When A "Plain" Reading of Scripture Fosters Abuse & Inequality

Marriage and 1 Peter 3:1-7

IN THIS ARTICLE: Many pastors have counseled women to stay in abusive marriages or try to patch up marriage trouble through silent submission based on 1 Peter 3:1-7. But Peter’s words are horrible advice for these modern situations. How can a Christian who has a high view of scripture as “God-breathed” make this claim? Read on — it matters for marriages and all male-female relations today.

In our local Bible studies, my co-leader and I often remind everyone, “The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us.”¹ All the books of the Bible were written to original audiences who lived in other cultures at other times and spoke different languages. If we don’t understand the original situation and how it differs or coheres with our own, we will misapply it (most commonly, by a wooden attempt to do precisely what we think it says). This is especially crucial when we read epistles because we are reading someone else’s mail.

1 Peter 2:11-3:12 is in the “household code” genre, much like the Ephesians, Colossians, and Titus sections that deal with marriage. Ancient Greco-Roman philosophers and statesmen wrote and taught household codes so citizens, slaves, and other inhabitants would obey laws and cultural expectations. Plato (428/427 to 348/347 B.C.) taught that each household is a “mini-state” (roughly meaning “mini-government or mini-nation” today). Households must organize for the good of the state. Plato’s principles were: “Parents are superior to their offspring, men to women and children, rulers to ruled.”²

His protege Aristotle devised the household code based on these pairings: master/slave, husband/wife, and parent/child (Paul includes all three in Eph. 5 and Col. 3). Aristotle wrote, “It is a part of the household science to rule over wife and children. For the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female.”³

The Greeks and Romans believed insubordination at home led to insubordination against the government; it was a matter of what we would call “national security.” If a group of people (for instance, Christians) violated these customs, they would be seen as seditious, and this could land them in deep doo-doo.

Typically, household codes were addressed to the ruling party (to men and slave owners). In the 1st century BC/AD, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Areius Didymus, and Seneca wrote handbooks for the codes, teaching that sedition occurs when lesser people claim equality.⁴ Households that disobeyed the code undermined Imperial Rome.

First-century writers continued Plato’s idea that good citizenship in the household ensured the same in the state. Gaius Musonius Rufus wrote, “It would be each man’s duty to take thought of his own ‘city,’ and to make of his home a rampart for [the whole city’s] protection.”⁵

Romans began to critique Judaism for subversiveness and “destabilizing influence.” Tacitus wrote, “The Jews regard as profane all that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they permit all that we abhor.” So, Jewish writers like Josephus and Philo began to adopt the codes.⁶ Their principle was to accommodate when possible and hold fast to what was essential (like circumcision, food laws, Sabbath laws, and monotheism).

The way Peter begins his household code (2:13-17) suggests he knows the context of a connection between household and state. He knows how and when to compromise to protect his people.

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people …Show proper respect to everyone … honor the emperor.

Honor and submit to the emperor and governors? They “are sent … to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right”? Here is what the Roman Seutonius wrote about how “justly” Emperor Tiberius reigned during the period of Jesus’ ministry and the church's early years:

An informer’s word was always believed. Every crime became a capital one, even the utterance of a few careless words …. The bodies of all executed persons were … dragged to the Tiber with hooks – as many as twenty a day, including women and children. Tradition forbade the strangling of virgins, so when little girls had been condemned to die in this way, the executioner began by violating them.⁷

Here’s what Seutonius wrote about Nero, who reigned while Peter was writing his epistle:

Not satisfied with seducing freeborn boys and married women, Nero raped the Vestal Virgin Rubria …. Having tried to turn the boy Sporus into a girl by castration, he went through a wedding ceremony with him …. He, at last, devised a game in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes.⁸

Yet Peter says honor/submit to him?!? This is the same Peter executed for not submitting to Nero in 66 A.D. and who said in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than human beings!” What’s he doing in this letter?

One reality of Peter’s audience is that they are already being verbally harassed for disassociating from pagan temple activities performed for their former gods:

For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They are surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you. - 1 Peter 4:3-4

Critics often charged Christians with being anti-social and rejecting civic duty when they insisted Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord. They were accused of “conduct injurious to the well-being of the commonwealth and favor of the gods.”⁹ The fallout was economic, political, familial, social, and physical. Peter and his flock will hold fast on “Jesus is Lord” but otherwise try to show themselves to be good neighbors, so he writes that they must be prepared to explain their faith but “do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander” (1 Pet. 3:15-16).

Peter’s adaptation of the Greco-Roman household code helps the church accommodate cultural expectations as much as possible and resist only when necessary (when asked to deny Christ, engage in idolatry, and do things Christ condemns). Peter wants to protect his flock! He doesn’t want these women to get hurt. The likely percentage of the Roman Empire’s population that were Christians by 100 AD was only 0.0126%.¹⁰ Their situation was nothing like ours in the U.S. They didn’t have the numbers, the money, the legal protections, the voting clout, the social power — nothing.

Peter knows some of his people are married to pagans, and others are slaves of pagans. So, he addresses slaves of “harsh” masters (2:18) and wives of unbelievers (3:1).

WAYS PETER’S CODE ALIGNS WITH GRECO-ROMAN CODES

• He’s got two of the three pairs (he doesn’t talk about parents/children)

• Slaves and wives are to submit (in other words, to obey the law)

• Peter’s frame (2:11-12 and 3:8-12) highlights the apologetic nature of his code, similar to what Jewish writers did to demonstrate that Judaism wasn’t at odds with the will of Rome for families.

• The reference to calling one’s husband “lord” evokes the expected power differential. We’ll say more about Sarah and Abraham in a bit.

None of these features would have stood out or seemed weird to pagans who were poking under the hood (either because they were attracted to Christ or they wanted to catch Christians in anti-Rome behavior). It’s as if a contemporary preacher said, “Be sure to drive the speed limit and rise for the national anthem.”

WAYS PETER’S CODE CLEVERLY SUBVERTS THE PAGAN NORMS

• He directly addresses those with lesser power, at length, with no word for slavemasters and one verse for husbands, during which he hints that God won’t even hear the prayers of a harsh husband.

• He says wives are their co-heirs and commands husbands to honor their wives, who are in a weaker position (physically, legally, and socially)¹¹.

• Slaves must not only honor good masters but “unjust” or “harsh” ones (the Greek σκολιός, which means “crooked, perverse, wicked, corrupt”). Christian slaves of pagan masters can witness for Christ and protect the community from accusations of sedition if they submit (They already had a mark against them because slaves were expected to take the religion of the master, so Peter wants them to be as submissive as possible, outside of denying Christ).

• Peter gives slaves the example of Jesus. New Testament adaptations of the codes consistently return to Paul’s admonition, “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col. 3:17). It’s always either “submit as if unto Jesus” or “consider the meekness and servility of Jesus who humbled himself.” Paul and Peter tell slaves and wives to obey the law (submit) but give them a new, dignifying reason: Look to Jesus. Keep your eye on the prize. You are co-heirs.

• Peter’s word to wives makes a special appeal to wives of unbelievers – again, these pagan husbands are the people who could especially get his flock in trouble.

They are already on thin ice because wives are supposed to take the religion of their husbands. Plutarch (46 - 120ish AD), in his essay, Advice to Bride and Groom, says:

A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the front door tight upon all strange rituals and outlandish superstitions.¹²

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60 - 7 BC) wrote Roman Histories to preserve foundational policies of Romulus that should continue, including the law that a wife should share in the “sacred rites” of her husband (meaning, “join his religion”) and that a husband should “rule her as a necessary and inseparable possession.”¹³

Women in Peter’s flock are already disobeying by being Christians. Peter is trying to mitigate their risk by telling them to be as quietly submissive as possible because the situation of Peter and these women is wholly unlike the situation of Christians in the U.S. They are a minuscule, maligned minority. Do you see how Peter’s advice (and this goes for much of Paul’s advice in his codes, too) is situationally based on their socio-cultural reality?

Rodney Stark has shown that men dramatically outnumbered women throughout the Roman empire. Still, women outnumbered men by nearly the same percentage within Christianity: “The ancient sources and modern historians agree that primary conversion to Christianity was far more prevalent among females than among males.”¹⁴ Stark points to the prevalence of intermarriage between Christian women and pagan men, given the lack of available women among the pagans and the preponderance of women within Christianity. Paul (1 Cor 7:13-14) and Peter (1 Pet 3:1-2) each advised wives how to win their husbands to Christ, and neither seemed concerned that Christian wives would revert to their husband’s religions.

Moreover, pagan sources agree …. Christians seldom lost out via exogenous marriages [a marriage where one party is outside the faith] …. This was partly because many married upper-class women became Christians and then managed to convert their spouses …. But it also occurred because many upper-class Christian women did marry pagans, some of whom they subsequently were able to convert.¹⁵

So Peter’s call for wives to submit is typical - of course, they are supposed to do that, just as we are supposed to only drive with a license. But Peter’s reason in v.1, “that they may be won over,” is subversive. He is telling them to obey Rome for the sake of their safety and the safety of the church but to do so for a reason that will ultimately undermine the false lord, Caesar.

The reference to Sarah will appease potential enemies of the church but be understood by those catechized in the faith at a deeper level. For Peter’s flock, the “Old Testament” is their Bible. The story of Abraham and Sarah is not a minor story tucked away in an obscure part of the canon; it is foundational, and Christians were expected to know it. Of course, this was even more true for Jewish Christians.

In Genesis, Sarah and Abraham each tell the other what to do at times. Sarah is never criticized in the text for this. One time, she is directly upheld by God, who tells Abraham (following Sarah’s demand about Ishmael), “Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you” (Gen. 21:12 ESV). God literally says:

“Whatever Sarah says to you, שָׁמַע” (Hebrew, shama, which means “listen and obey”).

In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures used by the early church), Abraham also “obeys” Sarah in Genesis 16:2, using the same Greek word that 1 Peter 3:6 uses for Sarah’s obedience:

“Abram agreed to what Sarai said.” (“agreed to” is from ὑπήκουσεν which literally means “he obeyed”).

So Sarah ὑπήκουσεν (obeyed) Abraham according to 1 Peter 3:6, but Abraham ὑπήκουσεν (obeyed) Sarah in Genesis 16:2. All of this would have been apparent to those catechized in the faith but would have gone unnoticed by an enemy of the faith who heard or read Peter’s letter. To the enemies, it simply sounds like a Christian teacher is telling his followers to obey their husbands like some ancient holy woman of their faith did. It’s clever, subversive, and gives these Christian women dignity.

Peter could not tell them what we can tell abused women today — to get out, to call the police, to obtain a lawyer, to stay in a safe place. He cannot even advise them to tell their pagan husbands, “Look, I’m a Christian, and that’s that.” Neither Peter nor these women are anybody in the Roman empire. They have no “pull” and almost no rights. Their situation is not analogous to ours, so a blind adherence to “the letter of the law” in this passage is irresponsible and goes against how the Holy Spirit has worked in the world in the millennia since Peter’s day. We certainly never say, as John Piper said when asked how he’d counsel an abused woman:

I think she endures verbal abuse for a season, and she endures perhaps being smacked one night, and then she seeks help from the church.

SUMMATION
We’ve covered a lot, so I’ll give you summaries from two scholars on this passage. Next week, we’ll look at other New Testament household codes.

Travis Williams: “They were instructed to comply with the standards of popular society as a way of preserving the basic safety of the most at-risk readers; yet, in each case, social conformity was balanced by some form of resistance which cautiously challenged existing social structures and quietly asserted the insubordination of the author. His message is, ‘With the gospel … at stake, these believers should submit to human institutions whenever possible, so that their only offensive behavior arises from their complete allegiance to Christ.”¹⁶

Jeannine K. Brown: “The goal of the household code, and the letter more broadly, is to help the believers navigate with circumspection the fine line between their two realities: cultural norms and their newfound faith. The author guides them toward conformity to these cultural norms whenever possible and resistance when absolutely necessary so that they will remain true to Jesus Christ as the one true Lord.”¹⁷

1. I think John Walton may have been the first to say this. Many scholars repeat it.

2. Plato, Laws 3.690a via Jeannine K. Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament: Understanding Their Impact for Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024), 90.

3. Aristotle, Politics 1.5.1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1944),

4. Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament, 94.

5. Musonius, 14.30-34 via Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament, 95.

6. Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament, 92-93.

7. Suetonius, “Tiberius” sec 61, The Twelve Caesars, 136–37.

8. Suetonius, “Nero,” sec 28-29, The Twelve Caesars, 222-23.

9. Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament, 88.

10. Rodney Stark, The Rise Of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (New York: HarperOne, 1996), 7.

11. Sandra Glahn and Andrew Bartlett particularly stress the literal meaning (that women, on average, are physically weaker) in Sue Edwards and Kelley Matthews, 40 Questions about Women in Ministry (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2022), 223-24.

12. Plutarch, Advice to Bride and Groom, 19 via Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament, 108.

13. Dionysius, Roman Histories II.24.i, II.25.vi-v via Jennifer G. Bird, Abuse, Power and Fearful Obedience: Reconsidering 1 Peter’s Commands to Wives (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2011), 22).

14. Rodney Stark, “Reconstructing the Rise of Christianity: The Role of Women,” Sociology of Religion 56, no. 3 (1995): 231-33.

15. Stark, “Reconstructing the Rise of Christianity,” 241–42.

16. Travis Williams, Good Works in 1 Peter: Negotiating Social Conflict and Christian Identity in the Greco-Roman World (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 277.

17. Brown, Embedded Genres in the New Testament, 118-19.