Ephesians 5:21

Mutual hierarchy is an oxymoron.

The participial clause ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις ἐν φόβῳ Χριστοῦ is traditionally rendered “submitting to one another,” yet this creates a logical tension, to put it lightly. Mutual subordination or subjection is structurally incoherent and self-canceling: subordination presupposes asymmetrical relational hierarchy, which cannot be sustained if reciprocal. Attempting avoid heirarchy and "submit to each other" never seems to work. Someone always seems to take the alpha position. Ask any Presbyterian board of elders. Such a saying leaves the reader with suspended over nothing: "Do I submit first, or they?" It leads in a downward cycle, and is just as nonsensical as saying "rule over each other" (which would lead to chaos).

However, ὑποτάσσω in the passive voice with a dative (cf. τοῖς φθόγγοις in Epicur. Ep. 1p.4U.; Phld. Po. 5.26, 27) also bears the sense of underlying, being associated with, or being structurally aligned with. On this reading, ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις denotes not authority-yielding but a mutual correspondence or underlying relatedness—an interpretive move supported by philosophical and rhetorical usage from Hellenistic and later periods. (cf. LSJ ὑποτάσσω II.3)

This broader sense—“being structurally coordinated with one another” or “being implied in one another”—speaks more logically and theologically to the shared participation in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4), whereby each member of the body is not subordinated to the other but ordered with the other in the same underlying nature. Such an understanding coheres with the metaphor of ecclesial unity elsewhere in Ephesians (e.g., 4:16), and avoids flattening the rich communal language into a frustrating pit of "reciprocal submission."