I’ll respond briefly to my old friend Bill Einwechter’s rejoinder to my article “The ‘Patriarchy’ Problem.” I have long thought that Bill is the most theologically astute, consistently practicing, and personally winsome of the patriarchalists, and they are wise to enlist him to champion their cause.  This present post responding to him presupposes that the reader is acquainted with the previous posts, so please read them if you haven’t done so.

Poor Analogy

First, Bill argues that since the fact that a private in the Army must obey both his captain and colonel does not negate the senior authority of the colonel over the private, so the fact that children must obey both Dad and Mom does not negate the senior authority of the Dad over the children.  The problem is that the family is not the Army.  It is, in fact, injurious to import human “chain-of-command” authority structures back into the family (or the church, for that matter).  The U. S. Army is not our paradigm; the Bible is.

Yes, Duties Can be Divided

Second, we can, in fact, separate the wife’s duties from the mother’s duties.  If we couldn’t, it would hard to show how a childless wife could fulfill her entire duties.  It’s hard to believe that Bill opposes the idea that “parenting [is] something distinct from the marriage and not an integral part of it.”  When I pronounce a man husband and wife, I’m not publicly authenticating half a family.  A husband and a wife are a family, even without children.  Children are a great blessing ([Ps. 127:3]; well, not all children, only godly children [Pr. 17:25]), but children are not essential to a family, and a marriage is not essential to children (it should be, but fathers and mothers do sometimes die, and children are [unfortunately] born out of wedlock).  If we can separate spousal from paternal and maternal obligation before children come along (and after they are reared), why can’t be do it while they are being reared?  In short, paternal and maternal obligation can be and often are separated from spousal obligation.

Everything Without Qualification?

Bill argues that when Ephesians 5:24 states that wives must submit to their husbands in everything, it means just that — apparently without qualification.  But we all know this cannot be true.  If a husband demands a wife sin (for instance, submit to an abortion or spouse-swapping), she must disobey him and obey God.  Likewise, if a husband demands that his children attend a public school while his wife believes they must be home schooled, he may not steamroll her God-given authority on the ground of texts like Ephesians 5:24, whose meaning is “Wives, obey your husbands in everything in which it is appropriate,” not in everything without qualification whatsoever.

Eight Unpersuasive Theses

Bill posits eight theses that allegedly support his contention not just that the wife should submit to the husband (valid) but that the mother should submit to the father (invalid), yet these sets of verses either are not pertinent to the special case he’s trying to make or do not prove what he’s trying to prove. For example, in arguing for (a) “male positional priority (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:8-24; I Cor. 11:7-12; 1 Tim. 2:13),” (b) that “man is the head of the woman and that she is to submit to him (1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:24; Col. 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Pet. 3:1-6),” and (c) that “elder and deacon qualifications … state that men are to govern their own children and households well (1 Tim. 3:4-5, 12),” Bill posits theses that do not refute the fact that father and mother have equal authority in the lives of their children.  Bill seems convinced that these texts support his view because he has already assumed its validity.  But you cannot assume what you need to prove.

Moreover, he makes a great deal about the fact that “father’s house” occurs 62 times in the Bible, while “mother’s house” appears only 4 times.  But this is to commit a quantification fallacy.  The virgin birth is taught explicitly only once in the Bible (Is. 7:14; cf. Mt. 1:23) while universal human depravity is taught ubiquitously. Should we allow the texts on universal human depravity to govern our views of the virgin birth merely on the strength of their quantity?  Of course not.

Similarly, Bill notes that in most Biblical texts, the father is named before the mother, and Bill insinuates that this chronological priority of the father necessitates greater authority.  Yet this fallacy is easily confuted.  In 1 Peter 1:2 the sequence of the Trinitarian designation is Father, Holy Sprit, Son (see also 2 Cor. 13:14 and Jude 20–21).  Does this mean that the Son is submissive to the Holy Spirit?  That view would be heresy. Chronological priority in Biblical texts does not imply greater authority.

Bill notes that “biblical law … gives a man authority to overturn the vows of his wife and daughters (Num. 30:3-16).”  Quite true, but in defending his view, that is an argument from silence.  He needs to prove the authority the mother does not have, not the authority the father does have, and he hasn’t done this.

The Blessings of Confusion

Bill contends that spousal hierarchy coupled with parental parity (the view I hold) is “confusion.”  But confusion is in the mind of the beholder.  Let’s use a Biblical example (and not an example from the Army) to address this argument.

The Bible and Christian orthodoxy teach that in their eternal relations, the three members of the Trinity are equally authoritative, just as they share a single nature.  It also teaches that in the outworking of redemption, the Son submits to the will of the Father and the Spirit does the will of the Father and the Son (at least the Western church teaches this).  That is to say, the Biblical Trinity is both egalitarian and hierarchical, depending on the perspective from which it is viewed.  This is the orthodox Christian position: ontological egalitarianism and economic hierarchy.  Confusing?  You bet.  But the fact that it is confusing does not give us warrant to deny its truth.  Eternal economic subordinationism is heretical, just as the more frequently espoused eternal ontological subordinationism is, despite the tragic fact that some patriarchalists (like Bruce Ware, not Bill) now espouse the former.  The easy and un-confusing tack is to say, “In the family, what the father says goes at all times.”  The easy way, and the wrong way.  The Biblical and “confusing” way is, “The wife must submit to her husband, and children must submit to their parents (equally).  The wife submits to her husband’s authority, but the mother does not submit to the father’s authority.  Fatherhood and motherhood by their nature are not essentially spousal positions.”  After all, we have plenty of single parents, but no “single” marriages, a contradiction of terms.

A Pastoral Exhortation to Mothers

Godly mothers are reading these lines, and I cannot avoid a teaching moment.

Mothers, you are to work lovingly and graciously and deferentially with your children’s father in rearing your children, just as is he is to work lovingly and graciously and deferentially with you.  But you may not abandon your God-given authority in rearing your children.  If your husband demands a choice with respect to their rearing that you cannot in good conscience support, you are not required by God to support it.  The Bible commands wives to submit to husbands; it never commands mothers to submit to fathers.  And you betray your God-given authority when you allow your husband the final and ultimate say in your children’s rearing.  Just as the Son and Spirit do not submit to the authority of the Father in their eternal being (there being loving, equally authority in the Godhead), so there should — and must — be loving and equal authority in the rearing of children.

Introduction

Like many of you, I was blessed to have been influenced by devout Christians in my youth. One of them was John Ashbrook. He was pastor of one of the Christian day schools I attended in the 70s. He finally went to be with the Lord a couple of years ago. He once said, “If you want to know what God loves, find out what Satan is attacking.”

I doubt anybody will dispute that today that includes the family. Extramarital sex, radical feminism, immature machismo (“he-man-ism”), pornography, recreational contraception, abortion, federal social policies that incentivize laziness, and much more. Satan is targeting the family — your family and mine, and too often he’s been dramatically successful.

If you want to know why I preach about the family so much, why Cornerstone stresses the family so much, that’s a big reason why: we want to be attacking Satan where Satan is attacking what God loves. We want to love what God loves, and God loves the family.

It occurred to me last summer that every main thing we need to know about marriage we can discover right at the beginning of the Bible. So I thought we’d survey the first two chapters of Genesis to discover God’s truth about marriage for us.

A pre-redemptive institution

The first truth I want us to note is that marriage was instituted in Genesis 1–2, before Genesis 3. What happened in Genesis 3? Man and woman sinned. This means that marriage is a pre-redemptive institution: it was in God’s plan before sin showed up. This is isn’t true of the church or the state, two other of God’s institutions for man. If man had never sinned, we wouldn’t have a church or state — at least not like we have them now. But we would have the family — many families.

This means that the family isn’t a concession to sin. This means the family isn’t designed to help redeem man from a bad situation. It means that the family is the way God meant things to be from the very beginning. This means that the family is for man as man, not just redeemed man. Christians sometimes ask whether non-Christians are really are married in God’s sight. Yes, they are. Only Christians should marry only other Christians, but marriage doesn’t depend on whether you’re a Christian. Marriage and the family are for humanity made in God’s image, not just Christians.

Husband

God is not enough for the man

God first made man, the male, Adam. God placed man in the perfect environment. Adam had splendorous, lush garden; the best food; no hard work; the animals as companions; bliss, daily fellowship with Triune God!

But all of this wasn’t enough for Adam. God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). I want us to think hard about the implications of that statement. Adam wasn’t alone, was he? After all, he had God, didn’t he? We sometimes might think, “I don’t need anyone but God,” but that’s not what the Bible teaches.

God was not enough. Man needs someone like him (like him, yet different). So, God created woman. Man in the garden had God, but God wasn’t all he needed. He needed someone like him, yet different from him.

He had God, but God isn’t a temporal, bodily being like man. Man had the animals. They are temporal and bodily beings, but they’re not made in God’s image. What man needed was a being made in God’s image like he was, and yet a being just different enough from him fill the void in his existence.

In other words, he needed a woman.

So God created woman, Eve, from Adam’s side, near his heart. I suspect there’s symbolism in this act. God didn’t fashion Eve from his feet, so he could trample on her. He didn’t create her from Adam’s head, so she could dominate him. God created woman from man’s side, near his heart.

Husbands, make sure your wife stays right there at all times: near your heart. Young single men, that’s what you’re getting with a a godly wife: a woman who can stay hear your heart at all times. A woman with whom you can share your deepest goals and longings and fears and hopes. A woman with whom you can be utterly transparent.

This is implied in Genesis 2:25: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” They were utterly open with each other — nothing to hide. Full intimacy, not just physical intimacy.

After a wedding this summer I was chatting informally with some of the young married couples. I said, “Most husbands think that if they show any fear or weakness or vulnerability to their wives, their wives will lose respect for them. They obviously don’t know women very well. Wives — the right kind of wives — cherish intimacy. The wife cherishes being able to help a man be what he cannot be without her. So, when you share your innermost thoughts with your wife, you’re not just meeting her needs, you’re helping yourself.”

And all the young husbands were staring at me warily while all the young wives were vigorously nodding their heads. A godly woman would never lose respect for a husband who shares his very life with her. She looks at that husband as a man she can trust — as her champion.

Adam saw Eve and said: “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh” (Gen. 2:23). He knew the significance of where God had taken her from: from his very body. And this is why the act of marital intercourse is such a profound act. It’s not just a unity of bodies but a unity of beings, of lives. And this is why all extramarital intercourse is so tragic. It robs us and one another of a communion that can only be experienced as it should between a husband and a wife. The woman was created from the man’s body and joins the man’s body — and his heart and emotions and mind and history and will and his very life.

Husbands: sacrifice for this woman. Put her needs first. Trust her with your very life. Ever man who marries, implicitly acknowledges that he’s incomplete, that he’s lonely, that he’s not self-sufficient.

And that’s a good thing.

The husband is the leader

Man was created first, before woman, to lead — not dominate, but lead (1 Tim. 2:11–13). That’s a weighty obligation: to lead a woman (and often children). The husband is responsible for his wife’s material care, as well as her spiritual oversight. Husbands, your job is to lead your wife into grace and freedom and obedience and in the church and in the culture. That job is yours, not hers.

One of the cruelest ways a husband can treat his wife is to leave her alone and abandoned — not just physically, refusing to provide for her, but spiritually and emotionally. To shut her out of his life. To force her alone to make the decisions about finances and church and living arrangements and vocation and the children and future plans.

The wife is designed to be led — longs to be led — by a kind and loving and sacrificial husband. Every decision takes on increased importance.

Like Joshua, you husbands, must say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Jos. 24:15). That’s your job, and you may not shirk it.

Wife

God made woman as a help worthy (suitable) to her husband: “Another like him, yet different.” Not like the animals, but one close to his heart with whom he can share his life.

The wife was created to assist the husband

We read in 1 Corinthians 11:9 that the woman was created for the man: not for his exploitation or amusement or objectification but to assist him in his God-called task. The man is called to steward God’s creation for the Lord’s glory and according to his standards, and the woman is called right along with him (Gen. 1:27–28). God calls every husband to a specific task, and the woman is to assist him in his life’s work. This isn’t limited to vocation, though it includes that. It means his entire God-given task of starting a family (which he can’t accomplish without a woman anyway!), of providing for their well-being, of supporting a church, of helping aged parents. The woman is to be there and a vital part of this task at every step of the way.

The wife is called to the husband. She is called to sacrifice her goals and aspirations for his. That’s not a popular idea today, but it is the biblical idea. The Bible does support the idea of the “career woman” for a wife, unless she understands that her husband is her career.

This obviously doesn’t mean that the woman can’t be employed or produce income (Proverbs 31 is obvious about that). It means that the wife cannot have a career track separate from her husband. She may not make plans about her future that are not subordinate to her husband’s plans.

The woman was created to be the man’s suitable help. Wives, that is God’s calling on your life.

The wife must submit to the husband

The Bible also teaches that the wife is called to submit to her husband — from the very beginning (1 Tim. 2:11–13). That just means she’s called to trust his leadership. He may never treat her as a doormat. He may never bulldoze her. The wisest husband always consults his wife and cherishes her counsel and no doubt follows it much of the time.

Godly wifely submission simply means that she trusts God with her husband’s leadership. If she disagrees with him, and he overrules her on some point, she trusts God that, if she’s right, God will change her husband.

There are so many times when God has changed me and vindicated Sharon’s counsel. Sometimes I disagreed and I was right. And sometimes not.

To live a life of submission is to live a life in faith. Wives, you don’t need to control or manipulate you husbands to guarantee that God will care for you and do right by you. In other words, God is sovereign in your husband’s life.

This is why godly submission is exhibition of of strength, not weakness. It’s proof of a woman who’s strong in faith and trusts her husband with God. And the godly husband who sees this submission never assumes he call bulldoze her. Why? Because she knows God is her great sovereign advocate and protector. A godly husband has great reverence and respect for a submissive wife, because he knows that God will move mountains to honor her obedience and to protect her against any usurpations of power.

The Husband and Wife

Marriage starts a new family

Moses writes, “[A] man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Our parents leave a heavy imprint on our lives. This is just what God intends.

But marriage starts a new family, a new covenant. A husband and wife honor their parents, but they are not submitted to their parents.

Parents of married children: love them and pray for them and help them, but know that you have no authority in their marriage. Married folks: never allow your parents or in-laws to dictate in your marriage and family. They have no God-given authority to do that. And God will not honor your family if you allow parents to dictate in your family.

You must leave father and mother and cling one another. You may not run home when hard times arrive. And parents: you may not allow your children and sons- and daughters-in-law to run back home when hard times arrive. Hard times in a marriage that are properly addressed in that marriage by the husband and wife only make that marriage stronger. Parents, if you keep interfering, you’ll rob your children of the victories that can be won only when they are forced to deal with big issues. Let God work in their marriage.

Marriage is permanent

Finally: Jesus once said to the Pharisees: “‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so'” (Mt. 19:8). Divorce is a concession to human sinfulness. Divorce isn’t God’s creational way. Divorce is not a part of the design plan.

We live in a divorce culture. (Christians divorce almost as widely as non-Christians.) This is one consequence of today’s cult of autonomy: “I get to decide how I’ll live my life and make myself happy, and if a wife or husband gets in the way, I’ll just throw him/her on the trash heap.”

People’s lives are destroyed and children are scarred for life and investments are lost and churches are ripped apart and businesses are disrupted all because somebody was willing to sacrifice anybody and anything on the altar of their own gratification.

But the God who created man and woman alone knows what gratifies them. God’s plans for marriage are designed not just to please him but to please us. God desires to share his communion with us an joyous people — joyous as he is joyous. So his law for our lives is a joyous law — it makes us joyous when we obey.

And sacrificing for the gratification of other people — just as God the Father and Son and Spirit do for each other and for us— makes us joy-filled. A life of autonomy is not a life of joy.

So, in depravation, failure, illness, and incapacity — hang onto each other. Death alone should sever a marriage. Determine for yourselves that divorce is not an option for a Christian marriage.

“Out of two, one.”

What we learn about the first marriage is just as true today: God’s holy way is always right and good, and man’s sinful ways are always wrong and bad.

Below are introductory remarks made at CCL’s 2013 West Coast Symposium in downtown San Francisco last weekend:

We need first to know what culture is. We do that best by distinguishing nature (or creation) from culture. John M. Frame captures this distinction: “Creation is what God makes; culture is what we make.” Culture is quite different from creation; its distinctive trait is the human use of that creation for man’s benefit. Culture is what we get when man intentionally employs creation for beneficial purposes. A tomato is not an aspect of culture; a pizza is. Oxygen is not an example of culture; an oxygen mask is. King David is not defined as culture; Michelangelo’s famous sculpture King David (c. 1504) is culture. Creation plus man’s beneficial interaction with it equals culture.

God’s first commission to man is to steward the rest of creation for his glory. We often call this “the cultural mandate.” God commissions man as his deputy to be the benevolent king over the earth.

If you’ll think about it, this means that creation isn’t sufficient. God made all things very good, but he didn’t make them to stay the way they are. Man was designed to use his ingenuity and diligence to improve creation for humanity’s benefit and God’s glory. God didn’t want the world to have only tomatoes. He wanted man to create pizza (or something like it). God didn’t want to make only oxygen. He designed for man to help his fellow man when he was ill by devising an oxygen mask. Creation isn’t enough. God wants his image, man, to employ creation to fashion culture.

That task requires intellect. It did from the beginning. Adam used his intellect to name the animals. In time, no doubt, he used that intellect to devise simple machines.

Fulfilling the cultural mandate isn’t possible without intellect.

As time goes on and civilization progresses — and this is my main point — intellect occupies a greater role in the cultural mandate. It takes greater intellectual exertion and sophistication to make a wagon than a wheel and pulley. It takes greater intellect to create an automobile than a wagon. And it requires more to fashion voice recognition technology than an automobile.

This progress is true not only for technology. It’s equally true in theology (16th-century theology was much more intellectually sophisticated than patristic theology), politics (our age of political ideologies is much more intellectually grounded than the age of the ancient empires), and medicine (I suspect nobody here longs for the good old days of George Washington and bleeding patients to heal infections).

And what’s true of these fields is true across the board: philosophy, music, economics, investment, architecture, literature, engineering, athletics, health, and so on. Civilizational advance requires intellectual advance.

If this is true, it means that over time, Christian culture must occupy itself more and more with intellect. The point isn’t that all Christians, or most, must be intellectuals — that would be boring and lopsided — and, frankly, dangerous. The point, rather, is that Christians must take with increased seriousness the intellectual task of the cultural mandate. Somebody needs to be doing the intellectual lifting, and Christians need to be first in line to start lifting.

Ironically, our society is increasingly anti-intellectual. How can this be, given the pervasive intellectual advances that surround us? The answer is simple: fewer and fewer people are doing more and more of the heavy intellectual lifting. Our world is hyper-specialized, and intellectuals are quintessential specialists. Unfortunately, Christians have followed this trend and are usually happily anti-intellectual. In this way, they are supremely worldly. We don’t tend to think of anti-intellectualism as a form of worldliness, but it is.

There’s no single solution to this problem, but I’ll suggest one. Christians must recover the intellect as a mission field. They should put money and resources toward getting Christians trained to be engineers and software architects and professors and surgeons and attorneys and economists and pastor-scholars and political scientists and philosophers.

If the cultural mandate necessitates increased use of intellect over time, we need more Christians taking the lead in intellectual fields, and refusing to surrender vast portions of society to the Devil. In 30 years, robots will be doing the tasks many people are doing today. Intellect will increasingly occupy a greater share of culture.

Christians,therefore, must take the lead in conquering intellectual fields as we contemplate a Christian future.