Resisting Aristotle: Judith Gundry on the Household Codes
I was pleased to receive a copy of the Ben Witherington festschrift called Rhetoric, History, and Theology: Interpreting the New Testament edited by Todd Still and Jason A. Myers. It is a great collection of essays in honor of a wonderful scholar who has served so many through his voluminous writings.
The essay I enjoyed the most was by Judith M. Gundry on “Resisting Aristotle: Marital Rule in 1 Corinthians 7 and the Household Codes.”
Aristotle wrote about the ideal way to organize a respectable household, demarcating the hierarchy, spheres of responsibility, accenting the obedience of children, slaves, and the wife to the “master.” Aristotle’s narration of the ideal household seems to have had a big influence on Greek culture thereafter and arguably even influenced the NT household codes in Ephesians, Colossians, and 1 Peter. It has kind of bugged some NT interpreters because it means that the NT household codes were Aristotlean ethics with a thin Christian gloss. For some, the household codes are an accommodation to patriarchal culture, while for others they are attempts to liberalize or even resist patriarchal norms.
Gundry’s argument is that the roots of the NT household codes go back to Paul’s remarks in 1 Corinthians 7 about wives and husbands having authority over each others’ bodies. She says, “1 Corinthians 7 is a critical engagement with Aristotle’s topos of the household management. Here I shall demonstrate that Paul’s depiction of marital rule in 1 Corinthians 7 is best compared to Aristotle’s ‘political rule,’ or rule over those who are naturally equal, characterized by the rotation of the ruler and the ruled.”
Gundry concludes:
1 Corinthians 7 is a critical engagement with Aristotle on the topic of household management. This Pauline text is most likely the origin of the household codes. They omit crucial features of Aristotle’s topos of household management in agreement with Paul’s earlier teaching. Their requirement that wives submit themselves to their husbands is not grounded in natural or creational differences between the man and the woman, as explicitly in Aristotle’s topos. Therefore, this requirement should not be interpreted to refer to a fixed role. Rather, Eph. 5:21 favors taking the requirement to refer to a variable role or to the relationship of the husband and the wife as equal partners, who both rule (alternately), in effect, as ‘political rulers.’ Hence, it is necessary to reexamine the common view that the household codes as a group represent a negative development for women away from the egalitarianism of the Jesus movement and the earliest Christian communities. While that may be true of some of the household codes, it does not appear to be true of the Colossian or Ephesian household codes.
Anyway, I find that a very interesting line of thought to consider in discussions about the NT household codes.
What do you think?