Tuesday, June 28, 2005

St. Paul & Darwin on Husbands & Wives

A classfellow sends the full passage from the New Testament on the strictures for husbands and wives in Christianity.

And here's the Bible passage from Ephesians 5:22-33 (New International Version):Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so
also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this way, husbands ought to love their
wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church -- for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery -- but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
We'll discuss this in seminar Wednesday, but my comments are that, as I read it now for the first time in some years, it seems entirely different from what Darwin said about women -- as we had it read to us by our visitor today. Darwin was clear and prolix- "men are superior to women" and in a great list of charateristics - courage, strength, intelligence, imagination, creativity etc etc -- with the only exceptions being maternality and vanity.

Ephesians, on the other hand, above talks only about _marriage_ -- and even there there is (a) reciprocity and (b) the quite remarkable -- indeed anti-Darwinian -- statement that men and women are _one flesh_. I just looked up what the Bible says about men & women, and it there it strangelyseems to emphasise their equality. As came up in class, the fifth Chapter (vs 1-2) of Genesis says that God is both male _and_ female:

... God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; male and female created He them;
And St. Paul on men and women says this (Galatians 3:28

... there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Again, your responses & developments are encouraged during seminar on Wednesday; but this does, prima facia, seem very different in spirit than "men are stronger in mind and body than women", and of course this from Descent of Man:

[Men have] a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women- whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music(inclusive of both composition and performance), history, science, and philosophy, with half a dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation from averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius' that..the average of mental power in man must be above that of women.
And so this is why I would not read Darwin's scientific assessment of women to the class! I would hate it to be thought that I endorsed such misogyny -- let alone this extreme.
[Update: "and" changed to "as" in the Ephesians quotation, thanks to a comment below.]

3 comments:

Dr. Stephen Ogden said...

Dear Kirsten:
a) I've fixed the quotation as noted.
b) I don't see the quotation as saying all men and women are husbands and wives. Doesn't St. Paul say something that people are better off _not_ marrying?
c) Good idea to quote an atheist interpretation in this regard. But does scholarship here require a Christian interpretation be quoted equally?

Dr. Stephen Ogden said...

Dear Kirsten:
The matter here is primary versus secondary sources. For Darwinism we cited a primary text: Darwin's _Descent of Man_. To balance, we cited a primary text for Christianity: the New Testament. Now, the secondary interpretation for Darwinism is ourselves - seminar discussion, this blog. For secondary interpretation of Christianity you have introduced an anti-Christian source (an atheism website) which has gived selective quotations from some secondary interpreters of the primary text.
The next academic step is to introduce a pro-Christianity source - Christian feminists perhaps? - and give their secondary interpretations by way of scholarly balance.

Dr. Stephen Ogden said...

Dear Kirsten:

Hmm .... interesting & well-considered post. In possible support of your position, was then St. Paul himself married? (Darwin was ;--)