Welcome back, ampersand! I hope my post will answer your questions; if not, please feel free ask again.
1. Is it your position that the commands in 5:22-24 and 5:25-30 are so exactly alike as to be interchangeable? That is, are these specific aspects of Christ's relationship to the Church and the Church's relationship to Christ exactly alike? Are the husband and wife being told to do the exact same thing and emulate the exact same aspects of the Church-Christ relationship?
First, I do not see them as "commands" per se. Rather I see them as Paul's effort (admonishments?) to change an existing system of harsh domination between members of various groups where authority had been usurped. In other words, unrighteous control was prevalent among many as opposed to treatment as one wanted to be treated.
It may be easier for you to see this if I show it first in the master/slave relationship. We know slavery was rampant but from the beginning, this was never God's plan nor did He establish a system of domination of one over the other among His people. We see, throughout scripture God's efforts to protect the well-being of slaves and educate slaveholders how to treat them fairly. With the many scriptures in the OT that support fair, just treatment of slaves, we look at Paul's admonishments to both slaves (weak and vulnerable) and masters (strongers and more powerful)
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ...Eph 6:5
And
masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening...Eph 6:9
Paul is not supporting nor endorsing the continuation of the practice; on the contrary, he is appealing to their sense of fair treatment one to another to ensure a peaceable relationship in an existing situation and time that permitted privileges to one to the exclusion of the other.
We know he continued in this effort to eradicate the existing system and implement one that is patterned after mutual respect when he encouraged Philemon to change his attitude toward his slave to one of a brother in Christ. He further tells slaves that if they became a believer while being a slave, to remain in that position (because of the late hour) but if they could become free, to rather do that.
We see his view of slavery in other places which you can research yourself that the system that allowed for one having power over another was never God's plan and you will see progressive efforts throughout the Word and throughout history to eliminate and/or rescue those who have been oppressed by such a system.
Next we can briefly look at Paul's admonishment to children and parents. Again, we know from scripture (and history) the harsh manner parents have treated their children; i.e. "Passing through the fire" and offering them to false idols, selling them as slaves. We see the relationship between Saul & Jonathan, Absalom's rebellion against his father David, and the stoning of a rebellious son whose parents brought him to the elders of the city to complain that he was a drunkard and a glutton. Compare the treatment of the father to his son in the parable of the prodigal son.
So Paul entreats children (weaker and vulnerable) to be obedient to their parents (stronger and powerful) so it will be well with them in their care and then admonishes the father not to be harsh nor to exasperate the children but to instruct them in the way of the Lord.
Children,obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Eph 6:4
Again, Paul does not endorse nor encourage an authoritarian, harsh relationship between parents and their children, but appeals to peaceable respect between them.
And finally, we turn to Paul's efforts to raise the status of wives and curtail the practices of harsh treatment toward them in an era that previously permitted polygamy, concubinage,
marriage by purchase or by capture in war, slave-marriage, and putting away wives for any cause. He first speaks to the wife as the weaker, more vulnerable vessel:
.....and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself the Savior of the body. Eph 5:23
Paul is
not establishing nor maintaining a system or relationship that was historically abused by husbands. He is appealing to the wife to see the husband in terms of Christ's saving the church. He's encouraging a new perspective and attitude toward the one who will love her and sacrifice himself for her as Christ did.
But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything Eph 5:24
Paul is comparing the church being in the care and nourishment of Christ to the wife's being the recipient of the care and nourishment of her husband. We know this by the words of admonishment to husbands to care for (nourish) and cherish her as Christ does to the church.
And then to the stronger, more powerful husband:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her...
Eph 5:25
He makes no mention of authority, control, or power in this relationship. Only "agape" love which gives itself up for another. This is radically different than the pattern of husbands to their wives which de-valued her, divorced her for any reason, and took multiple wives in total disregard for the original purpose of marriage.
In keeping with Paul's efforts to change the erroneous concept of the husband's authority, we find him specifically saying that the wife has equal authority in the home and the same as the husband in the sexual relationship. Surely we cannot interpret his words as commands that encourage anything other than mutual, reciprocal, loving, respectful treatment.
2. Is there anything that sets apart the husband-wife union from the union we all have as members of the Church? Is the only distinction between the husband-wife relationship and the member-member relationship that of sexual reproduction in the husband-wife relationship? Or, in your understanding, does Scripture (in, say, Ephesians 5.. or anywhere else) provide distinct prescriptions for the husband-wife relationship that are different (in whatever manner) from the member-member relationship?
I have answered this above by saying that just by virtue of the proximity to one another on a day-to-day basis, it appears that the importance of these virtues is magnified.
{I'm just trying to understand your position beyond your definition of the word "head." I know you have repeated numerous times that "virtue is not gender-specific." I may have missed something, but I don't think anyone has actually made gender-specific distinctions for virtues. I can't speak for others, but I am understanding some directives in Scripture to be relationship-specific. And because in the Biblical marriage union the husband will always be male and the wife will always be female, some directives inherently become gender-specific. However, I agree that virtue is not gender-specific. Did I make sense there?...}
There are only two genders in the body of Christ and none speak specifically to one that is not applicable, as far as I can see, to the other. Paul mentions 3 relationships in Ephesians that again, need specific reminders due to the nature of their close day-to-day living arrangements as well as the possibility of abuse by the stronger or more powerful.
The "mystery" of Christ's relationship to the church is Christ's giving Himself, humbling Himself, emptying Himself, and His servanthood as exemplary of His willingly subjecting Himself on behalf of the Church. In other words, He subjects Himself not
to her, but
for her sake.
It does not such thing, Mark. A wife is nowhere called a slave nor a husband a master. Paul was never endorsing such a relationship even to those who legally owned slaves in the NT. I've heard some strange assumed doctrines unsupported by scripture relative to the husband and his authority, but this is a first implying the wife is in a position of slave.