The Husband’s Call to Love Is A Call to Rule

[Pacman]

My statement was not an exhaustive study on pre and post curse patriarchy. I am not attempting to finagle anything. I believe there are several key statements throughout the Genesis account of creation, as well as within the curse to both Adam and Eve to indicate that Adam was in charge. I stand by my statement that something changed. And yes the verse seems to indicate that ruling began with the curse. Again remember that before the curse sin was not an issue, so what exactly did Adam's headship look like before the curse? Was it simply leadership without authority? If sin nature wasn't present then leadership would not need authority. Because the sin nature would not be tempting her to reject his leadership. And are we really being a curse to our women when we rule them? Or are we actually fulfilling our role in their lives and providing structure that she needs? Exactly what changed and to what degree is what I am hoping we can all discuss...

 

[FollowingHim]

I think it is very clear that Adam was in charge from creation, this has been discussed elsewhere. I don't see 'rule' being introduced in the curse.

The word 'desire' is not 'love', but rather a strong longing as of an animal wanting to devour something (check concordances).

So I would paraphrase this as 'you will desire to control your husband, nevertheless he will rule over you'.

He was in charge regardless. But when a loving husband leads a submissive wife, she doesn't feel oppressed in any way, it is a wonderful arrangement that just works. If the wife seeks to take control, and the husband responds by asserting his authority more forcefully (as the situation now demands), life's not so fun for anbody, especially the wife. So although the fact he is in authority did not change, her tendencies in attitude did, resulting in the more adversarial situation described.

 

[The Revolting Man]

I will have to look this up but I have vivid memories of men being cursed in the Bible for allowing their wives and daughters to sin.

 

[cnystrom]

Could you be a little more cryptic, please?...

Hey, all I can say is that if you think your job is to be the curse of God in your wife's life, then go for it. Anything else you were trying to say about this verse?

I didn't say anything about the verse. I was just adding data to the conversation. It seemed applicable.

A lot of times I like to just let the verse speak for itself.

 

[cnystrom]

In fact, Chris, you've actually done me a favor and made my whole case for me. Thanks, bro!

I am here for you, bro.

 

[cnystrom]

So I would paraphrase this as 'you will desire to control your husband, nevertheless he will rule over you'.

I do not even think necessarily means that she wants to control her husband. I think it means that she has a need for him and his approval in a way that is not reciprocal, as in there are Victoria's Secret stores, but there are no Albert's Secret stores.

And since women have a built in need from men that is not reciprocal, the power in the relationship naturally shifts to the man and he will rule the relationship.

Note: I do not think there is a judgement here in this verse about that rule. It is niether good nor bad, per se. It just is.

Of course it can and will be good or bad, a blessing or a curse, depending on the character of those involved in the relationship. There is nothing better than to be ruled by a wise and benevolent leader and nothing worse than to be ruled by a tyrant.

 

[rockfox]

So as a result of disobeying God and Adam, Eve is going to be under the rule of her husband.

Adam always had authority over Eve. She was his helper and he had dominion over her (he named her, just as he named the animals).

The hierarchy of Creation in 1 Cor 11 held true before the fall and after. Christ was there with God at creation and all things were created through Him under the Father. So too was Adam head of Eve before the fall.

Eve's curse is a somewhat hard passage to understand the meaning of, but my understanding from study jives with this...

'you will desire to control your husband, nevertheless he will rule over you'

What is new after the fall is the war within the minds of the daughters of Eve to at once desire and kick against the authority of her man (your #2&3). Life just became more difficult, more painful. Just like Adam had to work to tend the garden before, so too does he still work for food; just now with much toil and trouble. So too did Eve have some measure of pain in childbirth before; but now it greatly increased. Likewise, while she previously was under the rule of Adam, now she would fight against it and cause herself no end of trouble.
You see this with the war in the minds of Christian women who at once want to rebel and be submissive. You see this in the desire of all women to change their men, and then hate what he becomes once she has rule over him. You see this in the way women are more unhappy the more 'freedom' they have. You see this in the love songs singing about the intense desire in love-hate relationships. You see this in the way the men who are the most challenging to women, are the most desired by them and inspire the deepest loyalty.

will no longer enjoy the intimate oneness she enjoyed pre-fall.

I don't think that part is true. Experientially or from the text. Though maybe I lack imagination to know the level of oneness the first couple had. But at some level, it is still there.

I will have to look this up but I have vivid memories of men being cursed in the Bible for allowing their wives and daughters to sin.

I can't think of something exactly like that, but many similar. Samuel and his sons. There is also Isaiah 3. Deuteronomy 22:21.

@rockfox, sorry bro, but I'll catch up with you tomorrow. I've got someone waiting for me, and I do NOT want her to fall asleep....

You don't owe me a timely response, or any at all for that matter.

 

[cnystrom]

And since women have a built in need from men that is not reciprocal, the power in the relationship naturally shifts to the man and he will rule the relationship.

I would go further and say that the built in relationship power imbalance is a root source of eroticism.

Have you ever noticed that despite the feminist desire for "equality" that female sexual fantasy involves about as much disparity as possible? In "Twilight" the school girl is attracted to the almost all powerful demi-God like vampire. In "50 Shades of Grey" again we have a nobody school girl matched up this time with a mega billionaire who owns the world.

One of the major problem with feminism is that it kills eroticism. Dalrock has written about this.

 

[rockfox]

I would go further and say that the built in relationship power imbalance is a root source of eroticism.

Very true. And I'll take it a step further: the greater the power imbalance the more joyful, more content, and more secure she will feel. Presuming of course it is welded with agape.

 

[andrew]

You are grossly oversimplifying the author's main point as well as missing several side ones. For example, in the linked authors discussion of love he says

That is far from saying love=rule as if that is all it means and he's just playing word games. Whether his ultimate conclusions are right or wrong, there is a lot more depth to the article than you give him credit for.

@rockfox, you should go back and look at the article—I'm not oversimplifying anything. I'm calling bullshit on the title of the article and the title of this thread, which is also the thesis, summary, and conclusion of the article. The whole argument of the author is simply his best effort (I hope, or else he is wasting everyone's time) at justifying his conclusion, which he states as the title of his piece, the header of the section in which he makes his main argument, and the stated conclusion of that section.

He covers some interesting points in his article, and what makes most of this so pointlessly time-consuming is that you're responding to my responding to Pacman who was channeling the article's author who was responding to Cane Caldo and Dalrock (not Darlock... ). Like the game of "Telephone", there might have been some good points made in there somewhere, but much gets lost along the way.

Pacman asked for feedback, and I gave it to him. My contention is that the conclusion/title of the article is false. It is at best a kind of rhetorical hyperbole, too quickly excused by sympathizers, and at worst it is actively misleading, and false to Paul's and Peter's admonitions to husbands to love and care for their wives.

Note that the stopping point of the whole piece is "even if [the husband is] utterly failing to love his wife and lead his wife as Christ does his church wives ARE TO SUBMIT. Period." BOOYAH! In your face, you uppity females!

Isn't that where this kind of diatribe always ends up?

Under the banner of a stated equivalence that is demonstrably grammatically false, our author reduces Paul's balanced and nuanced teaching of Eph 5 to "wives ARE TO SUBMIT. Period." The husband gets a complete pass on anything Paul might have been teaching anyway, and we can all just move on. How about a big slow clap for that author!

 

[Pacman]

@rockfox, you should go back and look at the article—I'm not oversimplifying anything. I'm calling bullshit on the title of the article and the title of this thread, which is also the thesis, summary, and conclusion of the article. The whole argument of the author is simply his best effort (I hope, or else he is wasting everyone's time) at justifying his conclusion, which he states as the title of his piece, the header of the section in which he makes his main argument, and the stated conclusion of that section.

He covers some interesting points in his article, and what makes most of this so pointlessly time-consuming is that you're responding to my responding to Pacman who was channeling the article's author who was responding to Cane Caldo and Dalrock (not Darlock... ). Like the game of "Telephone", there might have been some good points made in there somewhere, but much gets lost along the way.

Pacman asked for feedback, and I gave it to him. My contention is that the conclusion/title of the article is false. It is at best a kind of rhetorical hyperbole, too quickly excused by sympathizers, and at worst it is actively misleading, and false to Paul's and Peter's admonitions to husbands to love and care for their wives.

Note that the stopping point of the whole piece is "even if [the husband is] utterly failing to love his wife and lead his wife as Christ does his church wives ARE TO SUBMIT. Period." BOOYAH! In your face, you uppity females!

Isn't that were this kind of diatribe always ends up?

Under the banner of a stated equivalence that is demonstrably grammatically false, our author reduces Paul's balanced and nuanced teaching of Eph 5 to "wives ARE TO SUBMIT. Period." The husband gets a complete pass on anything Paul might have been teaching anyway, and we can all just move on. How about a big slow clap for that author!

While I agree the title is misleading and implies that a husbands love is only rule and would be better stated that his love includes rule. I disagree that he kept that theme throughout the entire article. For instance he made this list right in the middle of it.

So here are key attributes of how Christ loves his Church that are given to husbands as a model in how God requires them to love their wives in Ephesians chapter 5:

1. The call to love one’s wife is a call to sacrifice one’s self for one’s wife.
2. The call to love one’s wife is a call to wash one’s wife, to wash her spiritual spots and wrinkles with the Word of God.
3. The call to love one’s wife is a call to provide for(nourish) her physical needs.
4. The call to love one’s wife is a call to protect(cherish) her.

Also if you look through his other blog post you will see that "love is only rule" is definitely not what he believes. He wrote this post to an audience who already know he does not believe that and majored on the one point throughout the post. So while it may have been lazy of him not to qualify it within this post I don't believe his intentions were wrong...

Unless there is a passage I'm not aware of that speaks about this. As much as we may dislike it husbands are to love their wives no matter how she is behaving towards us. This command is never conditional anywhere that we find it in scripture. And likewise the command for a wife to submit is never conditional anywhere that we find it in scripture. The only implied condition is if he tell her to sin (Acts 5:29). Which is something the author also points out.

 

[andrew]

And around and around we go....

I've already discussed that misunderstanding of Eph 5 above, so I'm not going to repeat it here. I will make explicit my implied assertion that his treatment of Eph 5 is only there as part of his general argument to take the focus off of what Eph 5 actually says and put it somewhere else.

The article is a waste of time. It's typically reconstructionist "patriarchal" obfuscation of what would be clear to anyone without an agenda. All chest-thumping and no practical help. (Which sort of circles back to my original rhetorical question re what the takeaway is supposed to be. The actual takeaway is WIVES SUBMIT TO THEIR HUSBANDS PERIOD. Nice.)

I made the charitable assumption that the author had actually done some basic homework, but I was wrong. The Greek verb translated "love" in Rev 3 is phileo. The Greek word translated "love" in modern translations of Eph 5 (translated "charity" in the KJV) is agapao. We have a slight apples and oranges problem here. We are to agape our wives as Christ agaped the church when He gave Himself for it, not as He something-elses the church in a vision. The difference matters.

There's a related problem, in that any way that we try to understand an infinite God runs into problems related to our finiteness of observation, experience, and understanding. Jesus is our King, our Shepherd, our Bread, our Husband, our Lamb, etc, etc, and each of those partial understandings of His identity and worth is useful in its place, but runs into conflict and confusion, not in the ultimate reality of who He is, but in our tiny brains. So if we're trying to understand how to agape our wives the way Christ agaped the church as our Husband and Lover, it doesn't make much sense to tap a passage regarding Christ's role as King ("prince of the kings of the earth", "Lord...Almighty", see Rev 1:5&8) with an indirect reference to the phileo he has for his assemblies to develop our understanding.

In fact, I say that whole reference is backwards, which should be understood by anyone with experience in leadership. The context of that passage is that Christ has just told seven churches "how the cow ate the cabbage", and as he is closing and exhorting them to repent, he says "those I phileo I rebuke and chasten", THEREFORE, you should be zealous and repent". Paraphrased: "It is because I phileo you that I am telling you all this, you should be encouraged by that."

If that passage teaches anything, it doesn't teach that "agape is rule", and it doesn't teach anything in particular about husbands or marriage; it teaches rulers that if you're going to line the troops up and dress them down, it's good to close with a word of affirmation and encouragement. Good for morale, so to speak.

I repeat my assertion that if we truly want to understand what Paul meant by loving our wives, we can start with what Paul actually says himself in context by way of explanation: surrender ourselves, nourish, and cherish. Then if we're still confused we could take a look at 1 Cor 13, which, unlike the Rev 3 proof-text, actually is about agape, and actually furthers our understanding of what Paul means when he uses the word agape elsewhere. If you're still confused after that, I don't know what to tell you.

Guys, being the head of a household is not the same as running a business, which is not the same as leading troops, which is not the same as governing people, and the word "rule" has different connotations and applications in different contexts. Focus on the plain reading of Paul's teaching on marriage (and Peter's sort of parallel passage) and take it to heart. You'll be glad you did.

 

[FollowingHim]

The article is a waste of time.

Personal opinion: This endless, circular discussion on the article is a much bigger waste of time.
A husband is the head of his wife. And he's to love her. The two instructions overlap in some ways and are unique in others. You're all saying that but saying it differently and emphasising different bits. I find myself in agreement with almost every post from either "side" of the debate.
You're all agreeing on the essentials but then arguing about how to say it, debating how misleading a title of an article is for instance. That's a debate about words, and something we're specifically told to avoid.
Feel free to keep on going anyway if you like, I'll step out and leave you to it. Have fun. That's just my 2c.

 

[Pacman]

Personal opinion: This endless, circular discussion on the article is a much bigger waste of time.
A husband is the head of his wife. And he's to love her. The two instructions overlap in some ways and are unique in others. You're all saying that but saying it differently and emphasising different bits. I find myself in agreement with almost every post from either "side" of the debate.
You're all agreeing on the essentials but then arguing about how to say it, debating how misleading a title of an article is for instance. That's a debate about words, and something we're specifically told to avoid.
Feel free to keep on going anyway if you like, I'll step out and leave you to it. Have fun. That's just my 2c.

I agree and I Was about to say something similar. You beat me to it.
Also it’s worth noting that the author of the post in question is not here to defend himself or explain anything further...

 

[rockfox]

what Paul actually says himself in context by way of explanation: surrender ourselves, nourish, and cherish.

Ya, that's a pretty good summation of the modern church's servant-leader approach. Husband as beast of burden. But as to what Paul wrote, a pale shadow. This summation is much more in tune with the content and depth...

So here are key attributes of how Christ loves his Church that are given to husbands as a model in how God requires them to love their wives in Ephesians chapter 5:

1. The call to love one’s wife is a call to sacrifice one’s self for one’s wife.
2. The call to love one’s wife is a call to wash one’s wife, to wash her spiritual spots and wrinkles with the Word of God.
3. The call to love one’s wife is a call to provide for(nourish) her physical needs.
4. The call to love one’s wife is a call to protect(cherish) her.

I was thinking about that summation and had a realization...

1 = savior (hero)
2 = priest (mentor guru)
3 = father (creator)
4 = king (warrior)​

Notice how complete that list is. It's a much more mature and fleshed out model than the modern romance oriented approach which treats the man as little more than a wallet with hearts on it.

Notice also the man as romantic is inherently supplicating, inferior, submissive. In contrast all those roles are dominant leaders who exercise authority and inspire reverence.

 

[mystic]

You haven't met Andrew, have you?

 

[andrew]

Personal opinion: This endless, circular discussion on the article is a much bigger waste of time.

I disagree, for reasons I'll give below after I make a couple of other comments.

A husband is the head of his wife. And he's to love her. The two instructions overlap in some ways and are unique in others.

I think (I hope) we would all agree on this, it's just not the actual subject of this thread. What does it mean for the husband to be the 'head' of his wife? That's a whole 'nother thread, I suppose, but while we're here, notice that Paul actually gets into that in his "call to love":

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies [AA: which, metaphorically, they are!]. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

That's precisely the point at which Paul says that the implication of the head/body metaphor is that we are supposed to "nourish" and "cherish" our bodies, so whatever else you want "head" to mean, let's start with that.

It doesn't matter here, though, because that's not what's being debated.

You're all saying that but saying it differently and emphasising different bits. I find myself in agreement with almost every post from either "side" of the debate.
You're all agreeing on the essentials but then arguing about how to say it, debating how misleading a title of an article is for instance. That's a debate about words, and something we're specifically told to avoid.

I emphatically disagree with all of this, except for your statement about your state of mind. We have a serious disagreement about what Eph 5 actually says. More below.

Feel free to keep on going anyway if you like, I'll step out and leave you to it. Have fun. That's just my 2c.

Will do!

Why I don't think this thread is a waste of time, at least for me and Pacman. [Everybody else can decide whatever their threshold is and make their own decisions, but Pacman posted an article and asked for our thoughts. I see some serious problems with the article, and I'll elaborate on that for as long as anyone wants to engage, so the two of us may be here awhile longer. But each person here has to make their own call re what is the highest and best use of their time.]

1. While there are some times that going for the middle road is the moral high ground ("a plague on both your houses"), this is not one of them. We are not "saying the same thing differently", and we are not "agreeing on the essentials but then arguing about how to say it"—not even close. We are not squabbling over insignificant niceties around the edges; we have a profound difference of approach and understanding that is leading to diametrically opposed points of view. I will stay on this thread for as long as it takes for that to be made clear to anyone who reads it.

2. The discussion we're having here goes to the heart of how we understand and apply the teachings recorded in the scriptures. I can't think of a more important discussion we could be having, and would respectfully submit that if this thread is a waste of time, then this whole forum is a waste of time.

3. Finally, the particular discussion we're having here goes to the heart of what it really means to love our wives, which I submit goes to the heart of what it means to be a husband. Again, if that's not worth spending some time on here at "Biblical Families", then what is?

 

[andrew]

Also it’s worth noting that the author of the post in question is not here to defend himself or explain anything further...

That's an occupational hazard of writing; nothing more, nothing less.

 

[andrew]

@rockfox, the bulk of your recent post is a blatant straw man argument with an ad hominem subtext. Since you're not actually responding to what I wrote, I don't see any need to pick apart your post. If you want to come back and respond to something I actually said, I'll be here.

 

[Pacman]

OK so I am going to try to state my take on the issue as clearly as I can. The points I am about to lay out are a major part of what saved my marriage. I do actually apply these things in my home. And yes I want feedback please whether you agree or disagree. Point out where you think I'm wrong. I want to learn. I want to become a better husband.

1. The title of the article is misleading and would be better titled "A husbands call to love includes a call to rule"

2. The amended title is pretty much what my opinion is while the exact reasons for it may be a little different from the article.

3. I do believe that Ephesians 5 teaches that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church which includes but is not limited to the following:

• Give yourself for her. Even to the point of death if needed
• Sanctify her (make her holy, purify her) with the washing of the word of God (teaching her the scripture) for the purpose of presenting her to both himself and God without spot or wrinkle
• Love her as if she were your own body
• Nourish her (bring to maturity, nurture, bring up)
• Cherish her (tender love, foster)

4. I believe all of those things listed above are involved in ruling her as well. (yes ruling has a much more harsh tone to it and includes dominion such as is typical of a king) The fact that she is commanded in verse 33 to reverence him is at least an indication of this. That word reverence is an interesting word study on its own...

I am aware that Ephesians 5 does not specifically state that a husband is to rule his wife. That I think is the central debate here. Is a husband called to rule his wife? If not what level of leadership and headship does he have? How should we be practically applying that to our marriages?