Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

Bauman-Martin: Women on the Edge 273
Much of this passage and the following words to the Christian husbands
are steeped in misogynist preconceptions about women: that they are weaker,
that their appearance is somehow provocative, that they should be silent, and so
on. The author of 1 Peter, like the other post-Pauline Christian writers, understood
that full redemption would take place not now, not here, but in the imminent
eschaton. 75 He strains under the tension of women taking action in the
church communities. Unlike the author of Colossians or Ephesians or the Pastorals,
however, this author faces head-on the idea that many women in the
communities he addresses are taking risks and operating at the margins of the
worlds of belief and nonbelief. He must acknowledge their status and courage,
because they, not their husbands, represent much of the Christian community
addressed in this text.
We can conclude from the author’s remark “even if some of them do not
obey the word” that many of the women being addressed are married to non-
Christians. Thus, the exhortation to the wives to submit is similar to the exhortation
to the slaves; it encourages them to accept their husbands’ authority
during the persecution that they face as a result of their disobedience. Their
independent conversions, attendance at Christian meetings, and neglect of
their cultic duties all constituted a crossing of boundaries that subverted the
authority of the paterfamilias and forced them to negotiate between two communities
in conflict. It is that subversion that the author encourages when he
tells the wives to “do what is good” (ajgaqopoiou'sai) even if the consequences
are frightening (3:11).
The boundary-crossing activities of the Christian wives and slaves may
have been even more significant because they may have engaged in public
activities more than is often assumed. Margaret MacDonald writes:
Recent anthropological thought criticizes the assumption that norms which
identify women with the household limit the role of women exclusively to the
private sphere. In this light, it is useful to see the woman married to the
unbeliever as being a mediator between realms. On the one hand, she ventures
into the public sphere, moving and manoevering to secure Christian
membership; yet she also returns to her private home, intent on transforming
the house. 76
MacDonald argues that what seemed on the surface to be simply a “Christian
appropriation of dominant patterns of hierarchy” is actually more complicated.
77 The exhortations confine the Petrine women to their homes, yet para-
75 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women and Redemption: A Theological History (Minneapolis:
Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 3.
76 MacDonald, Early Christian Women, 203.
77 Ibid., 202.