True to my pledge never to avoid the hard stuff, I turn now to a recent posting on Doug Wilson’s “Blog and Mablog,” wherein he discusses the Biblical concept of submission.
“Headship in marriage does not mean that women submit to men; it means one woman submits to one man. Her submission to her husband protects her from having to submit to other men. Prior to marriage, her submission to her father protects her from having to submit to other men. There is no overall biblical requirement that women be submissive to men in general. The biblical pattern is that a wife should respond to the initiative and leadership of her husband, and only to him. She is prepared and trained for this in her submission to her father” (Her Hand in Marriage, pp. 12-13).
No, not really.
Wilson appears to want to liberate women from the nasty idea that women, as a class, should submit to men — a higher, stronger, better, or more worthy class. Her submission, first to her father and then to her husband, frees her to not have to submit to other men, Wilson says, and this looks, at first read, to be a remarkably liberating idea.
But it comes from a man dedicated not to freeing women, but to freeing words and Biblical texts from their correct meaning. The Biblical idea of submission is mutual and all-encompassing. It’s mutual because it’s not gender-based; Ephesians 5, where the Apostle Paul argues that women are to submit to their husbands and men are to love their wives, is a call for mutuality and reciprocity. The verse that precedes Paul’s instructions to wives and husbands is “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (v. 21).” There is no mention of gender; there is an emphasis on reciprocity. The following admonishments to wives and husbands make clear the intention — no one would argue that “only men” are to express love in their marriages, and just as surely it isn’t “only women” who have to submit to their husbands. I can’t imagine a wedding ceremony that presumes that the Loving Partner can only be the husband and the Submitting Partner can only be the wife, and any rhetorical confusion is pretty clearly eliminated by “submit to one another . . . “
Further, submission is an act that comes from freedom, and it means to freely decide to set aside one’s preferences and rights for the betterment of another. It is always a volitional, non-coercive, unforced response from a position of strength. It is not, as Wilson argues here and elsewhere, an act of obedience or an expectation of subordinates. Wilson talks about dutiful, obedient daughters as examples of Biblical submission, when what he describes is appropriate parent-child guidance and obedience. To extend that dutiful obedience to wives is not only un-Biblical, but demeaning to women. Married women are not children and are nowhere in Scripture called to obey their husbands. To “free” them by saying that their childhood obedience to Dad simply becomes childlike obedience to Husband upon marriage is a shameful exposition of Scripture, although quite handy in establishing and strengthening patriarchy to one’s benefit.
Here’s a shocking fact: I believe very much in Biblical submission. The problem with submission is the wrapping Wilson and others package it in. I submit to drivers in traffic, to my friends, to store clerks, and to my husband — just as I’m blessed to have friends and a husband who submit to me. It’s simply kindness — unforced, unblemished by role hierarchy, and unlike what pro-patriarchy preachers tell you. Submission is, for example, a cheerful decision on my part to eat Mexican food with you because you want to, even though I might prefer Chinese, and I submit to the people in my life with the expectation that those with whom I’m in relationship are eager to submit to me as well. Submission is my choosing, pleasantly, to watch the movie my son wants rather than watching “The Color Purple.” It’s what makes reciprocal, mutual relationships work, and it — not the gender-based hierarchical “protection” of Wilson’s teaching — is what best represents Jesus’ character.
Wilson has written elsewhere that he’d laugh at the thought of some unknown man asking one of his daughters to go get him a cup of coffee — his girls, says Wilson, know they don’t have to. And that’s my point: they don’t have to, and that’s all the more reason why getting a stranger a cup of coffee in the spirit of Biblical submission wouldn’t be such a bad idea at all.