Tag: St. Paul

A Window into the Past: Women, Greco-Roman Society, and The Pastorals (pt. III:1 Cor 7:1-7)

1 Corinthians 7:1-7:

Principles for Marriage

7 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

6 Now as a concession, not a command, I say this.7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

v.1.  Paul, in response to the questions of the Corinthians, writes, “‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.’”  Johnson writes about the expression translated as “not to touch a woman”, “…the expression…is not the equivalent of ‘not to marry.’ In Hebrew and Greek it is a euphemism for not to have sexual intercourse with woman (Gen 20:6; Prov 6:29)” (108).  Johnson continues by adding that the expression does not necessarily belong to Paul but is a Corinthian colloquialism: the Corinthians were rejecting sexual intercourse with their wives in order to achieve a more intimate relationship with Sophia (Johnson 108-9).  Bruce adds this scenario, “…[Paul is] deal[ing] with ascetics who, partly perhaps in reaction against the libertines, argued that sexual relations of every kind were to be deprecated, that Christians who were married should henceforth live as though they were unmarried, and those who were unmarried should remains so, even if they were already engaged to be married” (Bruce 66).

v.2.  Leon Morris writes, “Since fornication was so common at Corinth it was hard for the unmarried to remain chaste and hard for them to persuade others that they were, in fact, chaste” (Morris 102).  And Keener observes, “Paul may refute [the Corinthian’s] point about a man not ‘touching’ a woman…but if he is conceding it, he applies it to unmarried intercourse only (6:12-21); he goes on to demonstrate that married people must have intercourse (7:2-7).  Contrast ‘It is well,” kalon, with ‘It is not good,’ ou kalon, in Gen 2:18, a context Paul has just quoted in 6:16)” (62).  Paul’s Jewish background would have provided him with the understanding of the  value of marriage and childbearing; but this was not restricted to Paul and his contemporaries, but was manifest in August’s legislation, “…to replenish the Roman aristocracy two generations before Paul’s time.  Augustus’s laws reward with tax incentives widows and divorcees of childbearing age who remarried as quickly as possible” (Keener 63).  On the other hand, Keener also notes that “Some thinkers…believed that marriage proved a distraction from high pursuits (e.g., Cynics in Epictetus Diatr. 3.22.69-76).  Some radical philosophers (especially Cynics) therefore eschewed marriage, nevertheless condoning the release of sexual passions on prostitutes (cf. 6:12-21)” (Keener 63).  Paul may have been dealing with the same group of people who were causing trouble in 6 as in 7 (Keener 63).

v.3.  Morris writes, “Each partner in a marriage has rights and Paul calls on each to pay what is due….Paul does not stress the duty of either partner at the expense of the other, but puts them on a level, a noteworthy position in the male-dominated society of the time” (103).  What is most striking in Paul’s language is the idea of “giving” rather than “getting”; in a culture that was obsessed with getting somewhere weather socially or spiritually, this command to give is countercultural.  “Marriage is the giving of oneself to another” (Morris 103).  Essentially, marriage is not the getting from one what one wants or thinks they deserve.  Horsley observes,

The Therapeutics near Alexandria, described by Philo, provides a striking similar example of women and men who leave their spouses and become ‘elderly virgins.’ Their motivation for spurning the pleasures of the body, moreover, is their devotion to Sophia, whom they consider to be their spiritual life-mate.  This makes the comparison all the more compelling, considering the importance of Sophia to the Corinthian spirituals addressed in chapters 1-4 (Horsley 96).

vv.4-5. Keeping in mind the discussion above about the Roman woman being the property of the husband, the first half of this verse is very much within the constraints of Roman society at that time.  However, the later part introduced by “likewise” is the countercultural statement.  Johnson writes that neither one has the right to do with their body what they want, “…because the other has a rightful claim to sexual satisfaction.  This requires mutual submission (Eph 5:21)….the principal of mutual submission and mutual consent (v.5) is very important in minimizing abuse…Paul’s view of marriage [is a] profound union that entails a shared body, the two becoming ‘one flesh’ (Eph 5:31) (Johnson 110-1).  And Bruce adds, “By the marriage vow each relinquishes the exclusive right to his or her own body and gives the other a claim to it; the verb rule over is exousiazō, denoting the exercise of exousia (‘authority’)” (67).  Horsley proposes that Paul is responding to a Corinthian-ism, “‘[a woman had] authority over her own body’” (97).  Horsley writes, “After reversing that principle, Paul sweetens his denial of authority over her own body with the reciprocal wife’s authority over her husband’s body.  This is certainly a break with patriarchal marriage patterns, at least rhetorically” (Horsley 97).

About Paul’s use of “authority”, Horsley comments, “Among the Corinthians it could have been an expression of empowerment, whether in liberation from parochial taboos such as dietary restrictions (eating food offered to idols, in chaps. 8-10) or old-fashioned customs such as patriarchal property rights (the man ‘having’ his father’s wife, in chap. 5)” (97).

In v.5, Paul makes it clear that it is okay to abstain; however, abstention was only to be for prayer and only for an agreed amount of time.  After the abstention, husband and wife were to return to intimate sexual relations with each other to avoid Satan’s temptation and the Corinthian’s lack of self-control.  Horsley writes, “Permanent abstention from sexual relations is often associated with women in prophetic or other religious roles in other New Testament cases and in the general Hellenistic-Roman culture…” (Horsley 97).  Women were able to find their way out from under Patriarchal domination by submitting themselves to the pursuit of Sophia which involved, as discussed above, devoting all their energy to toward the intimate relationship with Sophia and away from their sexual relations with their husband.  Thistleton observes,

‘With prostitutes and mistresses abundantly available (recall 6:12-20) Corinthian men unable to have sex with their wives would often look elsewhere.’…from the papyri and from Plutarch the double standards of a degree of extramarital relationships in the case of men in the Roman world, in contrast to married women.  Paul’s moral and pastoral principle remains either (a) monogamy (with a full relationship for most of the time; cf. v. 5); or (b) celibacy; but not (c) irregular physical relationships.  Paul…[is]…offer[ing] an antidote to a Corinthian desire to change everything with their new-found status” (Blomberg qtd in Thisleton 503).

(Next: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16)

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

A Window into the Past: Women, Greco-Roman Society, and The Pastorals (pt. II)

A brief history of Corinth:

Corinth in Brief

Prior to the Roman conquering in 146 B.C., “Corinth had been a leading center of Greek power.…In 44 B.C.E, Caesar refounded Corinth as a Roman colony,” and during Paul’s day, Corinth was officially, according to architecture and inscription, Roman (Keener 6-7).  Alan Johnson writes, “…the city’s architecture looked Roman, it was governed by a Roman civic structure, and it was inhabited largely by Roman people—a small contingent of Caesar’s military veterans, many freedmen and women, and urban plebeians” (14).  F. F. Bruce adds, “…its citizens were Romans, probably freemen from Italy, but the population was augmented by Greeks and Levantines, including Jews” (Bruce 19).  “Evidence for the prominence of Roman, rather than Greek, patterns of culture in the most respected mores….[is the] clear example concern[ing] the wearing of hoods by women in public, especially in public worship, as well as the issue of head covering (just possibly an issue about hair) for men (1 Cor 11:2-16)….” (Thiselton 5).

In the first century, “…the city was a bustling commercial crossroads for Europe and Asia.  Ships from the west traveling from Italy through the Corinthian Gulf would head for the port of Lechaeum, Corinth’s eastern harbor.  Those from the east could harbor at Cenchreae, which faced eastward toward the Saronic gulf, which eventually led to the Aegean Se and Asia.  An ancient cargo roadway a few miles to the north connected the western sea lanes with the eastern across the isthmus at is narrowest point…” (Johnson 15).  In addition to being the primary harbor for ships, Corinth was also known for the manufacturing of goods (Johnson 15).  Keener notes, “Its location on the Isthmus had long involved Corinth in trade….Local banking, artisans, and finally the current provincial seat would have further augmented the city’s wealth” (7).

Bruce provides some insight into “Old Corinth” Prior to Roman conquering,

Old Corinth had been a by-word for licentiousness, and this hotch-potch of races would have hastened the process by which the new Corinth acquired an equally unsavoury reputation.  AM Hunter says that in the popular mind Corinth suggested ‘culture and courtesans… “Corinthian words” implied pretensions to philosophy and letters, and to ‘Corinthianize’ was popular Greek for ‘go to the devil’….[Corinth] acquired a reputation for luxury, and its name became proverbial for sexual license.  It was a centre of the worship of Aphrodite, whose temple stood on the summit of the Acrocointhus… (18).

Even after Rome conquered Corinth and turned it from Greek ways to Roman ways, Corinth was able regain its wealth (Bruce 18).  However, with the return of its wealth  “…the old reputation for sexual laxity also returned: the temple of Aphrodite was staffed by 1, 000 female slaves dedicated to her worship, who are said to have made the city a tourist attraction and enhanced its prosperity (Strabo, Geog. Viii. Vi. 20)” (Bruce 18-9).

Though there was a vast amount of wealth in Corinth, Horsley observes that there was a ‘gulf’ between the scant wealthy and powerful and the larger, poorer population (31).  He writes,

Despite this, or perhaps partly because of this, Greek society—and even more so Roman society—was obsessed with rank and status…. women were subordinated to and under the power of their husbands and masters.  In Corinth the lower strata must have been every bit as concerned with their status as the elite scrambling for provincial honors and imperial favor (Horsley 31).

Keener makes the point that “condescending below” one’s social classes “was considered shameful in terms of social intercourse” (8).

However, though there was a vast gap between the haves and the have-nots, Johnson proclaims that  growth between the classes was possible, “…at Corinth the culture allowed a rapid rise in social status for many people.  Power (to achieve goals), education, wealth, knowledge, religious and moral purity, family and ethnic group position, and local community status were prized goals in this highly status conscious society” (18).  “‘Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form.  The Corinthian people thus lived with an honor-shame cultural orientation, where public recognition was often more important than facts…’” (Witherington qtd. in Thiselton 13).

In fact, this status seeking tendency was not localized in the pagan society surrounding the budding churches in Corinth, Johnson observes,

Many characteristics of the cultural life of first-century Corinth were seeping into the life of the Christian community.  Instead of being transformed by Christian values and viewpoints, they were behaving like their counterparts in the pagan society around them.  Status seeking, self-promotion, a competitive drive for adulation and success, even use of the Christian church as a means of self-promotion and advancement are themes that reoccur though out the letter.  There was a spirit of self-satisfaction and boasting, a spirit of having arrived and not needing anything else (4:6-8).  Those without means were being marginalized, neglected and even humiliated in the church’s meetings (11;7-34; 12:21-26).  A wrong notion of Christian freedom, more like the ‘freedom’ of the surrounding culture, was prevailing in their relationships with each other and toward the wider culture (6:12; 8:9; 10:23) (Johnson 22-3).

It is not naïve to assume that there was a predominance of Greco-Roman ways and thoughts that were infiltrating the Corinthian churches and are the reasons why Paul treats those Corinthian questions in the manner in which he does (Morris 18).  “Only when Paul went to Corinth did he encounter a Hellenistic urban ethos that was both the product of and fully assimilated into the Roman imperial order” (Horsley 28).

It is typically understood by scholars that the Corinthians, as a society, were immensely concerned with Sophia, and the effects Sophia had on their social relations.  “Their strong enlightened consciousness freed them from the parochial prejudices of conventional moral codes.  Spiritual experiences in particular were given for the satisfaction, illumination, and personal fulfillment of the individual” (Horsley 37).  Horsley notes, “The Corinthian’s exalted spiritual status and immortality gained from their intimate relationship with Sophia had significant implications for mundane social relations.  On the one hand, for some Corinthians the all-important cultivation of their relationship with heavenly Sophia required devoting their energies to the spiritual life” (Horsley 37).  The intimacy with Sophia was not restricted to men, but was available to women, as well.  Intimacy with Sophia as described by Horsley above meant, “devoting their [men’s and women’s] energies to the spiritual life.”  Therefore, as Horsley comments, “…intimacy with Sophia meant avoidance of marital/sexual relations, and perhaps, by implication, liberation from confining subordination in a traditional patriarchal marriage for women” (Horsley 37).

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

No More

Driving my husband to work, I heard something on a Christian radio station that he had set the car radio to. There’s a reason why I don’t listen to Christian radio (apart from my Pandora Waterdeep station), and what I heard this morning reinforced my desire NOT to listen to Christian radio. The statement was one of those statements that made me simultaneously deeply embarrassed and deeply angry; I slunk down in the driver’s seat a little bit and growled. Grrrr…

The nice thing was that my husband was as baffled and put-off by the statement as I was; solidarity in unity.

In a discussion of some books from the 60’s that were being considered as reasons why we are in the current cultural climate we are in terms of gender and gender relations and feminism, one of the personalities said: Look, in Galatians 3 we read there is neither Jew or Gentile man or woman; this here is speaking to complimentarianism, men and women are equal in image, dignity, worth, value but have different functions…

My husband and I looked at each other, “What did he just say?!”

We didn’t have an issue with the whole “equal but different”; I advocate for the same thing. While we both knew where he was going with his thoughts on “equal but different”, that wasn’t the idea that that made our jaws drop. What made our jaws drop was this: Galatians 3 is about complimentarianism. My husband’s astute response was: if anything, that passage lends itself more toward “egalitarianism” than “complimentarianism”. He’s right (my husband’s very smart). The passage in Galatians 3 where Paul says, “ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female,for you are all one in Christ Jesus” certainly does lend itself more to “egalitarianism” than “complementarianism” in that that portion of scripture is part of the unity out of plurality, all one, heirs of Christ, discussion. No where there does Paul discuss the equal-but-differentness of the couplings. The radio personality was just wrong. Out of all the passages of scripture one could pick from to argue _for_ “complimentarianism”, that IS NOT one of them; it’s not even close to being one of them. The breaking down of the barriers between segregated classes, races, genders, is gone, according to Paul: in Christ all are ONE.

So why did my feather’s ruffle so much at the comment? Because of both what my husband pointed out and this: both the terms “complimentarian” and “egalitarian” are recent man made terms often imposed on the the bible to try to make sense of things, to group like to like, to make a statement. “I’m an egalitarian” should tell you, in short, that I hold certain things to be true about gender and the distinction and likeness therein; “I’m a complimentarian” tells you the something similar about the person: what they hold to be true about gender and gender relations. They are terms to deal with the radical freedom the Gospel brings to human beings and all of their relationships. To say, “I’m an egalitarian” says: men and women are equal ontologically speaking; “I’m a complimentarian” says: men and women are compliments ontologically speaking. But the terms are so ambiguous that you have radically different shades of each. For instance, take my own marriage: we are very progressive when it comes to women and men and the relationship between the two: we don’t believe that men are better leaders than women, we don’t believe that substantially speaking there’s a secret authority gene given to men, we don’t believe in gender stereo-types, we affirm strong women _and_ strong men, we affirm the good that the feminist movement brought, etc. But, I stay home with the kids and he goes to work; I take care of the house and meals, and he brings home the “bacon”; i love making our home a sanctuary for him and my children to come home to and he makes that possible. Using my own marriage as an example, you can see that our life disturbs the neat and clean lines a term like “egalitarian” would like to create. I’ve also seen “complimentarian” relationships look _just_ like mine. In my immediate circle of friends who claim “complimentarian” status, I’ve never seen the husband assert his “authority” over his wife; they always come to decisions the same way we do: by the power of the holy spirit, bringing unity where there is division. In my immediate circle of friends who claim “egalitarian” status, I’ve never seen a confusion of gender or a rejection of proper orientation of man toward woman and woman toward man. So, I’m left to ask:

Is there actually such a things as “complimentarian” and “egalitarian”?

And to ask further:

Is it even helpful to bifurcate Christianity with these terms?

My answers to both: no. In order for “complimentarian” and “egalitarian” to be true and real, something has to be asserted that just won’t ever be asserted between two people who _just_ love each other. And, when we are fighting on so many grounds to maintain the truth of the Gospel, do we need the minutia of “in-fighting” and trying to uphold man-made, ambiguous, and unhelpful terminology? I’d say we don’t.

Here’s how I see it, and I’ll end with this: the terminology is wrought with problems and should be dismissed completely. Rather than defining our marriages as “complimentarian” or “egalitarian”, why not: Christian? Gospel centered? Or, better yet, “I’m married to an amazing man/woman and I can’t believe they love me.”  We don’t need more boxes to fill and lines delineated; the body of Christ is unique in that it is unity OUT OF diversity, this applies to marriages, too. There are no two marriages that look the same, not all men like _one_ type of woman, and vice versa. Marriages, like the people that inhabit them, will look different and will sound different, but it will be the presence of the Holy Spirit, the tangible brokenness of each member, their individual and mutual need for Christ that will be the beautiful and pleasing aroma of unity and similarity.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 1

A Window into the Past: Women, Greco-Roman Society, and The Pastorals (pt. I)

Hunker down and get comfortable…this is gonna be a long ride.

What I’m going to post over the next several weeks are portions of a paper I wrote while working on my MDiv (Master of Divinity, the first of two masters I have in theology and biblical studies). I’ll be upfront and honest about one thing: I didn’t perform as well on this paper as I typically did on papers; I received a B for it. The one reason I’ll offer for the lower grade was twofold: I not only exceeded the page limit by a whopping 19 pages (gah!) but I also didn’t have a thesis statement. In my opinion, I couldn’t have a concise, single statement that would coherently gather all 8 texts concerning the “house-codes” and women in the pastoral epistles while remaining true to each individual text in its own right. Was Paul merely saying the same thing over and over to different people? I’m not prone to affirm with a yes. While the language is similar, each context, having its own issues begs for nuanced responses. Paul’s approach in Crete (the book of Titus) manifests a different situation than, say, the one in Corinth.

But with that said, I don’t want to sound like I think that the text and Paul himself are barred down and locked in the past. Yes, both the cultural context and the “then” audience are important to understand for they do dictate a lot of our understanding of the text and what is going on. But, _you_ are now the audience, the hearers, and you play a vital role, too, not just in peering into the past, but receiving the words that have traveled from 50 AD to 2015, because the word moves through history, breaking through time and space barriers, longing to be heard, causing you to hear it and pulling you into to this grand story. You are now in that house church in Thessoloniki, caught up in the Gospel, the freedom it brings, the wonder and the excitement and you are now listening to a letter being read to you from St. Paul.

Now, to move on to the subject of this “series”…some things to cover before I continue:

1. I’ll be posting short segments, pieces really. I’d rather err in readability and digestibility and having more posts in a series, than trying to be efficient. Also, I suck at trying to be efficient in word economy especially with my own work–yes, I’m an editor, but I can’t edit my own work.

2. The paper was written in 2006. As I go, I’ll make some edits or expound where I can, but mostly I’ll be cutting and pasting from the document. It’s primarily exegesis and history; so, I don’t think I’ll have much to add or edit. But again, every thinker, writer, author, eventually disagrees with their historical counterpart one way or another…thinking to themselves: i can’t believe I wrote THAT?!?!

3.  Even though i exceeded the imposed page limit by 19 pages, this work is by no means a comprehensive work (though it sure felt like it at the time…). I’m also not an “expert” in the field of Greek antiquity, Paul, exegesis, or gender issues. I’m a thinker and I can do exegesis, and I can make educated deductions about things I read and apply them…but I’m not an expert.

So, with no further ado…here we go!

Let’s start with the views of women Greek and Roman antiquity:

The View of Women in Greece

Being a woman in ancient Greece was everything short of glamorous. Philo explains that women were strictly created for the indoor life, a life of seclusion (qtd. in Sly 196); she was not to be a too interested about the matters other than her own household, and “She should not shew herself off like a vagrant in the streets before the eyes of other men, except when she has to go to the temple (hieron), and even then she should…go… when most people have gone home (Spec. 3.171-174)” (qtd. in Sly 196-7).

Ancient Greek literature provides a perfect portrait of the typical male understanding of women during that time,

….women were considered more subject to those chaotic natural forces upon which humans depend, more passionate and less rational, and thus more volatile and potentially destructive unless subordinated to the controls of reason and culture. At the same time, women are lovely and alluring, shining with the pleasures of Eros and the charms of Aphrodite; they possess a power upon which men are dependent and to which they are intensely attracted. In short, the power of woman is the power of Eros, the creative and destructive force of nature both inside our souls and out in the world, a force terrible and beautiful—‘death and undecaying life,’ as Sophocles describes Aphrodite (Thornton 41).

Woman as the “force terrible and beautiful” was subject to the “controls of reason and culture” that were man’s; that which was incapable of being understood (woman) was confined (by man) to a status equal to that of a slave. Pandora, from Greek literature, embodies the above description of why women were not just relegated to an inferior position, but were, in a sense, feared,

Pandora is the first woman created….She is fashioned by Hephasitus, the craftsman god, as an ‘evil thing’ hidden in the semblance of ‘bashful minded.’ Athena teaches her the woman’s arts of needlework and weaving, while Aphrodite gave her sexual allure, the power to arouse ‘cruel longing and limb-devouring cares.’ And the trickster god Hermes provides her with a ‘bitch’s mind and a deceptive character’ and ‘lies and wily words.’ This ‘sheer trap’ is the ancestress of women, a ‘plague to men who eat bread’ (Thornton 41).

Using Pandora as an example, B.S. Thornton writes,

…her sexual power, both attractive and duplicitous, but also necessary for humanity in order to reproduce and have the children who will protect them from what Hesiod calls ‘deadly old age.’ Man’s dependence on nature and its procreative power animates this fear of women, for women seem to be more intimate with that ambiguous power, creative and destructive all at once (Thornton 41).

Helen provided another example of the “terribleness” of woman and her duplicitous nature, “The most famous woman from Greek myth, Helen, perhaps best exemplifies woman’ double character—her seductive allure and destructive capacity. Helen is not just the most beautiful woman, but the most sexually beautiful woman in the world…Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses’” (Thornton 42-3).

Though Pandora and Helen embodied the reason for control over women because of their inherent “duplicitous” nature, there was, however, an alternative and a more preferred figure of woman from ancient Greek literature: Penelope. Penelope, from the “Odyssey”, was the archetypal wife, Thornton writes, “…the hallmark of Penelope’s character is the virtue that was most capable or reining in the power of Eros, the virtue most important for a wife to possess: rational self-control, the ability to restrain her appetites out of loyalty to her husband and her household” (Thornton 53).

Though scarce in advocates, there was another opinion of women.   Plato, in his “The Republic”, discusses the need for women who are the wives of the guards to be trained for warfare and schooled like the men,

Actually, they are to be not only wives, but guards themselves…the women of the guards are capable of making a creative contribution to building up the community, but…not… through family life. He is opposed to the prevailing view that they are meant by nature only to bear children, bring them up, and look after the household ….Now, if they are to do the same work as men, they should have the same upbringing …and education…Therefore the women of the ruling class must be schooled in ‘music’ and gymnastics just like the men, and also trained for war (Jaeger 244).

Though Plato is talking about a specific societal-class of women, his understanding that women would be a valuable asset to the guards if they were trained in a similar fashion is incredible; his contradiction to the normal role of women as strictly child bearers and homebodies is encouraging. Plato defends his argument is terms of “different equipment”,

A man who is not equipped to be a cobbler is not to do the same work as a man who is. But if one a man is bald and another has a fine head of hair, they might both (despite that particular difference in their equipment) be qualified to become cobblers. No doubt the natural difference between men and women influences their lives more profoundly than that, but still they may both be equally well equipped for the same vocation (Jaeger 245).

Though, Plato expresses that woman can be “equally well equipped for the same vocation,” he contends that man is still superior over woman in every area “…even in those which are declared to be woman’s province by those who maintain she is a domestic creature—cookery, baking, and weaving; but there is no one work which man or woman alone can do and which is impossible for the other sex” (Jaeger 245-6). According to Plato, though men and women can be equally trained, woman will fall short to man, even in her own sphere. Ultimately, Plato does not lag too far behind his contemporaries on the subject of women.

The View of Women in Rome

Roman women were cut from a different cloth than Greek women. Though they did not bear their own names—like we do in our culture, and bore the feminine version of their father’s name, (i.e., Julius/Julia, “If a man had more than one daughter, the second would be designated ‘Secunda’, the third ‘Tertia,’ and so on”) (Ball 197)— under the empire, they did have more social freedom than the Greek women. Albert Ball writes, “Because they weren’t bound to the house the way Greek women were, Roman women seem not to have been content to play mother and homemaker….By Augusts’ day, women reclined on couches at dinner beside their husbands instead of sitting by their feet or on chairs” (198). These somewhat ‘liberated’ women could run the family business when their husbands passed, (under the reign of Claudius) bought and sold property, and could remain single, but they could not vote (Ball 197). Around 44 B.C., Bruce Winter says that there was

…evidence of a ‘new’ type of woman…in certain circles in Rome. Both in ostensibly factual texts and in imaginative writing a new kind of woman appears precisely at the time of Cicero and Caesar: a woman in high position, who nevertheless claims for herself the indulgence in sexuality of a woman of pleasure. What could have given rise to such a change in the traditional behavior of married women? Wives still brought to marriage the all-important dowry but could now retain their own property. It was also possible for them to terminate the marriage, and receive back a portion of or the whole dowry” (Winter 21-2).

Therefore, it was not only financial independence that these Roman women experienced; they also experienced a small degree of social freedom (Winter 22).

Though Women were allowed these certain privileges in society, these liberties do not indicate a redeemed relationship with man. In fact, Ball writes that there were similarities between the men of Rome and Greece and their view of women, “Greek men considered women by nature intellectually inferior to men; the primary level of interaction between them was sexual….Roman men shared the Greeks’ opinion to a degree, so women never enjoyed political rights in Rome …” (197). In fact, “Greco-Roman women lived under the protection of their fathers until they were handed over to their husbands….Throughout their lives, they had the legal status of children…In Cicero’s words, ‘Our ancestors established the rule that all women, because of their weakness of intellect, should be under the power of guardians’ (Pro Murena 12.27)” (Ball 198).

On average, it is understood that because of the liberties of the Roman women, they were described as acting more aggressive then any other woman of their time and in history (Ball 198). In order to maintain societal control, “…Roman men, once the emperors rendered [women] politically impotent, could only try to salvage a few scraps of power by urging women to be subject to their husbands; ‘in no other way do woman and man become equal’ (Martial 8.12)…” (Ball 198-9). This inequality between the sexes, in spite of social liberties experienced by Roman women, is best understood in terms of the social laws of adultery, “The Greek and Romans did teach that one should not commit adultery, but not because the act violates a divine prohibition. It was views as a violation of property rights. Greek and Roman men didn’t want another man sleeping with their wives—who were their property—anymore than they wanted someone stealing their farm animals” (Ball 220).

The Roman (and Greek) family mirrored the relationship of the state to the emperor,

Within each family the father, as priest and patriarch, had patria potestas, absolute control of the lives and affairs of his wife and children…The law allowed him to inflict capital punishment on them or sell them into slavery, though such things hardly ever happened. He arranged his children’s marriages and planned his sons’ careers….The woman was expected to practice domestic crafts, manage the slaves, and behave herself with the utmost propriety (Ball 225).

Wayne Meeks advocates the same idea of the patria potestas within the Roman Family, and explains that “The traditional patria potestas of Rome had become less absolute from the time of the late republic on; the Hellenistic queens of the East and of Egypt had set a pattern of ‘masculine’ ambition and ruthlessness that women of the Julio-Claudian houses soon imitated” (Meeks 23). Craig Keener writes, ‘… ancient writers [thought] of families in…[the] general terms of rank and duty; ‘family’ was defined more by relationships of subordination than by blood relationship. The man in charge of the household was often even compared to a king, since the family was viewed as a microcosm of society” (Women and Wives 146). The influence of foreign queens, who behaved as men on the women of the Roman empire, was a primary factor in the call for wives to be in submission to their husbands, as the family unit was in submission to their head, the emperor.   Winter provides an example of the Response of the empire of Rome to the New Roman woman,

…‘the married women of the imperial family would provide her with examples of appropriate ways for a wife to behave. Works of the visual arts would show her how they dressed and how they wore their hair’. They were ‘models she should emulate, or exempla, to use the term that would come naturally to the mind of the Latin-speaking person’….A good example of traditional values is found in the statue of Regilla, the wife of the famous sophist of Athens, Herodes Atticus, around whom Philostratus wrote his Lives of the Sophists. The council of Corinth had erected a statue in her honour, and the inscription which contained the resolution of the Council read—This is a statue of Regilla…. ‘pre-eminent above others, who has attained the peak of every kind of virtue, whom she took as her husband, Herodes famous among the Hellens and furthermore a son (of Greece) greater than them all, the flower of Achaia (34-5).

Through the statues of empirical women showing how to behave and dress as a “proper” Roman woman, women of the time were exhorted (visually and verbally) to be virtuous and exemplary above all women, especially in comparison to the New Roman Woman. The ultimate desire in this propaganda was to preserve the status-quo; if one preserved the status-quo of the family, one preserved the status-quo of the state. Keener writes,

Maintaining the systems as it was had long been emphasized by ideologists of the state: ‘Preserve the present order, and do not desire any change, knowing that revolutions inevitably destroy states and lay waste homes of the people.’ Thus it was commonly believed that earlier Roman society had had much ‘higher’ morals, including much more sever discipline of unsubmissive wives (Keener Woman and Wives 144).

The State was determined to keep everything the way it was and to maintain the status-quo. With the influx of the New Roman Woman caused the women of the Greco-Roman society to seek change, therefore the Empire had to do something. The emphasis on the wives’ submission to the husband became the venue for maintaining the desired status-quo

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Random Thoughts on Egalitarianism and Justification

A while back, I received an email from a Twend (Twitter+Friend=Twend) about egalitarianism within the marriage and male/female relationships. My husband and I are “egalitarian” in our approach to our marriage and relationship with each other, and I passionately welcomed this email. I don’t make a huge deal about our “egalitarianism” because I find it more divisive than helpful in social media contexts. I love talking about it; i don’t love tweeting about it because, in my opinion 140 characters in an environment that is consistently devoid of the I/Thou relationship is a recipe for disaster.
While this email exchange took place a few months ago, I’m posting it now because I find myself in the midst of a pretty radical and awesome and huge project on gender and the gospel. So, why not just put this email in to a post and put it on my blog. I’m passionate (VERY) about gender and gender relations; this isn’t some fleeting fancy. The bulk of my research is aimed in the direction of gender and gender relations. I think about this topic daily, examining all the different facets for all the different angles.
So here is my response (slightly cleaned up) to my twend about “egalitarianism” and all the “rights and privledges therein” 😉

I’ve done a lot of study on the creation of woman and through all of it I just don’t see any reason for an emphasis on one gender having authority over another–it’s pointless and causes more turmoil than it’s worth. My husband agrees and he finds it ludicrous. you should hear how he talks to our daughter about being equal with men: she’s not “eye-candy” or, his favorite phrase, she’s not to be “subjected to the male gaze and can wear whatever she wants!” (She often has pants tucked into socks and strips going all different directions from head to toe!) He’s even on me when I wear make up. I tell him: IT’S FUN! And he says: you wear it because you’ve been raised to do it by our culture. I typically just roll my eyes… my shoes and makeup are fun to wear/put-on…i love me some sexy boots and smokey eyes! #ohhedoestoo 😉

This is how we view our relationship: in light of the two great commandments. These commandments are: Love the Lord your God and Love your neighbor as yourself. In my opinion, my husband and my children are my CLOSEST neighbors. I don’t then need a another commandment or “law” to come in and tell me that my role as a woman is to be at home and in submission to my husband. If the gospel is the thing by which order or, what I prefer to say, orientation occurs between me and God and me and my neighbor, then the gospel rightly orients me toward my husband because it rightly orients me toward God through the Son by the power of the Spirit. My husband and I think “roles” are pointless, and that, truly, we in merely loving each other serve and mutually submit to each other. If i love you, then why wouldn’t I put you first? For all intents and purposes, if you were to look at my life and how we run our family, we look very traditional: I stay home, he goes to work (etc). But it’s less because I should or because he can’t and more because we wanted to run our family in this way (again, laying down our lives for our neighbors, our spouse, our children, putting our desires on hold until later)–it also helped that he made enough to see that it happened.

Some have argued (and have said this too me) that egalitarianism (again, a pointless word) leads directly to androgyny–as in you can’t avoid it. This is stupid. This is like me saying that “complimentarianism” (another pointless word) always leads to domestic violence. It doesn’t. Do i find it a dangerous concept? YES; in the hands of the wrong man, yes, it will lead to violence and oppression.  I’ll always err on the side of more liberty than less because I know the law is impotent to do what it desires (orient rightly). Androgyny only occurs if we begin to think that men and women are equal AND interchangeable (rather than: equal BUT NOT interchangeable). But if we adhere to equality and difference then it opens up a beautiful relationshiop between the two. Now, the accusation that egalitarianism leads to androgyny came to me from a student in a class who is a  confirmed “complimentarian”: the husband has authority over the wife. Now his accusation came after a discussion that one gender doesn’t have authority over another. So his point: without some authority over the woman the man’s role is now no longer defined and out of the window goes masculinity. Thus, masculinity and “decision making” and “authority” are inherently linked and femininity linked with it’s compliimentary features: “non-decision making” and “subjection.” Here’s the problem I see in that line of logic: 1) he is linking masculinity to a “work” which is a huge problem considering that in heaven while there will be no marriage or giving of marriage there will still be “gender” and “masculinity” (keeping in mind that the image of God isn’t erased in heaven but made glorified by his creation man and woman) and 2) what happens to said man when he loses his mind? Does he ALSO lose his masculinity? No, that’s stupid. He’s STILL masculine, he’s still a man even when she has to decide on his behalf.

The problem lies in the inability to go into the abstract and the deep desire of limited humanity to always want to figure out everything down to the tiniest molecule and have an answer: if a then b! But I love the abstract. What if, Twend, what if masculinity and femininity are defined by each other…what if just my presence as a woman (i.e. not man) is enough to emphasize, draw out, point to my husband’s masculinity. Boobs and hips aside: I’m NOT him; if we allow this to be true, and if we allow our nakedness with each other to be the deciding factor about who is feminine and who is masculine, then a whole new world opens up to us. Things that are classically “masculine” and “feminine” are now more appropriately considered human. My husband can cry and I can be a hard-ass, neither one acting like the other gender. In this light, we see how the doctrine of justification penetrates even the most intimate human relationships: no longer defined by works but by God’s declaration to us: forgiven sinners, forgiven men AND women. In how I understand the totality of the event of justification, i believe that works can no longer define me WHATSOEVER. And thus I’m free to be fully woman in right relationship to my husband, a man.

So, while there are things on this earth that still define me as a woman–things that I feel obligated to do or chose to do because I’m a woman–these works do not define me as a woman in Christ (not even birth or the act of sex, because women who don’t have either are still fully women).

Let’s also consider Ephesians 5. In v. 21 we have the verb translated as “submitting” and I know that this is the verb that is pulled into the subsequent verse (v.22) when Paul turns his attention to wives: submit to your husbands. Then, after only three short thoughts, he turns to the husbands and addresses them in a rather lengthy discourse starting with an exhortation to lay down their lives for their wives. Now, what I’ve heard from a number of people (both professors and lay people alike) is this: women only have to submit, but men have to lay down their lives! I find this statement ridiculous and irritating. I find submission to be a form of laying down yourself for another (it’s not subjection considering that the verb is a deponent with an active meaning: submit yourselves); in order for me to submit, let’s say, to the will of my husband, I have to put myself aside, sort of like an act of oblation; this, to me, thematically jives with 5.21: “Submitting therefore one to the other.” Submission is loving your neighbor as yourself and incorporates laying yourself (‘your life’) down (‘dying’). In this light, submission/submitting yourself = laying down your life.  Thus, Paul isn’t totally saying something new as in “subject” to the husbands, but rather explaining in clearer language what it means to live out “submitting therefore one to the other” (toward their wives). And if he is using different language to say something similar to the husbands as he did to the wives, then my next question is why? Why change the language?

The thought I’ve been having lately about the “why” is this: Paul speaks to the women in terminology they would’ve existentially understood–the language they would’ve been familiar with but also because of the woman’s ability (and in the case of Paul’s age) one of her primary functions in bringing forth life into the world: a woman, having gone through the experience of pregnancy, labor, delivery, and caring for a helpless child, would have been well acquainted with the event of submission as a laying down of their life, of loving something/someone form the inside out that can give nothing back in return (agape). I’m not saying that Paul had this later aspect on the forefront of his mind, but it’s intriguing to me that he speaks nearly in shorthand to the wives. Thus, what he says to the women, is not radical: it’s nearly status quo; they would’ve nodded ” oh yes, we understand.” But what’s radical is what follows with his discussion to the men. The feeling in the transition from talking to the wives to the husbands is as if he paused and said to the husbands: all y’all best sit down for this; i’m about to blow your minds. And thus enters into a longer explanation of how the husbands are to love (agape) their wives and live out the “submitting one to another” aspect of 5.21. Both the act and the concept would have been so radical to the husbands, that Paul essentially has to spell it out for them and even then Paul loses his own mind and gets caught up–nearly raptured–in the mysteries he can’t even explain well enough. So, in short, my thoughts have been that Paul had to explain in detail (agape worked out in submission to another (the wife)) to the husbands because it was radical and foreign, and he could speak plainly and briefly to the women, because they would’ve understood (per the reasons mentioned above).

another thing to think about (and I’ll end with this) is: whenever Paul seems to be correcting the women in his churches it’s nearly always because their pendulum has swung too far. Thus, while they are trying to flaunt their freedom, they are really just a law to themselves and others. Don’t dominate men, women, because that’s not freedom nor is it the proper correction to Gen 3. No gender is to dominate the other gender; don’t abandon your children and husband because now you’re “free”; that’s not freedom. Freedom is being able to say: this might suck and i might want to be devoting my life to the Lord (PhD, Career, etc), but I can’t because I have these lives, these others that need me. That’s freedom. That’s Gal 3. The law has been abrogated, the prison warden has been silenced and unemployed, and I am no longer defined by my deeds (“there is therefore no…”) but I am still here and there are things I must still do. Paul is always hyper concerned to protect the gospel from slander: if having a woman publicly teaching men was considered offensive to OUTSIDERS in his day and age, then he would encourage abstaining from the practice. From the commentaries I’ve read, it seems that Paul is not universally making a claim about women but, rather, talking about how things should proceed in order to move the gospel forward. (Cf. 1 and 2 Tim, Titus, Ephesians, Corinthians…etc).

Posted on by laurenlarkin 1