This week, an ‘awkward’* brouhaha has been stirring in the Australian evangelical scene. Never a community to be accused of adequately securing its bundle, the evangelicals kicked off in response to a reasonably inoffensive meme posted by Mark Powell, a Presbyterian minister in Tasmania.
The meme committed the cardinal sin of urging Christian husbands to remember their prime ministry and first priority is to their wives, and that a failure to treat her better than anybody else is to fail in all other ministries and giftings regardless of skill.
The original meme is a quote from Paul Washer, which reads:
Treat your wife better than you treat anything or anyone. That’s your covenant with God. That’s your first ministry. To love her the way Christ loves the church is a high calling. If you fail at that, you’ve failed at everything.
Pretty tame, right? Not according to Dani Treweek.
Dani’s website describes her as a “Christian theological researcher, author and speaker whose ministry focus lies in resourcing Christian individuals & communities on biblical singleness, sexuality, theological retrieval, worldview formation & other related topics.” She’s the Sydney Anglican guru of singleness and has become a go-to voice on what she sees as the evangelical excesses regarding attitudes to marriage in the church.
On Monday, Dani Treweek responded on her substack to the quote. There, she identifies four ‘awkward truths’ about marriage and scripture.
I’ll be frank, in case you want to get off this train now.
In this cultural moment, in an epidemic of broken marriages and fatherless children, where men feel more lost at sea about their value and role in the world than ever, it beggars belief that Dani’s immediate impulse is to respond with criticism to a call like this. Fatherless children, broken homes, and neglectful husbands are critical issues in modern Australia, as anybody in any ministry knows.
I hear you say that’s all well and good, but pragmatics are no excuse for bad exegesis. Amen! However, Dani’s response is anything but an example of sound exegesis. Her article is a Ziggy Pig bowl full of the flimsiest readings of the relevant passages with a good heaping of eisegesis sprinkled on top.
Dani’s article takes issue with four of the five sentences in the meme, one at a time. I’ll spend most of my time in the first point, as it is the most significant, and trail through the rest for those few hangers-on who are gluttons for punishment. I’ll skip over her final two points, as I don’t disagree much with them, and that with which I disagree will be covered in the other points.
First, she states that ‘husbands are not called to treat their wives better than anyone or anything.’
But where exactly does the Bible say that a husband is to treat his wife better than he treats anyone else? #spoileralert: It doesn’t.
Dani brings up Ephesians 5:25, where Paul commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church but somehow manages to avoid the very point of the verse. Let’s take a look.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25-27, CSB)
The command in v25 to husbands is to ‘love your wives’ (ἀγαπᾶτε τὰς γυναῖκας). The word ‘your’ isn’t there in the Greek, but the immediate context particularises the command: ‘your own husbands’ is used previously in v22 and assumed through the rest of the commands.
The ground and pattern for the husband’s love is the love that Christ has for the church, who Paul refers to as ‘her.’ The husband is to love (present, continual action) ‘just as’ Christ loved (past, completed action). How did he love? By giving himself up for her. His death on the cross is the husband’s referent so that he may continually mirror that action in the present, not in dying physically, but to his comfort and the dictates of his own will.
Paul further delves into Christ’s purpose in his death - to cleanse the church and ultimately to present the church to himself without any blemish. Notice here - Christ’s action and his purpose were particular. He died so his bride might be cleansed and presented to him. The relationship is intimate and specific. It’s his intention in dying that his bride might be saved. This is God’s great intention; John 3:16 tells us that the Father shows his love ‘in this way’ (Οὕτως) - he sends his precious son ‘in order that’ (ἵνα) those who believe might be saved - that’s the church!
In loving the church, Christ distinguishes between her and all others. Christ laid down his life for his bride; he does not do so for those who aren’t his church. This is a distinguishing love. Christ treats his bride better than he treats all others.