Complementarians might believe that the Bible teaches men and women have different obligations regarding labor. While men supposedly should go out into the world to work for external employers or pioneer their own businesses, they might think, women supposedly should remain in the home to take care of cooking, cleaning, and raising children if applicable. Provision is on this delusional worldview the domain of men, which burdens them with the weight of professional or family-sustaining labor in a sexist manner, even as it deprives women of financial autonomy and the opportunity to legitimately fulfill any personal gravitation towards going out into the world to work, say, in a particular industry. One passage complementarianism is assumed to be taught in is Titus 2:3-5. Sometimes, as Peter says in 2 Peter 3, Paul's philosophy and writings are severely misunderstood because they can be initially difficult to rightly understand, especially when it comes to their coherence. Titus 2:3-5 is not like this. It is far more straightforward in what it does and does not say than some suppose:
Titus 2:3-5—"Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."
What does Paul not say here? These verses do not say that women cannot work outside the home, for one thing. They also never say that husbands do not ever have an obligation to submit to their wives or that it is evil or them to do so, which is what genuine complementarian philosophy would regard it as. Deuteronomy 24:5, Ephesians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 7:2-5, and 1 Peter 3:1-7 all in their own way call for husbands to submit to their wives. Two of these are from Paul, whom the author of Titus identifies as. Deuteronomy 24:5 in particular is a command of God, not the demand of a New Testament author writing letters to specific churches.
Note also how Titus 2 already contradicts a complementarian interpretation of Ephesians 5:22-33. Paul directly instructs women to love their husbands, whereas in Ephesians 5, he only instructs husbands to love their wives. It is obvious that it does not follow logically that if this is obligatory for husbands towards their wives, it is not morally mandatory for wives to love their husbands. Here, in Titus 2, Paul states the inverse of this command just as he does call for husbands to submit to their wives outside of Ephesians 5.
The New Testament plainly cannot be true to the extent that it would genuinely contradict the Old Testament philosophy it stands on (the New would require the Old, but the Old does not require the New). Passages like Titus 2:3-5 absolutely do not say working inside the home, specifically for a husband or for children, is the only labor morally permitted to women on the basis of their gender. What about the Old Testament? The Torah laws ascribed to direct revelation from God are not antithetical to Paul's religious philosophy. Repeatedly, Paul says that the Law is of enduring and universal moral nature (except in cases like sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood, which are logically incapable of being administered in all places and times). I have selected a handful of comments where here affirms this—and if he rejected this, he would be a heretic according to Old Testament theology!
Romans 7:7, 12—"What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law . . . So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good."
1 Timothy 1:8-11—"We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me."
The Torah, in accordance with what is logically true either way, proposes that the standard for sin and righteousness (morality) would be the same for all acts that genitalia and affiliated anatomical/physiological differences do not impact whatsoever. Below is just one passage that, without outright stating it, would necessitate that women morally can and even situationally should work outside of the home just like men (who also should in the same situation):
Numbers 5:5-8—"The Lord said to Moses, 'Say to the Israelites: "Any man or woman who wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the Lord is guilty and must confess the sin they have committed. They must make full restitution for the wrong they have done, add a fifth of the value to it and give it all to the person they have wronged. But if that person has no close relative to whom restitution can be made for the wrong, the restitution belongs to the Lord and must be given to the priest, along with the ram with which atonement is made for the wrongdoer."'"
How would a woman make restitution unless she has her own belongings, an income, or a means of working off a debt outside the home? This would otherwise mean on the bullshit patriarchal stance that married women simply pay from their husband's wealth, and perhaps unmarried women from their father's, which is not only illogical as a tenet of justice (it is not only sexist, but punishes one person for another's sins), but also unbiblical—each prescribed punishment in the Torah is assigned to the individual wrongdoer and Deuteronomy 24:16 specifically condemns punishing one person for anyone else's sin. See also Leviticus 12 and 15 on women presenting their own sacrifices, married or unmarried, for reasons of becoming ceremonially clean, and well as how Numbers 6 directly mentions women among the people who bring sacrifices to be forgiven of their own sins. Women are absolutely allowed and even required to have access to their own means of making a living and their own property, or else they would literally be pragmatically incapable of making restitution and sacrificial offerings.
More blatantly, Deuteronomy addresses female labor in a manner that utterly contradicts a number of illogical complementarian heresies:
Deuteronomy 15:12-14—"If any of your people—Hebrew men or women—sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free. And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you."
More than just not condemning women working outside the home, married or unmarried, Deuteronomy 15:12 refers to them emphatically alongside men who sell themselves as servants, who would have engaged in manual labor. More than just prescribing rigid gender equality in becoming servants and going free in the seventh year, the extended passage mandates giving male and female servants and abundance of belongings like livestock upon emancipation! Thus, the "horribly misogynistic" Old Testament teaches women have the right to work outside the home and acquire their own personal wealth through this, whether or not they have a husband, and this is well before Proverbs 31. Many other verses regulate the equal treatment of male and female servants, so Deuteronomy 15 is not the lone passage directly authorizing that women, like men, can work for an employer outside their home and family.
Instead of stereotyping women and wives (and by extension inversely stereotyping men and husbands), Paul only teaches that women be self-controlled in order to abstain from sin that he never says is gender-specific, to love their husbands and children, and to submit to their husbands. Complementarian theology would only truly be taught by outright proclamation of true sexism like stereotypes, yet Titus 2 instructs men to be self-controlled no matter their age (Titus 2:1, 6), paralleling the command for women to have self-control, and tells women to love their husbands just as Paul tells husbands to love their wives in other passages. It does not actually prescribe uni-directional or absolute submission of only one gender to the other and would contradict the ideas behind Paul's other statements, as well as logic's necessary truths, if this was not the case. The chapter does not teach any sexism against women, and the Torah itself condemns such discrimination anyway aside from the often relevant Deuteronomy 4:2 (and 12:32).
No comments:
Post a Comment