One More Thing with Pastor Tim Burchill 4.30.2023

Don’t Take My Word On It…

        To understand how radical the apostle’s call for mutuality in marriage, cooperation in parenting, and compassion in dealing with one’s slaves really was, consider this summary of the great Greek philosopher and teacher Aristotle. (I got this off the web from a reputable source.) “ARISTOTLE: The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle of necessity extends to all mankind…

       “Of household management we have seen that there are three parts—one is the rule of a master over slaves… another of a father, and the third of a husband. A husband and father rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs: the rule over his children being a royal, over his wife a constitutional rule.

       For although there may be exceptions to the order of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female, just as the older and full-grown is superior to the younger and more immature… “[W]hen one rules and the other is ruled we endeavor to create a difference of outward forms and names and titles of respect… The relation of the male to the female is of this kind, but there the inequality is permanent. The rule of a father over his children is royal, for he receives both love and the respect due to age, exercising a kind of royal power…

       “The freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature.

“So it must necessarily be with the moral virtues also; all may be supposed to partake of them, but only in such manner and degree as is required by each for the fulfillment of his duty… Clearly, then, moral virtue belongs to all of them; but the temperance of a man and a woman, are not, as Socrates maintained, the same; the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying…

       “All classes must be deemed to have their special attributes; as the poet says of women, ‘Silence is a woman’s glory’, but this is not equally the glory of a man. The child is imperfect, and therefore obviously his virtue is not relative to himself alone, but to the perfect man and to his teacher, and in like manner the virtue of the slave is relative to his master.”

       This is most definitely not what Jesus was promising for the in-breaking Kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, the humbled are exalted and the exalted are humbled. In the Hebrew tradition God created women and men both in His image. Both Jesus and later Paul wanted to emphasize that whatever role an individual fulfilled in their family, if the love of Christ is present in each relationship, they will experience a little taste of the Kingdom here and now.