I agree that the family is an expression of the Holy Trinity, but I think the metaphor breaks down on two points:
- The Trinity is co-eternal – the 3 persons didn’t pop into existence one after the other (or at all) – but man and woman were created, and man came first, then came the woman as a helpmate to the man. Paul gives this order of creation weight when he says, “For Adam was first formed, then Eve” (1 Tim 2:13) in his justification for why the woman ought not to have authority over the man in the Church. While Paul does not explicitly make this same argument with regard to authority in the household, it’s not unreasonable to think he would do so. (And note that this justification is drawn from how humanity was brought into existence before the Fall, so my next point might have less weight than I originally thought.)
- It may have been possible for the family to exist without a definite authority structure prior to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were perfect persons who had no inclinations whatsoever that would have disrupted such a harmony, but human beings aren’t perfect anymore. We live with concupiscence, and concupiscence requires us to have authority structures that we otherwise would not have needed.
–Mike
I don’t believe I suggested in my posts that women should have authority over men. Apologies if my words suggested this.
I agree the relationship between men and women became distorted as a consequence of sin. This is one of the reasons why
some men believe a relationship can only work if the woman is subordinate to the man. Admittedly, such a relationship works well for the one who dominates. Wouldn’t it be a great world if only everyone else thought as we thought, did what we wanted them do, and subordinated themselves to our way of thinking. Such a relationship falls short of the ideal, the relationship being a mirror of the relationship of the Holy Trinty. It means one party in the relationship remains unfulfilled.
We humans are very bad at relationships. We believe there must always be a dominant partner for a relationship to succeed. There is no doubt, that working together in unity is much more difficult than working together in harmony. Such a relationship will be harder work than one that depends on subordination to succeed. There is no doubt relationships are easier when one party ‘knows their place.’ This is not the ideal. Despite how difficult the ideal is, the ideal being the relationship of the Holy Trinity, this ideal did not change when man sinned. Yes, it became much more difficult, as God prophecied, and it can only be accomplished by grace, but it did not change.
As I have said, ‘authority’ in the divine sense is not dependant on the subordination of another. We humans have difficulty understanding how someone can have greater resonsibility, or different responsibilities, in the absence of the subordination of others. This again is a distortion of relationships due to sin and because we humans have a human perception of ‘authority’ and not a divine one.
The relationship between a parent and their child does not depend on unquestioning obediance. It may do, when a child is very young and does not have the experience of life necessary to reason and the cognitive development to reason. Sooner or later, they will and ‘authority’ takes on a different meaning. The adult child continues to respect their parents because they chose to give that child life and give so much of themselves to the child in raising them. However, it does not mean the parent should always be in the driving seat of the child’s life. Therefore, it is not necessary for the husband to always be in the driving seat of the wife’s life. Rather, it is an equal giving of self, as in the relationship of the Holy Trinity.
The same can be said of relationships within the Church. God raise up leaders, but he raises them to be servants of others. God raised up prophets, judges, apostles to guide others to him. He did not raise them up to have followers\disciples\subordinates of their own. Leadership in the divine sense does not mean subordination of others, but creating unity. A great example of leadership that creates unity while not expecting others to be subordinate was Ghandi. I’m sure there are other great leaders who could be mentioned. Was Jesus different? Did he think relationships can only work when one party is ‘ruled’ by another?
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, teachings regarding the authority of men over women comes from interpretations of the Pauline letters. These teachings focus on certain words such as; ‘authority,’ and ‘subject.’ The original writing was not written in chapter and verse. They were letters. Therefore, the entire letter was to be read and as a letter, we cannot formulate a divine teaching because one word of an English translation reads ‘subject.’ ‘Subject’ may have had a whole different meaning in Greek and a whole different meaning to the first century Church reading the letter. If we want to know the divine meaning behind Paul’s words, it is important to consider the historical backdrop, the literary construction of the letter, why he wrote the letter, and what divine truth he was attempting to impart. In addition, Christ’s teaching on the status of women and divorce was quite radical for the time. Many Bible scholars believe he words denote a call to live the ideal I have discussed above. Interpretations of the Pauline letters that are inconsistent with the Gospels should be reconsidered to establish their true meaning.
