An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
It is an especially sensitive subject in our culture, but Christians still must come to grips with the biblical teaching regarding the roles of men and women in the church and in the home – perhaps especially so since it is such a sensitive subject. Claire Smith’s book, God’s Good Design: What the Bible Really Says about Men and Women, is a refreshingly clear study of the subject, and we are happy to see it now available in its second edition.
I’m Fred Zaspel, editor here at Books At a Glance, and I’m pleased to speak today with Claire Smith about her book. Claire, welcome, and congratulations on the success of your book!
Smith:
Thanks very much, Fred. Glad to be here.
Zaspel:
I think the way you pursue your agenda in the book is helpful – can you give us a brief overview? What are your major areas of focus?
Smith:
I guess the short answer to that is that the main area of focus is the Bible. That is, most of the book is taken up with detailed studies of the main texts that address the different roles and responsibilities of men and women. Part one has chapters on 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14, which look at God’s purposes for us in the church. And part two looks at God’s purposes for marriage with a chapter each on Ephesians 5, and 1 Peter 3, and Genesis 1 to 3 which sets out God’s purposes for woman and man in creation. And there’s also a chapter on the Proverbs 31 woman and another on domestic abuse, which I wanted to address, because it’s a terrible evil that is sometimes mentioned in these discussions. It’s a total distortion of the Bible’s teaching about the different responsibilities of husbands and wives, and yet can, and does occur in some Christian marriages. As God’s holy people it is something we just ought to not tolerate or overlook.
In the book I guess rather than approach things thematically, which is the way we often come at them. You know, can women be ordained? Should women preach? What does submission look like? I’ve tried to start with the Bible and let the Bible set the agenda. So, it’s a text by text, verse by verse, even sometimes a word by word approach. Now of course, all those other questions get answered along the way. But we start by looking at the Bible before we bring all our other questions. And because the Bible is God’s Word to us all and these passages speak to both men and women, it’s not just a book for women or a book just for wives, I hope unto God it’s a book for everyone.
Zaspel:
Oh, it is indeed.
In just broad stokes tell us what these passages have to say about both the freedom and the limitations given to women in the gathered meetings of the church.
Smith:
Well, the wonderful message of the Bible is that women and men are equally loved by God, saved by him, gifted and equipped to serve him and make him known. So that’s really the headline message of the book, I guess. And I hope that one of the up shots of the book is that women and men will catch that vision and instead of focusing on what women are not to do, we can all focus on the breadth of ministry we should all be involved in. And I’m not just talking about the morning tea roster which both men and women can be on, but the many gifts that God gives to us all to serve one another. I think sometimes we can, with 1 Timothy 2, we can think that it’s saying men must not learn from women. That’s not actually what it says and in the New Testament more broadly we see both men and women learning from one another, whether in prayer or song or prophecy or an equivalent sort of non-authoritative intelligible encouragement that we might do today in interviews or mission reports or those sorts of things. So, you can’t see in the New Testament the sort of one-man show that can happen sometimes, I think, in churches today.
Then alongside that congregational participation, there’s the formal authoritative instruction of the household of God that’s exercised in teaching, and leading, and discipline. And that’s a responsibility for men, not for women. But actually, not even all men, which is why it’s important to study 1 Timothy 2, alongside 1 Timothy 3. This teaching and oversight role is for those men who are gifted by God and appropriately and suitably qualified and appropriately appointed for that task of oversight. So, there’s much that we all can and should be doing to build up the body of Christ. At the same time, the doctrinal oversight and instruction is to be done by godly male leaders and not by women.
Zaspel:
Excellent!
What about in the home and the sensitive subject of the husband’s headship and the wife’s submission? Just what is that submission? And how ought the husband to make his wife’s obligation to submit joyful for her?
Smith:
Well, these are big questions, aren’t they? And hard to answer completely in a brief interview. But the first point to make is that the different roles and responsibilities of wives and husbands are God-given; they are good; they are part of God’s love for us; and they are grounded in the equality and the shared dignity of both wives and husbands. Both are moral agents, addressed by the Word of God and called to live out our faith in real ways that involve putting off the old person, putting on the new person by the power of the Spirit. At the same time, the roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives are not interchangeable or reversible. Wives are to submit themselves voluntarily to their husbands and husbands are head of their wives and are to exercise that headship through self-sacrificial love and cherishing and nurturing and protecting and leading their wives.
You asked how are we to think about a wife’s submission. Well, first, it’s something the wife does, herself. It’s not forced out of her, it’s not forced upon her. It’s dignified, voluntary; she chooses to submit herself. Also, submission is not just something that wives are called to do. Right across the New Testament there are relationships which involve submission, including, of course, Christ who, himself, will be made subject to the Father on the last day, 1 Corinthians 15:38, says. Submission is not a statement of worth, and it’s not demeaning – I think that’s important for wives and husbands to hear. Just to reiterate, wifely submission never means accepting abuse or threats or neglect. And, in fact, I would urge anyone in a situation like that to seek help and not to delay in doing so.
But getting back to your question, what submission looks like in a marriage, I think looks different in each marriage. We are all different, marriages go through different stages, they mature, they have different challenges. But broadly speaking, a wife expresses her submission by respecting her husband and welcoming and accepting and honoring his distinctive responsibility to lead and care for her and for the family.
You asked how a husband can make this a joyful obligation for women – great question! More ways than I have time to mention, but certainly by being godly and humble. Not passive, not threatened by his wife’s strengths and gifts, but engaged in the relationship, consultative and communicative, so that together the husband and wife can work as a partnership of equals under the husband’s loving head, as he lovingly leads. This pattern of relationship is something we are to work on together, but not by having a plan for how or the way our spouse has to change before we’ll submit to them or love them. We tend to focus on all the ways they have to change. But rather, working on ourselves and on our responsibilities as part of our obedience to Christ. So, joyfully and willingly, and knowing that for all of us, this is a work in progress as Christ works in us.
Zaspel:
I think you’ve brought that out very well in the book in a very precise way, both exegetically and in terms of the various nuances that are needed in order to show how the relationship works. It’s a relationship of equality, yet one regarding differing roles. And we should point out before we go any further that (and you make this point several times in the book) the basis of this instruction in the New Testament does not come out of nowhere. Paul does not appeal merely to cultural norms – tell us how all this is established for us in Genesis 1-2.
Smith:
Well, yes, Genesis 1 and 2 is the foundation for so much, well, the whole Scripture, really. I think many of us come to these passages in the Bible and they strike us as so foreign to our culture that our response can be, they can’t possibly apply today. Even for people who have been brought up in the church, the dissonance is so great. And it’s true, our culture is very different from that of the first century and things that were accepted then are abhorrent to us now. I think, for example, of slavery. So the argument used that the gender differences we see in the New Testament are, like slavery, just part of Greco Roman culture and either the New Testament writers hadn’t quite worked out yet that the Gospel reversed or overcame those differences, or, if they had, they counseled the church not to rock the cultural boat because the Gospel was radical enough. It was just sort of, well, let’s just put that one on the back burner for the time being until culture changes and then we can ditch those gender differences. So, the argument would be, well, the changes in modern culture mean that those differences between men and women can be set aside because they no longer cause offense, in fact, now they cause offense. There’s a certain logic in that. A small amount, but it may really play one part of Scripture up against other parts of Scripture. Allowing Galatians 3:28, for example, about the unity we share in Christ, to silence those passages that clearly teach about different gender responsibilities in the family and in the church, also written by Paul, I might say. And that’s no way to read the Bible. These passages need to be read and interpreted together, not against each other, because one God spoke them all.
Zaspel:
That’s very important.
Smith:
If there seems to be a tension, the problem is in us, not in the text. But also, the reasons these passages give for their teaching are not cultural. Almost all these texts look back to those first chapters of Genesis to the equality and difference of the first man and the first woman in creation before being disrupted, our relationships. And, of course, 1 Timothy 2 also points to the events of the Fall, 1 Corinthians 11 points to the relationships within the Godhead, and Ephesians 5 is based on the marriage of Christ and the church. That is, these are not cultural arguments, they are theological arguments that don’t have a shelf life and that apply across cultures. We have to admit the Bible’s teachings on these matters is strongly countercultural in our culture; it was in the first century, too, actually. That’s something that we can tend to forget. But because they are theological arguments, not cultural arguments that have been made in the New Testament, that tells us that they do apply today. Now we might want to think about how we apply them today, but they do apply today.
Zaspel:
Maybe it would be helpful if you would address the context of this male headship structure – there has sometime been some confusion here. Paul is not commanding all women to submit to all men, is he.
Smith:
Absolutely not. Good point. Paul is not saying that all women are to submit to all men. And he’s not even saying that all women in the church are to submit to all men in the church. Although, I have to say, I’ve come across people with that misunderstanding and it can be well-intentioned. It can arise from a genuine misunderstanding. The New Testament gives us two settings, or two relationships where these instructions for women to submit apply – in marriage, which is the closest relationship in which it’s to be expressed; and in the church, where a woman’s submission is expressed by learning and not by teaching or having authority over men. That is by joyfully accepting the different responsibilities that God has given women and men and expressing that by submitting to those men that God has appointed to lead the church family. So, particular relationships and particular applications within those relationships, not a blanket, all women, to all men.
Zaspel:
I think it’s very important.
This is the second edition – what’s new here?
Smith:
Yes, it is the second edition; the first edition came out in 2012. The main difference is that this edition includes a discussion guide. A lot of people over the years have said to me, “I wish there was a discussion guide,” because they are looking at these passages in their Bible study group and it would have been nice to have a discussion guide, or a university campus, or whatever. So now there is a discussion guide, which would help an individual engage with the contents of each chapter, but also if people wanted to do one on one Bible study with somebody, or in a group setting, it provides some broad discussion questions.
Also, there’s been a couple of scholarly developments in the last seven years that I wanted to pick up on. And other than that, just a bit of polishing here and there. The substance of the book is not that different, but there are a few things where I’ve added some material in. And the discussion guide, in particular, just to help people engage with things and engage more deeply with God’s Word, which is what I’m hoping people will do.
Zaspel:
Let’s finish up on a personal note. Tell us about your own journey in understanding and experiencing the role you chart out for women in your book – and then also how you came to write this book.
Smith:
I go into this a bit in the book because one of the questions people ask, and reasonably so, I think, is does it work? Especially because when we look at the way the world does male/female relationships and even the way some churches do them, the biblical model is just so countercultural. So I guess people can reasonably ask, that’s all very good but does it work? What’s going to happen if I accept this teaching? And, as I say in the book, my story is that the Bible’s teaching does work. My background is that I was raised, not in a Christian home. I was raised in quite a strongly feminist context and thoroughly believed that anything a man could do, a woman could do better and was fiercely anti-Christian, not just non-Christian, but anti-Christian. When in God’s amazing kindness he called me and saved me and over the years, particularly through my studies at theological College, he challenged and dismantled my feminist thinking. Quite a process! And he brought me to see the wisdom and beauty, not only at the cross, but also of his pattern for men and women. So, it’s been a long journey, and I’ve gotten married along the way and become a mother and so on. It’s been a long journey that’s brought me to a very different place from where I started. And I guess writing the book was part of that journey, as spending any time in the Scriptures changes us. Sitting here at my desk with my Bible open, the Word of God is life giving and life changing and it changed me even as I was writing the book. But more directly, the book had its origins in talks that I was asked to do at a large women’s conference here in Sydney, called the EQUIP Conference, where each year they would ask me to speak on the various texts I cover in the book. So, the book is the talks supplemented with things I had to leave out because I only had so much time in the talks. So that’s the background of the book. And I have to say, the wonderful thing is that after all those years and spending so much of my ministry being taken up with these matters, that I am still learning and I’m still seeing new riches and new depths in these texts every time I open my Bible and look at them again. Still being challenged, still being changed, still learning things and just seeing, really, the wonder of Scripture and God’s wisdom in these passages, as in the whole Scripture, obviously. And being changed by the living and active Word of God, so it’s just a wonderful blessing to have the opportunity to engage with God’s Word in such depths over so many years.
Zaspel:
Isn’t that the truth. And you’ve done it wonderfully!
We’re talking to Claire Smith about her excellent book, God’s Good Design: What the Bible Really Says about Men and Women. It really is a refreshingly clear examination of the various biblical passages on this subject, and we encourage you to check it out.
Claire, great to have you with us – thanks so much.
Smith:
Thank you very much, God bless.
Buy the books
God's Good Design: What the Bible Really Says About Men and Women