My earliest years of reading were spent on European children’s classics. In retrospect, I find the fathers in these stories to be vexed figures. There’s the impoverished father. In Rumpelstiltskin, the miller lies his way to marrying his daughter off to a king. In Hansel and Gretel, the father (twice!) abandons his children in the woods. Then there’s the widower father. All he does is lose one wife and marry another, who promptly turns into the wicked stepmother—Cinderella and Snow White, for example. Whether impoverished or widower, the father makes choices that are in his own interest. The children survive the choices only because these are fairy tales.
As for husbands, they come in two models. There’s the handsome prince who rescues the girl and provides her a happily-ever-after—Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty, for example. At the other end, there’s Bluebeard, who serially kills off his wives. Both models of husband are unreal, and serve for entertainment rather than instruction.
At the same time growing up, I was reading Bible stories. In retrospect, I find the fathers and husbands in them largely inadequate as well. Sarah’s husband (twice!) puts her at high risk to keep himself safe. Leah’s father tricks Jacob into marrying her, for which Leah pays by going unloved for the rest of her life. When princess Tamar is sexually assaulted her father decides to protect the perpetrator, the crown prince.
Because the biblical narrator doesn’t always explicitly call out the offence of the father or husband, the reader—especially if they hold patriarchal values—normalizes these offences just as much as the first audience of fairy tales normalized the behaviour of the male protagonists. This issue is dedicated to helping us review the desired profile of Christian fathers and husbands.
Daniel Gonzalez sets the context, literally, for the discussion on biblical prescriptions for husbands and fathers. Taking 1 Timothy as a test text, he provides a series of examples of texts that we do not apply literally because it would not make sense to. Each biblical passage should be carefully understood against its cultural context if we are to rightly apply it to the present day.
Joseph Early sets further context to how the Christian community understands the place of husbands and fathers—first, theologically, and second, socially—by reviewing the thought and work of the influential medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas on the subject of women and men.
Abeneazar Urga carefully unpacks 1 Peter 3:7 to help us understand better the caution it gives to husbands who fail to treat their wives with the honour due to them—such a man’s prayers will not receive God’s attention! Jeff Miller brings us a sermon on the broader passage (1 Peter 2:18–3:7) to help us fit the difficult advice Peter gives to slaves and wives to submit to masters and husbands into a big picture of our calling to work for the good of others.
Andrew Spurgeon examines the practice of hospitality, which in many cultures is allocated to the women of the family. Through a series of biblical examples, he shows how, when the male head of a household takes the lead in being hospitable, he reflects our welcoming God.
Finally, Joshua George does a big-picture exploration of the terms “complementary” and “egalitarian” to argue that this word pair is a mismatch since it conflates structure and function. A debate on structure would logically pair “egalitarian” with “hierarchical.” A separate debate concerning function would discuss gender-dependent complementarity versus gender-independent complementarity. Untangling the terms helps us use these terms more accurately. It provokes us to critique our practices in the church and home.
I trust that this issue will nudge us to rethink what God desires in husbands and fathers. Fairy tales couldn’t help getting it wrong. We need not.
Together, side by side, in God’s world.