Leithart
1 Corinthians 7:3-4: Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
These days, Christianity is often characterized as misogynist, bigoted, or anti-feminist. The Apostle Paul, after all, warns women to be silent in the church, tells Timothy that women should not teach or have authority over men, and describes marriage in terms of husbandly headship and the wifely submission.
Of course, to call Christianity, or Paul, misogynist is absurd. In the text I’ve just read, Paul does talk about authority in marriage, but, perhaps surprisingly, talks about the mutual authority of husband and wife. Just a few chapters later, he refers to Eve’s creation: “Man is not from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for woman’s sake, but a woman for man’s sake.” But immediately, he closes the circle of dependence by referring to the daily fact that all males are born of women: “as the woman is from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things are from God.” In short, “neither is woman without man, nor is man without woman” (1 Corinthians 11:8-12).
His great typological treatment of marriage in Ephesians begins with the exhortation “Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” And he appeals to Genesis 2’s description of man and woman as “one flesh” in order to emphasize the husband’s duty to care for his wife. Because his wife is “one flesh” with him, a husband should treat her with the same care that he treats his own body: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,” which is bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh (Ephesians 5:29).
Those who are hostile to Christian faith applaud these passages and others like them. They like the Paul who says there is no more Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. This is the genuine Paul, the sleek modern egalitarian Paul, and a good bit of energy is expended to pull apart this “good cop” Paul from the “bad cop” Paul who talks about wifely submission and forbids women to speak in church. They attempt to show that the Bible, and the church, are divided against themselves on this question.
We believe the Bible, and so we will not be seduced into dividing Paul from himself, pitting one biblical teaching against another, separating what God has joined together. But it’s essential that you be aware of the forces that are arrayed against the biblical model of marriage, the forces that want you to grab one biblical teaching and ignore another. These forces are enormous. We’re not talking about a small cadre of embittered butch biblical scholars. Many of the basic structures, patterns, practices and notions that dominate our world conspire against anyone who attempts to build a biblical marriage. We need courage, dogged perseverance, steady confidence if we are going to stand against the tide.
Consider, for example, the opposition between authority and passion assumed by so many. The idea that passion is opposed to authority and law is nothing new. History and literature are replete with lovers who sidestepped or directly assaulted authority, and this includes most of the most famous lovers of history – Lancelot and Guinevere, Abelard and Heloise, the tragic Francesca de Rimini that Dante meets in hell, Troilus and Cresida, Paris and Helen.
But the modern separation of love and authority is far more radical. All these classic love stories are tragedies: Lovers who flout the law, or their marriage vows, end badly, and often throw their nation into turmoil as well. Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere is tragic for the lovers, but it also bring an end to the Christian dream of the Round Table. In modern mythology communicated through ads, movies, sitcomes, and popular novels, lovers flout the law, and ignore custom and marriage, go wherever passion leads them and do whatever passion directs, all without consequence. In fact, those who challenge authority in the name of love are lionized. One historian said that the non-marriage of the novelist George Eliot to George Henry Lewes as the happiest union of a man and a woman “outside of fantasy literature” (quoted in Himmelfarb).
The modern opposition of authority and love is more radical too because of the modern world’s unprecedented hostility to authority of any sort. Throughout the modern age, authority has been seen as an evil, and this judgment about authority has only intensified in what is now called “postmodernity.” Postmoderns may grudgingly admit that authority is an inescapable evil, but they join moderns in believing that autonomous freedom is the greatest good, and even the most benign authority is violence and slavery. In fact, the more benign and hidden the authority is, the more insidious it becomes. Authority is bad, collapsing eventually if not immediately into arbitrary, oppressive “authoritarianism.”
This comes to particular expression on the issue that Paul addresses directly in 1 Corinthians 7 – the question of authority and the body. Today, promiscuity, sodomy, abortion are all justified with a simultaneous rejection of all outside authority and a declaration of the absolute authority of me : “My body is my own, and I can do whatever I like with my own body with whomever I like whenever I like. The notion that your body might be under someone else’s authority is anathema.
If the assault on authority were purely ideological it would be bad enough, but the practical habits of our culture are equally founded on a renunciation of authority. A culture is a pattern of life and habit that is passed from one generation to another; a culture is inherently authoritative, imposed from the outside, programmed into the young. But no longer. In an age of iPods, satellite television, XM radio, Napster, and CinemaNow; in a time where you can choose to follow any of a thousand different religions, or none; in our epoch of pop culture, when we can always find something suitable to our tastes – “culture” loses its traditional authority. Pop culture still forms our conduct; more importantly, by our choices, each of us creates his own individual culture. I can construct my own highbrow culture with my Stravinsky CDs and my art house DVD collection, while in the next room you’re creating your culture listening to country music and watching Blue Collar Comedy. And again, authority resides in only one place – in me . We can pick up these anti-authoritarian habits without thinking about it. In fact, if we don’t think about it, we will. In this context, working toward a biblical marriage that unites love and authority, passion and duty – that is a radically counter-cultural stance.
Of course, authority is inescapable: “Question authority,” says the authoritative slogan – and what are we supposed to do? Submit? Contrary to contemporary thinking, authority doesn’t necessarily reduce to authoritarianism, but is instead the only real protection against arbitrary, naked, unchecked power. If no one’s authority is recognized, then power goes to the guy with the biggest guns or the biggest mob. Without authority, ruthlessness becomes the clearest path to power, and this is true in marriage as much as in politics. Authority is not an enemy of enduring love, but its prerequisite.
Nearly thirty years ago, the late Christopher Lasch warned that “the popularization of therapeutic mode
s of thought discredits authority, especially in the home and the classroom,” and in its place come various forms of domination: “As the ideas of guilt and innocence lose their moral and even legal meaning,” Lasch continued, “those in power no longer enforce their rules by means of the authoritative edicts of judges, magistrates, teachers and preachers. Society no longer expects authorities to articulate a clearly reasoned, elaborately justified code of law and morality; nor does it expect the young to internalize the moral standards of the community. It demands only conformity to the conventions of everyday intercourse, sanctioned by psychiatric definitions of normal behavior.” Authority does not produce conformism; it’s the enemy of conformity.
You can stand against this array of ideological and cultural forces urging you to question all authority only by the Lord’s power. But let me urge you to one thing that will be useful for you: Remember that by the vows you take today, you have both placed yourselves under authority – the authority of God, but also each under the authority of the other – for the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; and the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife.
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