The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

by Beth Allison Barr

Do you hear the differences? Aristotle is writing specifically to men about how they should rule and why they have the right to rule. He does not include inferiors within the conversation. Household governance is the domain of the Roman man—as master, father, and husband. The conversation is directed to men alone. By contrast, the Christian household codes address all the people in the house church—men, women, children, and slaves. Everyone is included in the conversation. Theologian Lucy Peppiatt writes that this is “key” to the Christian subversion of Roman patriarchy. Because the Christian household codes are directed to all members of the Roman household, instead of presuming the guardianship of the male head, they “contain within them the overturning of accepted positions accorded to men, women, slaves, and children, and the expectations placed upon them.”25 Instead of endowing authority to a man who speaks and acts for those within his household, the Christian household codes offer each member of the shared community—knit together by their faith in Christ—the right to hear and act for themselves. This is radically different from the Roman patriarchal structure. The Christian structure of the house church resists the patriarchal world of the Roman Empire.