As Sarah Obeyed Abraham...

Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

I Peter 3:6

…calling him lord. That is the rest of the quote.

Lord. That’s a powerful word. That’s an extremely powerful word. It’s a word that is more powerful than modern readers can appreciate, since we don’t do ‘lord’s nowadays. It’s a word that gets used to refer to God, although not exclusively so. It’s a powerful word.

Introduction

This post is the second in a series of posts responding to the reaction of Ross Byrd to my post Trust… and Obey, which itself was written in response to one of his posts. He and I had a discussion as to what he was actually saying, and where we agreed and disagreed. These subjects are ones I have addressed before, Ross ended up with the following quote, and that is what I have been responding to:

As far as your argument goes, I will have to think on it. I agree that Abraham’s trust is most truly embodied in his obedience. I have myself written about that. But I definitely don’t think the English word “obey”—which is used generally in response to commands—is the best functional term to characterize a Christian wife’s role with regard to her husband. I believe marital relations should exist in proper hierarchy (as is true of all relationships, even the Father and the Son). I believe what Paul says here and in 1 Cor 11 is true and in some ways straightforward though in others ways quite mysterious (as just about all scholars agree with regard to 1 Cor 11). You seem to take a common sense approach: that submission obviously means obedience and that obedience obviously means exactly what it sounds like: same as a dog to its master, a child to her mother, a slave to his master. I do not think obedience to anyone other than God—though it is definitely called for in innumerable cases—is entirely straightforward. For instance, a child of five obeys his parents very differently than a child of 15. A child of 35 may not explicitly “obey” his parents at all and yet may still be in submission to their authoritative role in his life. In short, I have a hard time trusting an argument about obedience between humans that does not leave room for nuanced consideration of situation and perspective. The biblical norm alone, however clearly stated in the text. is not enough to make for absolutely clear-cut application. (See John Frame’s tri-persepctivalism.) Even “thou shalt not kill” does not always means “thou shalt not kill,” etc. If you agree with this, then I would suggest that “honor” is a better word than “obey.” Honor will oftentimes include obedience, of course, but nuance is involved. You may even consistently honor someone who does not consistently give you commands (e.g. an adult parent or…a husband). There are, for instance, many ways that adult children must honor their parents without directly obeying their commands. The same may possibly be said of wives to husbands.

All that to say, I believe you can still honor and submit to someone without the necessity of obeying explicit commands (if that person is not God). That may be because the nature of the relationship is such that explicit commands are not (or are not often) given. Or it may be because the commands given are not trustworthy and wisdom would say not to obey them. In either case, I don’t see obedience as functionally central to every relationship of submission (nor do I see commands as central to every hierarchical relationship). Though, of course, it is in the relationship of young children to their parents.

Words Words Words

I wish to reiterate at the beginning of this post, as I did for my last post, that I am going to address his specific proposal as to the terms we should be using in this debate. This post is not meant to be a reaction to his entire response; it is just the issue of the proper terms to use in our thoughts and writing about this subject.

Which is not to say that that will leave us in a neutral position vis a vis what wifely submission should look like. Words matter. Words inform understanding. If I use the phrase ‘government schools’ it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to get some idea of what I think about those institutions. Words can help or hinder our thinking through issues and, in this case, can help or hinder us in our obedience to the Biblical commands involved.

So I am focusing on the words we should use, full confession, in order to set the scene for how we should understand the commands concerned.

Kurios

The Greek word used here is ‘kurios’. It is translated almost exclusively ‘lord’ in the KJV, with the excpetion once as ‘master’ and a few times as ‘sir’. (Which is an English word that comes from the French ‘My Lord’.)

One of, but by no means the only, subject of ‘Lord’ is God Himself. But in every case the implication seems to be someone in authority, usually direct authority over the person speaking.

Lordless Lord

In comments to a thread on this subject, I had a poster state that, in his opinion, the best way to handle the issue of how husbands and wives were to behave toward each other, was to have the husbands ignore the passages written to the wife, and vice versa.

As this odd idea sat in my brain for longer and longer and as I meditated on the Scriptures in this context, it translated itself into the phrase, “My Lord should have nothing to say about how I serve him.” Which is, frankly, ridiculous.

Our society doesn’t use the word ‘jurisdiction’ often nowadays, but it is vital to this discussion. When a husband wishes to know how he should exercise his lordship over his wife, it is vital that he understand where the limits of that lordship are! What is he allowed to command, and in what areas is he required to command? If a husband sees his wife about to sin, is he to advise? Or command? If he develops a goal for the family, is he to command, or convince?

There is a gulf as big as the Grand Canyon between the person responsible for making a decision, a person giving advice, and a person on the sidelines. A husband must know which he is. And much of that data comes from the passages written to the wife.

And, contrariwise, the wife must know what areas her husband has responsibility for. When he states his opinion, is that a decision, or the beginning of a discussion, or just advice? Does the husband say, “We are going to homeschool,”, “Let’s talk about homeschooling,” or “Honey, have you considered homeschooling.”?

Mistranslation

There are times when language changes, and translations have to change too. If the KJV uses the word ‘house’ and their audience would all have understood that this meant ‘wife, children, servants’; and a time comes when people only understand house to mean ‘a building where you live’; then we might have to use a different translation.

But we need to be careful that our translation fixes the problem, not exacerbates it. If the translator were to choose to translate ‘house’ as ‘place where you live’, they would be making the problem worse, not better.

So if we decide that when the average American hears the word ‘lord’ all they can think of is ‘stuffy old English guy in funny clothes’, then we might need to come up with a new word or phrase. But we need to be careful that we move the meaning to ‘person that typically has life and death decision-making power over the people under their authority who have to obey their every whim’ not ‘person you are merely being polite to’.

Conclusion

I think it might be possible to get most Bible commentators to agree that the modern English word ‘lord’ does not adequately represent the word that Peter used to represent what Sarah called Abraham. (Or the Hebrew word she actually used). But the problem with replacing it would be that we don’t have, in modern English, a word that comes close to the strength of that word.

The deadly danger in today’s society is that we will do the opposite. That we will first decide what our modern world thinks should be the relationship between husband and wife, and then modify the translation to accommodate it.

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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

Honour v Obey: Refuting the modern heresy that says older children are to ‘Honour’ their parents, and only younger ones ‘obey’.

Social Roles and Headcovering // Podcast Version