Torch, Summer 1978

/ Marriage: Biblical Roles In Relationship / I / Stanley N. Ballard An overemphasis on either headship or submission leads to poor family relationships. Thus, Dr. Stanley Ballard explains that the Biblical roles of husband and wife have been designed by God to produce unity and order. Men and women are both to be honored and fulfilled through proper role relationships in marriage. IT is timely to consider the biblical concept of husband and wife relationships because of two unbalanced viewpoints that are being promoted in churches today. One line of reasoning maintains that there are no distinct gender-based roles in marriage. Two books emphasizing this thrust are All We're Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation by Scanzoni and Hardesty, and Man as Male and Female: A Study in Sexual Relationships from a Theological Point of View by Jewett. These authors emphasize the concept of equality in male / female relationships and assume that this equality rules out prescribed differences of function in a husband / wife relationship. According to these writers, the I I I I I I I I \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ I I \ I I I I I I I I unity stressed in the redemptive passage of Galations 3:28 indicates that there is to be no submission of women to men in marriage. The other unbalanced viewpoint emphasizes only the wife's responsibility to live under the authority of her husband. In this position, the wife exists only to meet the needs of her mate. The woman is seen to be secondary or even inferior in an essential way. Her purpose is to live out her existence for and through her husband. She, because of her womanhood, is under the man, never attaining full potential as a person in her own right or for her own sake. The interpretation that is presented in this article will challenge both of the above approaches. \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \