The Bible Nerd

I am not writing these series of posts in a vacuum.  I don’t even own a vacuum.  What I mean is that I have been married for 17 years and would really like for my “head” to stay attached to my body and don’t enjoy sleeping outdoors.  In other words, my wife can and will be reading everything that I am saying about marriage and headship.  She could even post her own comments about me, but thank goodness I can just not approve them and then no one will ever see them.  Not that I would ever do that, and of course my wife and I agree on everything in life, like for example the beauty of country music.

There are several other passages of Paul in which he uses the concept of headship, but none give us more fits than 1 Corinthians 11.  In a digression on woman’s head coverings in church, Paul gives such wonderful zingers such as 11:10, “That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.”  Umm, thanks for that Paul… In addition to comparing Jesus and the church to husband and wife in Ephesians, Paul also compares Jesus’ relationship to God with the husband and wife relationship.  11:3 says, “I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” Not only does headship apply to Jesus and the church, but also Jesus and God!

With our two main options for the figurative meaning of “headship”, we must apply both to these comparisons to see if they fit contextually.  Is Jesus in authority over the church?  Yes, of course.  Is Jesus the source of encouragement and nourishing of the church?  Again, yes.  Is God in authority over Jesus?  Not so easy an answer, but you can read my post on subordination in the Trinity and see that my answer is that at the very least we have incarnational subordination of Jesus under God’s authority.  Is God the source of encouragement for Jesus?  Yes, we know that there is perfect unity of thought and love within the Father/Son relationship.  I want to repeat here however, that just because Jesus is under the Father’s authority, it does not carry any connotation that the Father is better or more valuable than the Son.  It is simply a differentiation of the roles that they have.  God never abuses (or abused) that authority, and they still worked in perfect unity together as evidenced in Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel of John 5:18-47.

Paul does use “headship” in talking of Jesus in several passages that do not pertain to husband/wife relationships.  Our next goal is to decide whether these uses seem to denote “authority” or “source”.  In Ephesians 1:22-23, Paul says, “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”  When you look at the preceding verses, it would appear that Paul is talking about the authority of Christ.  In Colossians 1:18 and 2:10, both uses of headship  mean authority.  However, in Colossians 2:19, Paul says, “and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.”  Paul uses “head” here to talk about the life that flows from Jesus to the believers, and in Ephesians 4:15 it also seems to carry the “source” aspect.

Since the uses for “head” to mean “source” and “authority” are both used by the same author in the same books, I find it hard to conclude that he means one to the exclusion of the other.  Rather, it is more logical to conclude, that Paul uses “headship” to mean BOTH “source” and “authority”.  Jesus is both the source of nourishing for the church, but He is also the authority over the church.  If we combine this with our study on the guidance for wives to submit to their husbands, it becomes more difficult to remove the sense of authority of the husband in marriage.  Though this same concept of headship is not used by other authors of the New Testament, we can observe that the use of “head” in Revelation carries the meaning of authority in describing the various characters.  Also, Peter echoes Paul’s words on wives being subject to their husbands in 1 Peter 3:1.

The discussion is not over though, we have not analyzed the options I gave in discussing how to apply Paul’s commands on submission (progressive revelation or mutual submission).  They would apply in the same way to the concept of headship.  In the next post, we will discuss these, and also talk about how the conclusions impact people’s views on women in leadership.  Let us not forget how far the church has come in the treatment of women, and we need to continue to pray and labor to see these freedoms come to those women still in bondage and suffering in their cultures.  I know that many of us have these images in our minds as we discuss marriage and headship, and no matter our views, we should be united in the humane treatment of all genders.

I can’t think of many things more personal than digging into people’s relationship with their husband or wife.  Seriously, people have very strong views on how marriage should work, and there is a truckload of emotion due to past experiences both good and bad.  Everybody asking this question ultimately has to say who they think is the boss and calls the shots.  We can make it sound more deep and thought provoking, but that is the bottom line.  Even people who say, “no one is the boss”, are still saying that there are two co-bosses (that sounded much better in my head before I wrote it down).  From Promise Keepers to stay at home dads, from women’s lib’ers to the Amish, you have to admit that the church has been all over the board on this one.

In the next few posts, we will attempt to look at the key Scriptures involved in this discussion, and see that it is intertwined into the discussion about female pastors and women in authority that we left unanswered from the 1 Timothy 2 passage.  I am going to begin with the New Testament and work backwards on this one, and Ephesians 5:22-33 has to be one of the most debated New Testament passages on marriage.  Paul begins by addressing the wives first in 22-24, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”

In this passage, Paul compares the relationship of husband and wife to the relationship between Jesus and the church.  In doing so, he creates a new term to describe this called “headship”.  In the Greek, the word for head is the same one (kephale) that is used for people’s literal heads, but here it is clearly taking on a figurative meaning.  The million dollar question is, “What is the figurative meaning of headship?”  There are two main views in the church on the figurative meaning:  1) authority:  in the same way we can say that a leader is the “head” of a group, this view maintains that the husband has been given the role of authority in the marriage; 2)source: in the same way that we can say a lake or underground water supply is the “source” of a river, this view sees headship as the responsibility of the husband to provide encouragement, nourishing, and care for the wife, and has nothing to do with authority.

Paul gives this same advice to married couples in his letter to the Colossian church in Colossians 3:18-19, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.”  Before even dealing with the concept of headship, we need to observe that in both passages Paul starts with the command for “wives, submit to your husbands”.  He never gives this command for husbands to submit to wives, so the term “submit” must be defined.  You can do a fancy Greek word study and come up with the astounding conclusion that “submit” means to “submit”  Mind blowing, I know.  To submit is to voluntarily place yourself under the authority of another,  and was originally used in Greek as a military term of placement under a leader.  Often, this word is translated as “be subject” and has connotations of “yield, subordinate, and arrange under” (the Greek word is actually in 5:21 of Ephesians for submit).

No matter what we say about “headship” in our next post, there is still going to be this command about submission.  I have heard the following thoughts on this: 1) Paul commands them in 5:21 to “submit to one another”, and he does this to establish that all relationships should be mutual submission; 2) Paul is merely addressing what each one struggles with (women with submitting and men with love) but both are applicable for husband and wife (both need to love and submit).  3) this was a temporal command (not timeless) based on the culture of their day and was intended to be phased out as they understood their identity in Christ (just like Paul never says “Don’t have slaves” in the New Testament); and finally 4) Paul is establishing roles within marriage with the wife “submitting” to her husband’s authority.

I have to be honest here and say that the fourth option seems the most straight forward and requires the least amount of “explanation”, but that doesn’t mean that it is the correct option.  Once we cover headship next, we must bring these two concepts together, and see how they fit together contextually.  Ultimately we are all submitted to God and under His “headship”, but we shouldn’t use that as a cheesy way to get out of addressing the practical question of roles within marriage.  Until I start having babies, God has clearly made man and woman different and has different roles for each.  Whether that involves authority or not remains to be firmly established as we continue.  Would it be really tasteless of me now to insert a husband/wife joke here?  On second thought…