Submission today, in some circles, constitutes a four-letter word; not the count of letters, but the social repulsiveness of the concept. On this point, of wives being subject to their husbands, contemporary, conservative Christianity has received a black eye. Women are now CEO’s of large blue-chip companies like Xerox and IBM, and more women earn college graduate and post-graduate degrees than men. Hard fought suffrage rights are now entrenched in our western society. So how can Christians be so “archaic” to believe that in marriage wives should submit to their husbands?

For many Christians this is a hard pill to swallow, and creates a formidable barrier to the gospel. One common solution is to develop a clever hermeneutic (i.e. method of interpretation) to get around these verses: Paul was only speaking to a different culture. Other approaches point out that the original Greek does not even include the word “be subject” in verse 22. Further, in fact, the previous verse (21) does use the word “be subject” and there it refers to everyone in the church, not just to wives or women in general.

In response it must be pointed out that the beginning Greek student is not unfamiliar with the “missing verb” phenomenon. In fact, it is quite common; the context makes clear what verb intended, and that is why all modern translations include the word in verse 22. This verb “be subject” is implied from the previous verse, and therefore its absence in the Greek is not problematic.

The cultural argument, on the other hand, is a slippery slope at best and dangerous at worst. It says that the NT writers addressed a different culture at a different time than what we live in today, and therefore we need to adapt the broad principles, and ignore the cultural specifics. In other words, if it doesn’t fit with today, then just principle-ize it enough until you can make it fit. The problem with that approach is the lack of controls for the interpreter in deciding what biblical teaching is universal in application versus what is limited in application. For example, do we limit baptism or the Lord’s Supper to the first century where many religions had a similar practice? Does our culture allow for one person to pay for the crime of another? What does that mean for the substitutionary death of Christ for us? One must be careful in relegating Biblical assertions to cultural irrelevance.