Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism | Wayne Grudem

Wayne Grudem. Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism: Biblical Responses to the Key Questions. Multnomah, 2006. 284 pp.

Egalitarian Claim:

The New Testament writers urged the mutual submission of husbands and wives to one another (Ephesians 5:21). Therefore, there is no unique leadership role for the husband.

Ephesians 5:21 says, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Egalitarians say this verse teaches “mutual submission,” and that means that just as wives have to submit to their husbands, so husbands have to submit to their wives. Doesn’t the text say that we have to submit “to one another”? And this means that there is no unique submission that a wife owes to her husband, and no unique authority that a husband has over his wife. . . .

Based on the idea of “mutual submission,” egalitarians will sometimes say: “Of course I believe that a wife should be subject to her husband. And a husband should also be subject to his wife.” Or an egalitarian woman might say, “I will be subject to my husband as soon as he is subject to me.” And so, as egalitarians understand Ephesians 5:21, there is no difference in roles between men and women. There is no unique leadership role, no unique authority for the husband. There is simply “mutual submission.”

Answer #1: If by “mutual submission” someone means that husband and wife should love one another and be considerate of one another’s needs, this is surely a biblical idea, but it is not taught in this verse.

People can mean different things by “mutual submission.” There is a sense of the phrase “mutual submission” that does not nullify the husband’s authority within marriage. If “mutual submission” means being considerate of one another and caring for one another’s needs and being thoughtful of one another, then of course I agree that “mutual submission” is a good thing (unless these ideas are used to nullify all unique authority for the husband). We can get these ideas from Jesus’ command to “love one another” (John 13:34) and from Paul’s commands in Philippians 2:3-4: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

But as we will see in the following discussion, it is doubtful that these ideas are taught in Ephesians 5:21. The Bible does not use the language of “being subject” to teach these things. In addition, egalitarians mean something so different by the phrase “mutual submission” and have used this phrase so often to nullify male authority within marriage that I am convinced the expression “mutual submission” only leads to confusion in today’s context.

Answer #2: In the context that follows Ephesians 5:21, Paul explains what he means by “submitting to one another”: He means wives should submit to husbands, children to parents, and servants to masters.

The plain sense of “submitting to one another” in Ephesians 5:21 has been clear to Christians for centuries, simply from looking at the context. Paul explains in the following context that wives are to be subject to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23), children are to be subject to their parents (Ephesians 6:1-3), and slaves (or bondservants) are to be subject to their masters (Ephesians 6:5-8). These relationships are never reversed. He does not tell husbands to be subject to wives, or parents to be subject to their children (thus nullifying all parental authority), or masters to be subject to their servants.

Paul does not tell husbands and wives generally to be subject to each other, nor does he tell wives to be subject to other people’s husbands. He says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22).

What Paul has in mind is not a vague “mutual submission,” where everybody is considerate and thoughtful of everybody else, but a specific kind of submission to an authority: The wife is subject to the authority of “her own husband.” Similarly, parents and children aren’t told to practice “mutual submission,” but children are to be subject to (to “obey”) their parents (Ephesians 6:1-3), and servants are told to be subject to (to “obey”) their masters (Ephesians 6:5-8). In each case, the person in authority is not told to be subject to the one under authority, but Paul wisely gives guidelines to regulate the use of authority by husbands (who are to love their wives, Ephesians 5:25-33), by parents (who are not to provoke their children to anger, Ephesians 6:4), and by masters (who are to give up threatening their servants and remember that they too serve Christ, Ephesians 6:9). In no case is there “mutual submission ; in each case there is submission to authority and regulated use of that authority.

And then Paul says that the kind of submission wives are to exercise is like the submission of the church to Christ: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Ephesians 5:24). This is surely not a “mutual submission,” for the church is subject to Christ’s authority in a way that Christ is not, and never will be, subject to us.

Answer #3: The egalitarian view of “mutual submission” is a novelty in the history of the church.

Throughout the history of the church, I know of no author before 1968 who thought that “submitting to one another” makes the passage mean what egalitarians understand, namely that there is no unique male headship and authority in marriage. For centuries it was understood that the passage teaches that we should all be subject to those God has put in authority over us, such as husbands, parents, or employers. . . .

Answer #4: Husbands are never told to be subject to their wives.

There is another fact that egalitarians cannot explain well when they propose “mutual submission” as an understanding of this verse. They fail to account for the fact that, while wives are several times in the New Testament told to be subject to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1-6), husbands are never told to be subject to their wives. Why is this, if Paul wanted to teach “mutual submission”? . . .

Answer #5: The egalitarian position depends on giving a Greek term a meaning it has never been shown to have.

When we look at the word Paul used when he said “submitting to one another” in Ephesians 5:21, we find that this word (Greek hupotassō) is always used of submission to an authority. No one has yet produced any examples in ancient Greek literature (either inside or outside the New Testament) where hupotassō is applied to a relationship between persons, and where it does not carry this sense of being subject to an authority. . . .

Answer #6: The term translated “one another” often means “some to others” and not “everyone to everyone.” That is the sense it has to have here.

The Greek term translated “one another” (the word allelōn) can have two different meanings. Sometimes in the New Testament it means something like “everyone to everyone,” as we see in verses like John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” Everyone agrees that this means that all Christians are to love all other Christians. It has the sense “everyone to everyone.”

But egalitarians make a crucial mistake when they assume that because allelōn means “everyone to everyone” in some verses, it must mean that in all verses. In many other contexts, the word doesn’t mean “everyone to everyone,” but “some to others.”

For example, in Revelation 6:4, the rider on the red horse “was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another.” This does not mean that every person first got killed and then killed the one who had murdered him! It simply means that some killed others. Here the word allelōn does not mean “everyone to everyone” but “some to others.” . . .

Therefore we find that no idea of “mutual submission” is taught in Ephesians 5:21 and we can paraphrase the verse as follows: “Be subject to others in the church who are in positions of authority over you.”

Excerpted from Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism © 2006 by Wayne Grudem. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc. Excerpt may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of Multnomah Publishers.

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