Redeeming Submission

When a Christian, accepting the authority of Scripture is sorting through a complex matter—say the nature of the relationship between masculinity and femininity, or the nature of the relationship between free will and God’s grace—one ordinarily does not have to sort through the matter like some rugged frontiersman or brave adventurer pondering the mystery for the first time. For one who submits to Christ, he can look to the authority of Scripture as a guide, as a giver of clues. Some matters are more clearly spelled out than others. We all know that something is wrong with the world (the problem of evil); we don’t know as well know operation of the Trinity. But on both scores, Scripture and the Church speak. And the Christian can take great comfort in submitting to its teaching in whatever particular area he is meditating upon, and seek to grasp the truth of the matter using what is said within Scripture at the least as a foundation or starting point.

“But is not this anti-intellectual? Is not the job of the scholar especially to question every assumption, to understand a matter from a multitude of angles, to explore the host of possibilities present?” No and Yes. No, submission to teaching authority is not anti-intellectual—it is, in truth, immensely intellectual—and Yes, it is the especial vocation of the scholar to ask those questions that typically go unasked.

First: how can we say that submission to teaching authority is intellectual? Because the wise man (1) knows that we live in an enormously complex world, filled with baffling paradoxes and precarious tensions, (2) to be intellectual is to be curious about those baffling paradoxes and precarious tensions, (3) that truth lies in the “multitude of counselors”, and (4) that one often cannot penetrate the sacred mysteries until he submits to the teaching authority in faith. In faith because he goes forward not fully apprehending where all the nuts and bolts fit, but in the hope that they do in truth fit. To adopt this approach is to believe that the “most efficient way” to truth is to accept what God has revealed through Scripture. The Scriptures were written for our edification, and we can be sure that when we allow the light of the Word to illumine what it is that we’re contemplating, we will receive more and more light; once we crack open the door of the Word even just a little bit, the room becomes brighter. The matter at hand will make sense—even if it seems to lack complete sense when we crack open the door. (I emphasize complete because I think we can be sure that if something completely lacks sense, we should not trust in it. Elusive though it may be, truth always seems at least partly true.)

Further, we must not be so much focused on making our message compelling as telling the truth. The truth will never be compelling to all people. “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind” (Jn. 9:39). But we must speak the truth in the hope that those whose hearts have been so prepared by God’s grace may gladly hear and receive that truth. The truth is powerful—but only to those who by cooperation with God’s grace, are prepared to submit to it. It is not powerful in the sense that whoever hears it believes it; it is powerful in the sense that whosoever whose heart is so prepared to receive it carries the words of eternal life. (Truly, the “contingency” of truth’s potency reflects the grace/free will dynamic.)

But what of times when the matter we are contemplating has been so distorted that if we so much as mention the word, it is like throwing pearls before the swine? Let us take the word “submission.” We have all seen this word fabulously abused—whether man abusing submissive women, priests abusing submissive laity, or kings abusing submissive subjects. Yet I propose we have also seen, and do see, the wondrous meaning of this massively meaningful word playing itself out in life—whether a student submitting to his professor’s knowledge by diligently taking notes or the apprentice submitting to the master craftsman’s directions. Submission is a beautiful act, and if we wish to achieve any sort of true “power” we must learn to submit. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (Jn. 12:24).

But no matter how hard one may try to rehabilitate “submission”—and he should try—there’s no guarantee that some person’s hearts might be so turned against truth that they will not submit to it. We are not asked to make the message compelling such that everyone who hears will be persuaded. We are only asked to speak the truth in love.