“Submission,” Again

Interested Readings and Their Guardrails

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A thoughtful reader—he goes by the moniker “Brother Barnabas” (BB)—has pushed back on my recent essay, “The Trouble with ‘Submit.’” (See his post here.) It’s an interesting read, one that triggered for me a question larger than the translation dispute that occasioned it: Is a reading of Scripture discredited by the interpreter’s (or the interpreting community’s) theological interests? That issue deserves some attention, and I’ll get to it momentarily. First, though, let me try, briefly, to represent BB’s position.

First: Hearing from Brother Barnabas

BB notes that rendering ὑποτάσσω (hypotassō) as “submit” is lexically defensible; indeed, as my essay had observed, the semantic range of this term (or lexeme) can bear this option. He suspects my alternatives (“order yourselves toward,” “take your place in relation to,” etc.) might preach well but shouldn’t enter a formal translation of the Bible, since pastoral considerations “can change, and vary from place to place.” BB offers a pastoral concern of his own: At a moment when many young men—whether Christ-followers or not—imagine that they have no role in family, workplace, or society, allowing a translation to move away from the language of a husband’s leadership teaches men not to lead precisely when they most need to learn how. Behind my essay he sees an all-too-American, all-too-Protestant allergy to hierarchy and authority. The “traditional family,” he urges, must be upheld.

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I have to admit my puzzlement over how my translation alternatives undermine the question of twenty-first century manliness, though I happily see how they might direct the conversation in certain ways…. For now, though, on to the linguistic issue.

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Second: A Point of Clarification

BB seems to read me as granting that “submit” is “the correct” rendering, then setting it aside on theological grounds. He seems to think that I conceded the lexical question before appealing to my preferred theological position. Actually, that turns my argument upside-down.

What I conceded is actually pretty narrow, namely, that the word’s range includes subordination, that in some settings ὑποτάσσω (hypotassō) might indeed signify “I submit.” I argued, though, that the New Testament settings of these particular texts point toward other options—options that are also within the word’s range. I noted, for example, the use of the middle voice, which marks the action as chosen rather than mandated; the reciprocal ἀλλήλοις (allēlois), “to each another,” in Ephesians 5:21, which makes mutual submission an oxymoron if “submit” means what most English-language hearers hear; Peter’s own refusal to use ὑποτάσσω (hypotassō) where he wants to speak of obedience, for which he reserves ὑπακοή (hypakoē); and the framing of the household code in 1 Peter as an exercise of freedom. None of this is “theology overriding the lexicon.” It’s simply the ordinary labor every translator performs. This is what translators do: They choose from among a word’s possible senses the one activated here, in this text, in this “company.”

In short, I’m simply drawing attention to the difference between what a word can mean and what it signifies here. To move from “‘submit’ is lexically possible” to “‘submit’ is therefore the right rendering of these verses” overlooks how words actually work. My essay was an argument about the second question. The theological sentence BB fixed on—that “submit” teaches readers that the New Testament “baptizes hierarchy as such”—was a consequence I drew at the end; it wasn’t my basic argument.

Brother Barnabas: Theologically Motivated?

This raises another question—and this is an observation, not an attempt on my part to score any points. BB’s own argument—concerning the traditional family, young men and leadership, family formation, the crisis of authority, and so on—is itself theological and pastoral through and through. Actually, BB makes no linguistic claim at all. In fact, he left my linguistic case—the voice of the verb, the reciprocal pronoun, Peter’s careful vocabulary, etc.—standing, without comment.

I point this out not to disqualify his argument, but to press on the issue that most interests me here. My earlier post was centered on a linguistic argument, but BB raises for me a pivotal, hermeneutical question.

What about Interested Readings?

Are They Okay?

There’s no straightforward answer to this question! On the one hand, our response can only be: Yes, because there’s no such thing as an uninterested (or disinterested) reading! On the other hand, our response can only be: Well, it depends….

The first thing that must be said—and it really must be said!—is this: There is no reading from nowhere. There’s no uninterested ledge on which to stand while doing our interpretive work. Every translator, every interpreter, comes to the task with commitments. Our Modern Era has promoted a fantastical view that locates the interpreter outside and above the text, but that view is, well, a fantasy.

Note: In my earlier post, I said as much about the translation “submit.” That English term was never the neutral default from which other renderings deviate. If someone chooses it in her translation work that’s because of an interpretive decision—an interpretive decision shaped by a certain theological understanding. And, as I observed, the versions most invested in a hierarchical marriage render it most rigidly. I observed that some translations have even inserted a paragraph break between Ephesians 5:21 and 5:22, severing wives from the mutuality built into the text’s grammar (given that 5:22 borrows its verb from 5:21). As I said, the white space on the page was doing exegesis. Wherever it came from, however it got there, “conviction” was (and is) always present.

The real question, then, is not whether we have interests, or whether we are motivated, but what disciplines those interests, that motivation.

Some Guardrails

What guardrails are, or should be, in place?

Accountability to sense-in-context: Theology shapes what questions we bring to a passage, but theology ought never to make a word bear a sense its cotext refuses. This is the guardrail that “ruled” my understanding of ὑποτάσσω (hypotassō). Accordingly, if not for the use of the middle voice, if not for the use of “each other” (ἀλλήλοις, allēlois), and so on, my argument would be required to take a different turn.

Transparency: We ought to identify our interests, our motivations, rather than pretend that our rendering is “plain to all right-thinking people.” The troublesome move, in either direction, is the one that hides in the shadows.

Revisability—sometimes called epistemic humility: We recognize that we could be wrong, so we hold our reading answerable to a stronger lexical or contextual case.

If we move further into the work of interpretation, we might adopt further guardrails. So, in addition to thinking about interpretive moves—

• negatively, that is, interpretations should not obscure the text (or deliberately mask unfortunate aspects of the text that continue to haunt the interpreter);

• positively, that is, interpretations should be consistent with the general rules of language, including considerations of a philological, syntactical, and grammatical sort; and

• positively, that is, interpretations should account for the cultural embeddedness of language, allowing the text to have its meaning fashioned in light of its sociocultural assumptions—

we can also identify as guardrails for Christian interpreters the following:

Canonical embeddedness: That is, individual texts, books, and even testaments ought to be read and interpreted within the larger framework of the whole canon of Scripture. (How this work might proceed is a matter of discussion. Intertextuality? Canonical criticism? Narrative approaches to Scripture?)

The “rule of faith”: Historically, the Rule of Faith and the canon of Scripture took shape in a context of mutual influence; indeed, one of the primary criteria by which these books (and not those) would comprise the New Testament was their coherence with the kerygma as this was articulated in the Rule of Faith. Irenaeus (ca. 155?–ca. 191?) made this “rule” explicit when he urged that the Rule of Faith captures the Bible’s overall order or structure, its “economy,” and that faithful interpretation of Scripture expresses that order. (See here.)

The “rule of love”: This rule was well-articulated by Augustine (354–430), who claimed that Scripture should be read always according to the intent of the God who stands behind, speaks through, and authorizes the Scriptures. And this divine intent is clear: to form in its readers and hearers love of God and love of neighbor. Scripture is formative of readers and hearers of Scripture who, then, practice Jesus’s commandment, which is nothing other than God’s Instructions of old (e.g., Deut 6:4–5; Lev 19:18): Love God, love neighbor. Indeed, for Augustine, if our reading of Scripture does not form us in this double-love, this love of God and love of neighbor, then we have read wrongly and should begin again (On Christian Teaching 1.86). (See here.)

A Closing Irony

On the question of translation, Brother Barnabas helps us see that no one reads from nowhere, that our commitments are always present, that translation is never innocent. In fact, that was my thesis about “submit” before it was his objection to me. So the question is never whether to bring our convictions to the text. It is whether we will say so out loud—and then submit those convictions to the discipline of the text’s own sense.