DOES PATRIARCHY MAKE THE BIBLE LESS ACCEPTABLE?

Many reject the Bible because of its teachings on male headship. In Why Modern Patriarchy Is Not Biblical, Kathryn J. Riss, Th.M. had started out on the wrong foot, defining patriarchy as “the supremacy of the father.” However, this doesn’t reflect a Biblical understanding of male headship, which is about role distinction and not superiority:

·       But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)

In the same way that the Father is the head of the Son, the husband is the head of the wife. However, this is no indication of any inferiority of the wife. Instead, the Father, Son, and the Spirit are each completely God. Even though the Son and the Spirit submit to the Father, this too doesn’t imply inferiority. Similarly, the husband and the wife are equally created in the likeness of God:

·       So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Male and female are equally created in the image of God. Consequently, they have equal value before Him.

However, as we go further into the article, we find that Riss is not arguing against Biblical patriarchy but against unbiblical perversions of patriarchy:

·       Women are created with these godly characteristics just as much as men.  Human sexual differences were created and designed to function for reproduction, not governance.

Riss correctly points to the Biblical teaching that both were given the mandate to “have dominion over” the earth:

·       “. . . male and female He created them.  God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”

Riss again rightly concludes:

·       Therefore, to rob woman of her sovereignty is to violate her creation as a human being in God’s image and her God-given mandate to subdue the earth.  Like a man, a woman may use her sovereignty to yield willingly to others, but it should never be taken away from her.

Although I agree with her, I think that she has taken this too far. Riss writes:

·       Scripture nowhere directs a husband to rule over his wife, nor a wife to obey her husband.

Riss then claimed that “the Ten Commandments contain no directive for wives to obey their husbands or husbands to govern their wives.  The second commandment directs children to honor both father and mother, showing that the marriage partners share equal authority over their offspring.” Riss also correctly points out that:

·       In I. Timothy 3:4, Paul says that a bishop should be “one that rules well his own household, having his children in subjection,” not his wife! Verse 12 says that deacons should be “husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their households well.” Roman husbands were legally the rulers and judges of all those belonging to their households.  Yet, Paul deliberately omits any reference to Christian husbands ruling over their wives!

However, her next distinction is not substantive:

·       The New Testament instructs wives to “submit” to their husbands, not to “obey” them.  https://godswordtowomen.org/patriarchyriss.htm?fbclid=IwAR1H35qQ7U1BNhSiD1LeLQEUsPvq5ZPc33PTm5_3vY-lVlPAS4O2evCfwCE

However, what does submission mean if not obedience? She claims that submission only “means to defer to someone respectfully,” but various passages will not support her distinction:

·       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. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

The wife is supposed to submit to her husband as the Church must submit to Christ. This must include obedience, the mark of respect and love:

·       Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:23-24)

Consequently, to refuse to obey Jesus is also a refusal to love and to respect Him. They all go together.

Nevertheless, Riss raises legitimate concerns that patriarchy can be abused. However, any good thing can be abused – food, drink, sleep, and even our vital tools can be used destructively. Therefore, we need to be careful about rejecting something merely because of its potential for abuse.

Riss, therefore, raises an appropriate warning about the use of authority:

·       Jesus condemned authority being exercised among His followers.  He said, "The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that are great exercise authority upon them, but it shall not be so among you.  But whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:25-28)

    

This raises questions about the use of authority, and rightly calls into question the husband’s use of force to make his wife submit. The Ephesians 5 passage makes no mention of the husband forcing his wife to submit. Instead, it is her responsibility to willingly submit obediently to her husband. Likewise, the husband has been assigned the weightier responsibility of loving and wife as Christ did for His Church and sacrificing himself for her:

·       Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (Ephesians 5:25-28)

In light of the husband’s surpassing responsivity and his determination to fulfill it, many Christian wives have reported that they gladly submit obediently to such a husband. This is the ideal, and it is mirrored perfectly in the Trinity. Consequently, Jesus stated:

·       “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.” (John 12:49-50)

Clearly, there is nothing demeaning in this kind of submission.