Chapter Three

OTHER FACTORS THAT SUPPORT A NON-HEIRARCHICAL READING
OF EPHESIANS 5:21-33

After the previous chapter’s discussion of the redemptive-movement hermeneutic and its implications for a non-heirarchical reading of Eph 5:21-33 it is now useful to examine some other arguments for such a reading that are not reliant upon that hermeneutic. Each of the following subjects do not require a trajectory, or redemptive-movement, reading to support the thesis and include a look at the argument for mutual submission; the relationship between headship and submission; Paul’s summary of the wife’s submission as “respect”; and the linguistic evidence that supports a view of voluntary submission.

Mutual Submission
Virtually all biblical egalitarians contend that Eph 5:21 is support for a form of mutual submission. There are some noted exceptions but for the largest part egalitarians contend that Eph 5:21 should be considered a part of the section related to marriage whether they would consider it the heading of that particular passage or if they simply consider it the transition piece that connected the disparate parts together. This point of view is not without its critics in the hierarchical camp and the most notable refutation of this view is articulated by Clark who suggests that 5:21 means that one is to submit to one’s appropriate authority rather than brothers and sisters in Christ submitting to one another, deferring to one another as more important and of greater worth, across the board. However, since context determines meaning one must come to the conclusion that this verse supports a form of mutual submission among those who identify themselves as followers of Christ, regardless of their social or gender standing, for the following reasons.
1. The preceeding participial phrases are universal exhortations applicable to the entire Christian community. According to Hoehner, Eph 5:21 is to be viewed as the conclusion to the preceding section and reliant upon the command in Eph 5:18 to be “filled with the Spirit.” The injunctions that follow Eph 5:18 include, “speaking to one another” (v. 19), “singing songs and spiritual songs” (v. 19), “giving thanks” (v. 20), and then “submitting to one another” (v. 21). As each of the three previous injunctions apply to anyone who is a follower of Christ so does Eph 5:21. No one can be exempted from this type of submission anymore than someone could be exempted from “giving thanks” or “singing songs”. Of course, in the same way, no follower of Christ could be exempt from being “filled with the Spirit”.
2. The following context of submission, respect and love within marriage supports mutuality in Eph 5:21. Lincoln and others see v. 21 as a sort of hinge verse, a transitional piece that connects the section about being filled with the Spirit and the practical outworking of that in the Roman household structure that was the basic unit of Roman society. In the following verse Paul calls wives to subordinate themselves to their husbands by borrowing the verb from 21. He gives some explanation to this and then proceeds to tell husbands to “love their wives as Christ loved the church”. He spends several verses explaining the origin of this love which is based in God; the nature of this love expressed in Christ’s self-sacrifice; and the practical outworking of this kind of love where the man actually benefits himself. One can’t deny the force of these verses addressed to the husband. They are, by far, a greater challenge for the husband in light of the cultural context where wives subordination was assumed but a husband’s self-sacrificing love was not. The wife’s act of submission, however, is succinctly summarized with the word respect. Since the submission of the wife was assumed Paul evidently felt nothing more need be said. Paul’s decision to summarize a wife’s submission as respect could be perceived as euphemistic.
There is an integral relationship between love and submission. The wife is to submit to the husband, “as to the Lord” connoting a responsive submission to Christ-like actions taken by the husband. In Christ, it is assumed that submission is the response to Christ-like leading which is motivated out of a reverence for Christ.
3. The voluntary nature of submission, reflected in the usage of middle voice, denotes mutuality. Hoehner, Rienecker, Lincoln and Neller all identify the verb for submission to be in the middle voice. This is important because it highlights the concept of cooperation as opposed to forced subordination through coercion. “The word has primarily the idea of giving up one’s own right or will.” It is therefore, not a foregone conclusion that the one who is being submissive in this passage has to be submissive. The use of the middle voice implies free agency and capability in personal decision making. There would be no point in enjoining such a command if its intended results were to happen automatically.
4. Theologically, it follows that being “filled with the Spirit” would result in behavior that transforms normal social interaction. Each of the preceding injunctions by Paul speaks to a new way of positively relating to one’s fellow believers or to God. Paul gives his readers positive and assertive things that they are to do as a result of their being indwelt by the Spirit. These are actions that have a mutually edifying effect in the community of believers. It is unlikely that Paul, in the same breath, would encourage his hearers to “speak to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (an assertive and uplifting command) and also command them to remember their subservient station (a much more negative command). These exhortations also stand as quite a contrast to those outside the Body of Christ who would normally cling to their own self-sufficiency and pride. Ephesians 5:18, with its emphasis upon the infilling of the Spirit, points to a picture of believers being transformed corporately as well as individually. In addition, since each of these are predicated upon the infilling of the Holy Spirit and his subsequent empowerment the believer has little basis for complaining that such things are too hard to do. For Paul to command the believers to be appropriately subordinate in existing hierarchical relationships seems hardly fitting in a passage that requires the empowerment of the Spirit to make obedience to the command a reality.
5. The controlling motivation for submission is based in an experience all Christ-followers equally share: the fear (reverence) of Christ. Paul could have told those who were to be subordinate to do so because they should fear their masters, employers, husbands or other superiors. Those in customary positions of authority had the right to appropriately punish ones in their charge. But instead he calls upon them to submit out of their fear of Christ. There is no other motivation one in a superior social position could have for submitting to one beneath them in the social caste. For those in a culturally subordinate position the fear of Christ is not a necessary motivation because the social structures demanded submission already. The fact that Paul calls them to submit because of their reverence for Christ suggests strongly that his hearers needed to pay attention to that great leveling ground which exists before the cross of Christ.
In light of these five reasons it is reasonable to assume that Eph 5:21, along with the verses following, is encouraging a type of mutuality that was not common in the ancient world. Paul was challenging the surrounding culture by encouraging a type of graduated equality between husbands and wives. The reliance on the verb in v. 21 for v. 22 further highlights that what follows it, the paraenesis regarding marriage, is one form of this mutual submission put into practice.

Headship
It should be noted that few subjects in the debate over the roles of women and men in the church have kicked up as much dust as the discussion over the meaning of the word head, kephale. This term, in the words of some, has been the source of more heat than light in the debate over the role of women. Gilbert Bilezikian, Alvera Mickelson and other egalitarians have invested a lot of energy and ink in seeking to prove that the best interpretation of this word is “source” or “wellspring”. Neller believes that this concept was most likely inspired by Bedale’s study of Paul’s usage of the term over fifty years ago. While the idea sounds good and has some support it is not likely that Paul used the term in this way. Not only is this a rare usage of the word but the context of Eph 5 does not demand it. Interpreting the “head” as “source” is not necessary in discerning a non-hierarchical outcome.
On the other side of the divide, however, Wayne Grudem has invested much time and energy in refuting this assertion, and through a great deal of research has reviewed 2,336 usages of the word in the ancient literature to make his point that “source” can’t be the meaning intended by the biblical writers. Interestingly, he sees the best translation of this term as being “authority” even though he admits that this is the case in only 2% of the usages he reviewed. One gets the sense that Grudem’s intention was more focused upon disabusing egalitarians of their notion that “head” could mean “source” or “wellspring” than in identifying what the word actually means. In the midst of this controversy it is useful to examine what Grudem’s research does in fact suggest.
In 2,287 instances of Grudem’s original 2,336 the word is a reference to a physical head. This usage is sometime literal and sometimes metaphoric and in the case of Eph 5:23 one must assume that the idea conveyed is that of a metaphoric head. There is no denying that Paul is employing an analogy to press his point home. The analogy he uses is that of a human being composed of head and body compared with a married couple. This recognition creates significant implications for understanding Paul’s intention for husbands and wives throughout Eph 5.
Sarah Sumner makes an almost startling point. The imagery of Eph 5:22-33, that of a head (the husband) and a body (the wife), illustrates not a hierarchical arrangement, though this is not explicitly denied in the passage, but an image of oneness and reciprocity. This image of oneness is presented through the metaphor of the head and body, an image that Scripture itself recognizes as a being a mystery. When viewed this way the argument as to whether the word “head” means “source” or “authority” becomes less pertinent to the discussion.
This picture of oneness gets played out in some detail when looking at the text itself. The first insertion of this metaphor into the text is in v. 23: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.” The first comparison is clear: the wife is to respond to her husband as the church is to respond to Christ. Christ’s oneness with his church is highlighted by the phrase, “his body”. The inference is that the wife, on the metaphorical level, is the body of the husband. This theme is picked up again in v. 28 where husbands are called upon to “love their wives as their own bodies”, again a picture of deep connectedness and interrelatedness. This is followed up with the statement that “He who loves his body loves himself” again drawing a deep and powerful connection to the oneness that is implied throughout this passage and succintly defined in the “one-flesh” description of v. 31. Ephesians 5:29-30 continues this same line of thought asserting that one cares for themselves by caring for their own bodies, in this case the husband’s body is his wife.
The most powerful description of oneness, and the most explicit, is expressed in v. 31 where Paul reaches back to the book of Genesis to make his point of the oneness between husband and wife. Quoting this familiar passage Paul provides yet another image of oneness where the metaphor suggests two people sharing the same physical existence. It reads, “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” v. 31 (Quoted from Gen 2:24) Immediately, Paul acknowledges that he is talking about a relationship between husband and wife that reflects the union between Christ and his Church. This is a mysterious union that was evidently beyond Paul’s ability, not to mention our own, to fully comprehend or convey. At this point we do well to pay attention to the overall primary meaning behind the imagery which is the deep connection between husband and wife that is unique in all of Christian relationships which bodies forth a picture of the oneness which exists between Christ and his church. Every analogy is imperfect and one also does well to avoid drawing too many similarities between the parties. For example, the husband is fallible where Christ is not; the husband must be reminded/commanded to love his wife self-sacrificially where Christ does not need to be told to love his Church; Christ bears full authority over the body of Christ whereas the husbands authority over his wife has significant qualifications described throughout Scripture. Most notable of these is the equality between husband and wife within the confines of their sexual relationship as describe in I Cor 7:3-5. However, the pictorial analogy of Eph 5 provides an overall depiction of oneness between two individuals who have come together in Christ. Sumner summarizes, “The Bible presents a picture of a physical body and head. Marriage is a picture of one being. A picture of a body organically connected to a head.”
To reiterate, the primary way of understanding the head-body language in Eph 5 is to view it as a visual analogy. The husband and wife become one flesh harkening back to the image presented in Gen 2:24 where man and woman are brought together to create a unique relationship that is indissoluble and unlike any other relational arrangement among humans. In Eph 5 the headship metaphor cannot be used or understood apart from its connection to the body. In every instance that the term is used it is mirrored by a reference to the body thus not allowing the reader to separate the two. This is one reason why one can assume that the form of headship expressed in Eph 5 is not to be understood primarily as a means of expressing authority but as a way of expressing oneness and interconnectedness. Paul recognized the fact that husbands were in positions of authority and in his use of the household code he greatly modifies this hierarchical arrangement by focusing not upon the rights that the husband has to demand for himself, these were no doubt understood and perhaps overstated, but he instead qualifies the type of headship the husband can exercise when he says in vv. 25-26:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with
water through the word, and to present her to himself, as a radiant church
without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Self-sacrifice, modeled after Christ is the hallmark of marital headship.
This headship is further qualified by the pairing of submission and sacrifice. Whereas the wife is called upon to submit to her husband he is called to sacrifice himself for his wife. That is to say, the husband is to give up his wants, needs and desires for those of his wife. Meanwhile, the wife is to value her husband more than she does herself by giving up her wants, needs and desires for that of her husband. This understanding is somewhat different from the hierarchical interpreters who see headship as a necessity for the sake of getting things done assuring that the organization of the family and marriage continues to run as it is supposed to. Again, this is not the purpose of the Eph 5 passage. At no point does Paul claim that the husband is the head of the wife in order to maintain organizational expediency or to make sure that there is no disruption in the natural order of things. For that matter, Paul never describes the husband as the spiritual leader nor as the head of the family. Rather, Paul makes the point that the husband is the head of the wife to illustrate that husband and wife are connected deeply in this new arrangement of oneness. This oneness presupposes an equality between husbands and wives.
Sumner makes one more valuable contribution to this discussion by highlighting the couplets described in the passage. They are as follows: 1) the wife is to submit and the husband is to sacrifice; 2) the wife is the body and the husband is the head; 3) the wife is to respect her husband and the husband is to love his wife. The conventional conservative evangelical wisdom is to confuse these pairings and wrongly assume that submission is directly connected to headship. However, when looking at the couplets above it is clear that submission is connected to sacrifice. The wife is to submit herself to her husband as her husband sacrifices himself for her in a manner like Christ. The headship of the husband is expressed not in the authority that the head demands but in the interconnectedness and unity of the head with its body. Here is one reason why head should not be viewed as simply meaning “one in authority” because in this context no authority is assumed, unless one assumes it from the submission of the wife. It is only secondarily a reference to authority. It is used to highlight the “one flesh” relationship derived from Gen 2:24. Lastly, the third couplet of respect and love reflects the overall point of the analogy that wives and husbands are to live relationships of mutuality, respect and love. Theodoret of Syria commented on this image by saying: “Its purpose [the analogy] is to encourage women to respect men and to implant in men an affection for their wives.” We see in this ancient exegete’s words an understanding that the damage done to male/female relationships needed healing even within the community of Christ.
Finally, in respect to the actual meaning of the word “head” it is not necessary to find within it a new, previously unrecognized, meaning in order to maintain a stance that the headship in Eph 5 is non-hierarchical. Paul used the term in a much less specialized way than one would think. The common usage of the term at the time was to denote what was first, supreme, the head of a person or animal, the head of a pillar, the top of a wall, or something that was prominent outstanding or determinative. Neller notes that the idea of “head” being used to describe one who is a leader was not used prior to the Septuagint. Undoubtedly, Paul was not trying to infuse this word with new meaning but instead he used this common term as a reference to husbands because of their social standing. In light of what Paul is trying to communicate there was not need to deny men what was normal within their culture. Instead, Paul worked within the constraints of that culture to modify marriage in a direction that created a more equitable arrangement between husband and wife while not jeopardizing the status of Christian households among their pagan counterparts. Men received the prominent recognition in the first century and Paul was working from within that cultural arrangement expanding the depth of meaning of headship while allowing men to retain the prominence that was theirs societally and culturally.

Submission and Respect
As has been mentioned already, a woman’s submission to her husband was assumed by Paul and all others in the first century. It went without saying that wives were in a subordinate position to their husbands and that may be why there is a disproportionate number of words used to discuss a husbands way of loving his wife compared to the relative fewer ways in which a woman was to submit to her husband. In essence, wives are commanded to submit to their husbands because of their reverential awe for Christ. In addition they are to do so in the manner in which the church submits to Christ. As stated previously, because of the prevalence of wifely submission there was little need for Paul to go into greater detail.
At the end of the paranaesis on marriage Paul summarizes his arguments by reminding the husband and wife of their appropriate means of treatment to the other. He ends his discussion of marriage, which is both theoretical and elegant, with a very practical summation. The husband is to love his wife and the wife is to respect her husband. But what does this word respect mean? It is, in fact, the same word that was used in 5:21 when Paul instructs, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This word, translated reverence in the NIV is the word fear from which we get the root word for the psychological term phobia. However, Lincoln is quick to point out, as does Barth, that this is not some form of abject terror but rather a recognition of Christ’s authority and power. Barth makes the point that too often translators inappropriately soften the word and translate it as respect. Its usage at this point in Paul’s writing enables one to see a theme completed in the passage. He introduced the idea of submission by pairing it with this type of reverential fear and he closes it down by highlighting the same concept. In this instance the wife is not called upon to fear her husband because of his ability to do her harm but because of the analogy that was presented of the church and the body. It is assumed that this type of respect for her husband is not difficult because the culture demanded something similar. Yet Paul challenges the wife to submit out of a different motivation. He wants wives to live submissively with their husbands because they live in reverential awe of Christ. Paul uses the household code to his advantage as he describes the reciprocity which is to exist between husband and wife. Men are called and challenged to love their wives self-sacrificially as wives reverence their husbands. In so doing Paul is challenging the typical marital arrangement of his time and preserving the early churches ability to maintain itself without unnecessary abuse or scrutiny from the outside world.
One is to understand a wife’s respect for her husband as a continued reflection of the discussion of men and women in marriage. This was not a difficult message for women of Paul’s time to hear. They already were engaged in the act of subordinating themselves to their husbands and now they were called to continue this from a different motivation. To respect their husbands was a means of honoring Christ.

Voluntary Submission
One last expression of a reduced hierarchy in Eph 5 is worth noting even though it was described in some detail in chapter 2. The submission called upon in Ephesians 5 is a voluntary action undertaken by the one who is to do the submitting. Too much emphasis cannot be placed upon this distinction. When Paul calls upon wives to submit he is addressing an issue of interior control as well as an issue of exterior behavior. A wife’s submission was almost universally assumed. Therefore, when Paul calls upon women to subordinate themselves he is not calling upon them to do something unheard of. However, his challenge to men to love their wives in the way that Christ loved the church, self-sacrificially, is a definite challenge to the typical way in which men understood their positions as husbands. The writer makes his command of submission to the wife by addressing her as one capable of action and by using a verb form that implies voluntary action. These two points require quick review.
First, as mentioned in chapter 2, Paul’s address of the subordinate parties in the household code was out of the ordinary. When he addresses them he breaks with convention by addressing them at all and further by addressing them first. In doing this he awards them a level of moral agency highlighted by the assumption that they can make decisions for themselves. Paul’s direct communication with them indicates that they were involved in the regular worship of the church and were allowed to participate as members of that community.
Second, when Paul addresses wives in the middle voice, “to submit”, he makes a different type of assertion. The way this verb is expressed suggests that the person completing the action has some choice in the matter. Implied in this choice is the concept that Paul was speaking to the interior dimension of the wife’s personality. She was not being made to submit by her husband evident in the fact that Paul does not address the husband but the wife. She was called upon to submit or “to subordinate herself” which is a voluntary action. If a wife was submitting to her husband it would have been evident in her exterior actions yet these exterior actions are not all that Paul is speaking to. He is addressing the wife at what might be considered the heart level, addressing her will and volition, by asking her to submit. Neller summarizes this well:
Christian submission, like Christ’s submission, is a voluntary surrendering
of one’s own rights… Christ does not forcibly subject the individual
Christian nor the church, but his followers voluntarily give up their lives
and submit to him (see Mk. 8:34). In the same way, when a woman marries,
she chooses to submit herself to her husband.
As a result of these arguments it is reasonable to view Eph 5:22-33 as representing an image of marriage that is less hierarchical than is traditionally assumed. Mutual submission, headship, the summary of submission into the term respect, and the notion of submission being a voluntary action undertaken by responsible parties serve to make non-hierarchical marriage a viable application of Pauline marriage.