle insists on submitting the woman under the man in a preventative perspective.

d. St. John Chrysostom’s remark on the cultural aspect of the apostle’s words

The cultural aspect of the apostle’s words, that has become obvious in our present time due to the development of humane sciences, was not hidden from St. John Chrysostom who noticed it at the end of the fourth century.

- With all the severity of his speech on women, St. John Chrysostom gives testimony that Paul was in part influenced by the culture of his era and that his thoughts are associated with a cultural configuration.

- This inflexible ascet goes as far as to claim that the woman – as he has come to know her in Antioch and Constantinople- is much more proactive than the man when it comes to piety and Christian struggle. Therefore, one can, through Evangelical struggle, overrule the aforementioned system that Apostle Paul spoke of whereby a wife can be the head of her husband if she were more pious.

2. The divine aspect of the words of the apostle Paul

The divine aspect of the apostle’s words is reflected not by grossly and directly overruling the cultural settlement, but by penetrating it to give it a new meaning and flavor that would truly divert it from the concepts of man’s authoritativeness and woman’s derogation.

The diversion that the apostle Paul incorporated into the settlement, through the biblical originality which it assimilates in its depths, is manifested in the samples that he took as reference to define the man and woman’s position in relation to one another. This diversion is embodied through the use of the term “as” which, despite its smallness, turned the purport of the cultural concepts – which Paul ostensibly maintained – up-side down.

a. Man’s leadership transforms into an image of Christ’s leadership

“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”. So, his leadership isn’t upright unless it is on the image of God’s leadership. But what is the nature of God’s leadership? It is that of love:

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25), the leadership of the head that reanimates the body by ensuring that all its biological functions are working properly and adapting them to the environmental requirements. The lordship of Christ is for the service of life in all the organs of his body:

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10). Because this lordship is a service, it involves neither arrogance nor dominance. This has manifested itself through the washing the disciples’ feet, which was a servant’s job:

But I am among you as one who serves. (Luke 22:27)

This washing of the feet was an introduction and a sign of what Jesus was determined to complement of total kenosis for the sake of the parish.

“and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:15)

This was accomplished on the cross which was shortly preceded by the washing of the feet.

Therefore, the leadership of man over woman, as the apostle sees it, is as any other that is inspired by the bible. It is that of serving life in the subordinate to the extent of giving one’s life completely if necessary:

25Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… (Ephesians 5:25)

It thereby initiates a radical “coup” in the widespread common concept of leadership that enforces the domination of the strong over the poor:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mathew 20:24-28)

In Christ’s perspective, the greatest and the first isn’t he who uses his authority to greaten himself and achieve his objectives but he who understands his authority and lives it as a service and development of life in others. That is Christ’s “authority” as referred to in the bible: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”. (Mathew 28:18). As bishop Georges Khodor pointed out, Exousia, the Greek expression used for this sentence in the original text, doesn’t mean ruling: It does not indicate control over the universe but a power, a force that releases life from its chains.

a. A woman’s submission transforms into an image of the Church’s submission

On the other hand, women are asked to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ. Such submission has no trace of slavery or disparagement for it is a voluntary submission as response to the love that emptied itself unto the cross: 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 15 I no longer call you servants, (…) Instead, I have called you friends (…) (John 15:13 and 15)

3. How shall we understand the apostle’s invitation?

After we have acknowledged the existing tension between the novelty of the divine breath that moves the apostle on one hand, and the antiquity of the cultural rims in the shadows of which he lived and grew up on the other hand, we can no longer disregard this tension and thereby consider the literal meaning of the apostle’s words as if to place on the same level the novelty and the antiquity or the divine breath and the cultural rims that impersonated it and limited it at once. Therefore, we must seek to interpret the apostle’s invitation within the new cultural context through which it came to view- by several historical factors, especially and undoubtedly the biblical yeast in the humane history- as a movement, still limited in its achievements, that is demanding equality between man and woman. We as believers, see in this equality a reflection -on political, social and economical aspects- of the declaration of the apostle Paul himself.

28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

In this new context from which the rigid distribution of roles between man and woman is precluded, it is possible for us to read in the words of the apostle about a husband’s relationship with wife, an invitation to mutual leadership and mutual obedience.

a. An invitation to mutual leadership

According to the bible, leadership is connected to love. He, who goes deep into love, automatically becomes a leader for he opens the road of life to others:

5So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?”

He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”

He said to him, “Feed My lambs.”(John 21:15)

Therefore, it is only natural for the couple to take turns in leadership where each spouse occupies the spot at the time or the area where he/she gains ground through love. St. John Chrysostom has taught us that in a Christian marriage, the husband and wife “teach one another and motivate one another…”

b. An invitation to mutual obedience

This mutual leadership is met by mutual obedience which the apostle might have meant when he recommended that the believers:

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians 5:21. It is a commandment the church repeats during the rituals of the week of Christ’s passion where she (the church) invites us to be “submissive to each other and feet washers of one another”. Obedience, as indicated by the French word “obeir” which is derived from Latin: ob-audire, or by the synonymous expression for the Arabic verb “Ataa’” which is “sami’a kalamahou” “ listened to him”, means that one confronts the other (ob) in order to hear (audire) and listen to what he has to say. Man has to be alert in all his being to receive the words of the other person where these words resound/ echo in the heart (which is, in its deep meaning, the core of one’s being) and a consequent response of the heart that stems from the being as a whole. There is no true love between two spouses if there is no such mutual obedience which means a mutual readiness for deep responsiveness with the other.

The modern French orthodox priest and theologian, Andre Borelli, says: to love is to obey; that is, to listen, to put oneself in a listening position for the loved creature.

As the aforementioned writer shows or points out, this position must become a rule in all the different situations of marital life, whether it has to do with planning to travel, choosing a career, buying a car, selling a ?realty, or taking a pedagogical stand etc… the writer says that all these are chances to alienate myself from self- incarceration; consider the other person, his positions, thoughts, and feelings; give weight to his/her difference from me and take this difference into consideration. If each of the spouses took this listening stand, a dialogue develops between the two of them (not a “dialogue of the deaf”) and the opportunity for harmony, through the differences and the resulting tension, is open.

It is then when the couple feels that each is changing due to the other and that none of their wills is forced upon the other, but, on the basis of the communication between them a new reality emerges and both contribute to its emergence into existence.

Translation by: Carol Ojeil. Revised by: Miriam Cradock.