The Politics of Conjugal Love

A Baptismal and Trinitarian Approach to Headship and Submission

Conor Sweeney, Brian T. Trainor

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532663673
  9781532663680
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532663697
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Does the New Testament teach that a wife must submit to her husband as head? If so, does it have a lasting value beyond the cultural milieu in which it was first articulated? The Politics of Conjugal Love takes a fresh approach to this classic issue in theological anthropology, paying specific attention to the role of theological hermeneutics in its interpretation. Conor Sweeney and Brian T. Trainor contend that both "subordinationist" and "anti-subordinationist" readings of headship and submission miss the mark. Their alternative is a baptismally specified trinitarian reading in which headship and submission appear as modes intrinsic to both life in Christ and the love proper to the highest mode of trinitarian love.

1

Conjugal Politics: Taking Stock

To encounter commentary on the theme of conjugal politics—especially the Pauline and Petrine motif that the husband is head of his wife (cf. Eph 5:23; 1 Cor 11:3; 1 Pet 1)—is to very quickly discover that claims regarding the validity or invalidity of the teaching turn on the question of hermeneutics. Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of hermeneutics as “the theory of the rules that preside over an exegesis—that is, over the interpretation of a particular text, or a group of signs that may be viewed as a text,”16 or Hans Georg Gadamer’s contention that hermeneutics functions to “clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place”17 are thus particularly relevant for the present study. This is to say that to view the politics implied in the Haustafeln texts of the New Testament according to the rules of historical-critical scholarship, biblical literalism, or through a more theological and ecclesial lens has everything to do with the conclusion that one will arrive at.

For example, in the case of a purely historical-critical hermeneutic, we find that the rules (implicit or explicit) governing the interpretation of a particular text (in this case the Haustafeln), lead in the main to the dismissal of the teaching, whereas a “plainer” or more literal reading of the same text produces the precisely opposite result. Clearly, then, we need to further investigate and thematize this hermeneutical “fork” and inquire more deeply into the methodology and motivations that feed into the different interpretations of the New Testament Haustafeln. This chapter will thus survey some of the dominant hermeneutical options exercised both historically and in contemporary readings, with the broader aim of establishing the importance of a baptismal-trinitarian theory of the rules of interpretation for conjugal politics.

Complementarians and Egalitarians, Maximalists and Minimalists

Very roughly speaking, there are two main interpretive camps across Christian denominations when it comes to the particularly vexing question today about whether some kind of “priority,” “leadership,” or “authority” position should be afforded to the man over the woman in the spousal relationship; or, stated from the reverse, whether some kind of “receptivity,” “obedience,” or “submission” should be imputed to the woman vis-à-vis her husband, each thus implying certain distinct spousal and perhaps social roles. Put simply, to use the language of the contemporary debate, the “complementarian,” “subordinationist,” or “pro-difference” interpretation answers in the affirmative, while the “egalitarian,” “anti-subordinationist,” or “equal regard” interpretation answers in the negative. The egalitarian position broadly assumes that one should not read sexual difference as denoting divinely sanctioned hierarchical connotations where there is a “first” and a “second” or “roles” that would forbid women a role in ministry or suggest a submissive posture on the part of a wife in relation to her husband in their shared married life. By contrast, the complementarian position holds that sexual difference is a divinely sanctioned hierarchical ordination, where masculinity and femininity come attached with determinative ministerial and spousal vocations and restrictions, e.g., headship and submission.

The above terms and framing of the debate presently plays out in the liveliest, often acrimonious terms within Evangelical forms of Protestantism, which tend to be today’s “hot zone” as regards the question of conjugal politics. Here, the question is very much alive and up for debate, and much ink has been spilled in recent debates between complementarian18 and egalitarian19 foes. Across Protestant denominations in general, the particular question of the role of women in liturgical ministry continues to be a point of contention that dominates discussion. Distinguishing Evangelical Christianity from older mainline denominations is their particular concern with not only the ministerial dimension of gender, but also with the pastoral implications of difference in a conjugal setting. Driving the conjugal question in certain Evangelical contexts is the complementarian position, which places great pastoral stress on the importance of distinctly male headship as ingredient to the unity and stability of the marriage, a role thought to flow directly from the will and ordination of God as embodied in the Scriptures. Against this, more egalitarian strains of Evangelicalism have begun to resist this more classical reading, arguing for a levelling of gender roles in both ministerial and domestic spheres.

As the debate has continued, the doctrine of the Trinity has emerged as a key question in the debate, an ultimate horizon by which both Evangelical camps have sought to defend their claims. Complementarians have accented the perceived status of the obedience and subordination of the Son to the Father as exemplary for the position of the wife in relation to her husband, while egalitarians have stressed the equality and mutuality of the trinitarian persons as an ultimate frame of reference thought to be ultimately corrosive of a rigidly hierarchical and exclusionary interpretation of difference. In the following chapter, Trainor will consider and engage many of the arguments adduced in the Protestant context of the debate particularly as regards the use of the Trinity.

The situation in a Roman Catholic context is somewhat more ambiguous and—at least on the question of spousal roles—decidedly less “hot.” Given that Catholics share the same core Scriptural foundation and much of the same interpretive tradition with Protestants, there is a similar range of theoretical questions in play here, although when we descend deeper into the hermeneutics of it all some key differences will emerge. Ministerially speaking, the question regarding gender roles within Catholicism is more or less settled, at least at the formal or doctrinal level. Pope St. John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, published in an effort to put the debate about the ordination of women to rest, concluded with the pope’s judgement “that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”20 Sara Butler contends that there is little or no scope within the constraints of the received tradition to seriously entertain the possibility of the ordination of women.21

Of course, the letter has provoked hermeneutical gymnastics and dissent similar to that which characterized the response to other contentious documents such as Humanae vitae in 1968. At a de facto level, there is ongoing grumbling and malcontent from various quarters about the ongoing exclusion of women from sacramental ministry. Movements agitating for women ordinations have waxed and waned in the Church since the Second Vatican Council. There has been, and continues to be produced reams of liberal and feminist theology that seeks to give credibility to an alternative conclusion, but by and large by going well beyond the formal constraints of the apostolic tradition. More recently, under the papacy of Pope Francis, however, the “revolution by praxis,” so to speak, that has recently swept through...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Reframing the Question
• Chapter 1: Conjugal Politics: Taking Stock
• Chapter 2: The Trinity and Male Headship of the Family
• Chapter 3: A Baptismal Anthropology of the Acting Person
• Chapter 4: Sexual Difference in the Baptismal Relation
• Chapter 5: Conjugal Politics in the Baptismal Relation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography