Craig #93 “The comps I know focus very much on loving, sacrificial service as the way of exercising leadership and authority.”

I agree Craig that they would say that but that doesn’t make it a practical reality. In particular, loving sacrificial service is the opposite of authority (although I think, as we have been discussing, that leadership can be done in a loving and sacrificial way). The key continues to be authority. One can not be servant and master at the same time. If comps want to be master, then they are not engaged in loving sacrificial service no matter how hard they claim to be. Conversely, if one offers the kind of loving sacrificial service that Ephesians 5 calls for, then they, like Christ, have relinquished authority and taken the role of servant. It is a practical impossibility to have it both ways.

Very good Marg. And of course, all those add up to the core Biblical value – love. “Insistence…for male authority” is, if nothing else, quite unloving.

I agree Kristen. As we have been discussing, leadership is not inherently a bad thing and we should expect our spouse to “lead” in areas of our life that they are gifted or experienced to lead. The idea that the male should lead in all things and that the wife should never lead her husband not only defies the gifting of the Spirit and puts an impossible burden on the husband, but is just plain dumb because it is not the best plan for success of the marriage and the family.

Cheryl @ 137 – I think your own experience is the best answer to your question. The patriarchal authority paradigm is almost like brain washing. I have known many women who were prefectly content living in their male dominated world and perfectly confident that it was best for them. It is almost like the movie “The Matrix” – you have to have a rude awakening or you won’t even be aware you are having the life sucked out of you. I believe many feminists experienced the same frustration waiting for women in general to wake out of their 50’s “Father Knows Best” slumber. Unfortunately for secular feminism, just being equal in a Christian egalitarian marriage is not enough. But that is a whole other topic.

Just awesome Cheryl. But it will still be hard for many to accept. The obsession with authority and hierarchy that permeates not just our culture but our very nature makes the “humble God” paradigm seem to be an irreconcilable paradox.

3. An excellent question if, for no other reason, it relates to the comp position and the debate in general. Can one be a leader without having or exercising authority? Can one have authority without being considered a leader? I think the answer to both is a qualified “yes”.

I think leadership is more about getting people to follow a plan than it is about getting your way. I think of Lincoln, who was a great leader but who often compromised and even changed position based on debate and counsel. Lincoln also had the authority to carry out action on his decisions. But it wasn’t that authority that made him a great leader. Even when he lost political races (or court cases) and had basically no authority at all, he was still viewed by almost everyone who knew him well, including his opponents, as being a great leader.

History is also jammed full of examples of people who had great amounts of authority but were horrible leaders. Again, the terms do not go hand in hand.

Marriage is a unique institution. I truly believe that men have an inate desire to be leaders. I think it is in our genes. Where we get in trouble is when we are told that we are in authority. Authority is about overt power and it is corrupting. Instead of leading, we command. Instead of leading, we punish. Instead of leading, we demand obedience. This is abusive, yet it feels strangley right to us. That is because of the influence sin has over us. Adam was probably, potentially, a great leader. But sin made him a ruler, which is an entirely different and evil thing.

Women are gifted with many leadership skills as well. When we join our wives in “one flesh” leadership, we are far stronger than the two of us could be apart. There is no need for authority (between the two partners).

That is the paradox that the world does not understand. The world can not envision strength and power outside of a hierarchy. But the original design for marriage was one where strength and power were to be greatly multiplied through the one-flesh relationship, yet in a hierarchical vacuum. That is mind blowing to the world, and especially to men who feel comfortable in hierachies. It truly seems a contradiction – die to self (give up authority) in order to lead together. Even typing it, there is something within me that rebels against the idea. My inner Adam says “you were made to rule”. But my spirit cries back “it is not good for you to be alone (an authoritarian hierarchy is inherently lonely) – God has made an ezer neged (strong help facing you) to complete you and join you in leadership”. This battle rages all the time within me but I am not blind to God’s truth. I know the Spirit is right. The choice, then, is up to me. Do I rule by myself, or do I and my wife lead together.

2. That is kind of tough. I would say it is the power to cause your desire to occur. It may be overt – you may have the power to punish and reqard to bring about your desired result. Or it may be subtle – you may be able to bring about your desired result just by virtue of your “position”, “title”, or “role”. And it may even be unsolicited – people may give in to your desired result simply because they view you as wise and “good”. In any case, you have “authority” over others.

Now, we have discussed authority in a number of aspects. We have talked about “having” authority, “granting” authority, “holding” authority, and a number of other such ideas. But the bottom line is that the authority itself, regardless of how it came about, is a form of power over others.

1. I am going to assume by “legitimate” you mean biblical or God ordained. The answer is “yes”, government is God ordained with the “authority” to punish wrong doers and reward those who do right (see Romans 13:1-7).

There is also a certain amount of authority the church has to punish those in its midst (see 1 Cor 5 for example). And I believe, as we have been discussing in Eph 1-2, that we will sit with Christ in authority over the world.

But regarding person to person, especially in the Body of Christ, no, I don’t believe it can be demonstrated that there is any legitimate authority structure ordained by God.

Just an observation. This is a difficult forum to hold a “tight” conversation. I agree with Dave that Mark and other comps tend to opportunistically pick and choose which questions and points to respond to. Who could blame them! With the deluge of comments from the egal massesm we actually support this approach from them – nobody could respond to absolutely everything unless they were dedicating a majority of their time to the task. Even Cheryl, who naturally gives more time to this blog than anybody else, can’t get to every post. So I certainly don’t blame Mark for carefully choosing his battles.

I say this not to encourage or suggest any change. Just be aware that with such a popular blog, things are going to, at times, get frustrating with so many people “talking” at once.

Hey Mark – let’s circle back. Since my wife was the one who made the decision whether or not the children could leave the table after dinner, were we sinners, operating outside of the will of God? Were we violating Paul’s directive? Was I shriking my responsibility as a proper “head”? Was she usurping my authority by not submitting properly to me “in all things”?

72 good question Craig. I don’t have time to research but I think others are more qualified to answer anyway. I do know we have found that Greek prepositions can vary in meaning. Of note was our discussion some time back of the hypo portion of hypotasso and it’s possible meaning of “with” instead of “under”.

can’t……keep…….up

You all seem to be doing a great job. I think I’ll float on the sidelines for a while.

Craig – sorry for the mix up.

Mark – I will have to take a look at Hosea. I have not studied in depth. As far as lexicons go, I have never met an expert yet who didn;t have an agenda. But we discussed that at length in another thread so no use reviving it here. My point, although possibly slightly “overstated”, is that the lexicon you refer to seems to offer opinion on the definition of the word rather than actual demonstrable proof. And the author seems to have a stunning (our new favorite word 🙂 ) misunderstanding of how a metaphor works. For the metaphor to mean what your lexicon says it means in 2a, Paul and the Greeks of the time would have to have the view that the anatomical head is the lord and master of the anatomical body. But that is demonstrably false.

Sue – right on time as usual. I leave it to you and your research to press the point.

To continue on the Adam/Eve-Christ/Church connection.

Jesus is the second Adam. From a purely marital perspective, where Adam failed God and his Wife and brought about the curse, specifically, of authoritarian patriarchy, Jesus has triumphed and kept His mutually submissive (as in Cheryl’s dual-action submission), one-flesh relationship with His bride in tact.

“In “Head over all things”, “head” is not being used in any metaphor so we look at the context and possible meanings of “kephale” (like authority, source, origin) to determine its meaning.”

I missed this part – thanks TL for bringing it up.

Mark – are you purposely playing ignorant of the next verse? How can you claim “head over all things” is not part of a head/body metaphor when the very next phrase is “to the church, (v. 23) Which is his body…”?

Anyway, even if the metaphor wasn’t in use, your contention defies the Greek where kephale is never synonymous with authority like it is in English.

Cheryl will probably delve into Genesis a little more as well in her response, but we can’t lose sight of the importance of the Genesis account when dealing with Christ and His marriage to the Church. Paul certainly doesn’t lose sight of it.

Jesus is Adam; the Church is Eve. Does Jesus “need” the Church? Absolutely. Just as it was not good for Adam to be alone, it is not good for Jesus to be alone. The Church is Jesus’ ezer kenegdo. Does Jesus rule the world alone? Absolutely not. Just as with Adam and Eve (Gen 1), Jesus and the Church rule together (Eph 2 and others). Mark asks “Is Christ in authority over the Church at all?” Of course! BUT not in this instance where the relationship is a marriage. This stuns complementarians who can’t fathom the inverse of Mark’s question: “Is there any instance where Christ is not in authority over the Church”? Just as Adam was not in authority over Eve in the Garden, neither is Christ in authority in relation to His bride.

Is it no wonder that Paul so adamantly avoids authoritarian language when the Christ/Church or any other marriage relationship is in view? The use of the head/body metaphor seems, IMO, to be quite intentionally an effort to avoid worldly ideas, about husbands and wives. Paul’s frequent and exclusive use of this and other “mutually benefiting relationship” metaphors when speaking of marriage, whether Adam and Eve’s marriage, yours and my marriage, or Christ and the Church’s marriage, is, I believe, his direct attempt to undo the hierarchialist, patriarchal, ruler/husband-property/wife paradigm wrought by the fall and propegated by the world.

So, to Cheryl’s point which Mark refutes. When we look at a phrase like “head over all things”, we think authority because in English, such a phrase could legitimately mean “authority over all things” because in English, “head” can mean “authority”. We have to get out of our English mind set and definitional universe and think about how the Greeks defined “kephale“, not how we define “head”. In the Greek definitional universe, “kephale over all things can’t mean “authority over all things” because “kephale doesn’t ever mean “authority”. That becomes even more true when the metephor is in place, because the concept of the anatomical head being in authority over “all things”, whatever that may be, “to the [anatomical] body”, is nonsensical. The Greek speaker, being given that definition of the verse, would, I imagine, give quite a puzzled look. But staying within the Greek definitional universe of kephale and the Greek understanding of the relationship of the anatomical head to the anatomical body, Cheryl’s explanation makes perfect sense, especially to Paul’s audience, but even to us once we remove our English blinders.

I want to make sure this is clear. The lexicon Mark uses claims that in Greek, kephale is used metaphorically of persons to mean master or lord. That contention is absolutely false. kephale in the biblical Greek metaphors that have persons as the tenor could only be used in that way if Greek’s viewed the anatomical head to be the “master” or “lord” of the body. But they absolutely did not have that view, nor is that true today based on our advanced scientific knowledge. One must look at the relationship between parts of the body, not the ordinary relationships between people (where a person may be master or lord over another), to grasp what Paul is trying to convey about marriage.

In fact, the Greeks never used kephale in any sense to mean authority over. Common English phrases like “head of state”, “head of the company”, “head of the house”, “head of the family” etc., are unknown in ancient Greek (maybe modern too, although I don’t study that). That is why, when the Greek translators of the Septuigint ran into a Hebrew idom or phrase using the Hebrew word for head that contained an aspect of authority, they didn’t translate “rosh” into “kephale“, they translated it into “archon” (ruler). “kephale of state/city/country/house/clan/family” would be meaningless to their Greek readers. But “archon of the state/city/country/house/clan/family” would make perfect sense.

Mark – My answer to 324 (1) would be that Christ does not have authority over the church in the marriage realtionship (unless you want to bring in eros as NN has suggested and then the church has equal authority). He does in other relationships but not in that one.

And no, we are not changing our definitions. We have consistently maintained that kephale does not mean “authority over”.

Regarding point two from the lexicon. We have discussed your choice of lexicon in the past and shown where it is in error regarding kephale. To the particular passages, you are incorrect, definition two is not the applicable definition. Definition one is the correct definition as used in the metaphor. It is the anatomical head that is the vehicle for the metaphor – the object whose attributes are being applied. It is persons who are the tenor – the objects who adopt the the attributes. To answer your question, we are dealing with people by looking at the attributes of things (parts of the anatomy). The direct relationship between people is not what is being described; it is the direct relationship of parts of the anatomy that is in view and it is that which Paul is superimposing on people. So, the dynamics of ordinary people to people relationships are irrelevant. Even more so if it is the dynamics of people to people relationships as described by English idoms. Hence – “head of the household” is a completely out of bounds expression in this discussion, since it has nothing to do with the anatomical relationship Paul is using as his vehicle to describe martial interaction. It is even more out of bounds because it doesn’t exist as a Greek idom. There is not such thing in ancient Greek as the “kephale of the household”. Kephale is simply not used in the same way we use “head” in English at tiems to descirbe an authority.

oops, and I meant to say “Craig – I’m glad you brought up Eph 1“

Craig – I would also refer you to the other post that is going on at the smae time as this one. Cheryl points out that authority from God is always directly and obviously granted, and that is certainly true in Eph 1. Going back to Eph 5, one needs to see if authority is directly granted to the husband. I think you will see that not only is it not granted in Eph 5, it is not even part of the discussion.

Craig – I’m glad you brought up Eph 5. Take a careful read and note where the authority is applied (I sugest NASB, but you can get multiple versions at blueletterbible.org). Is it authority of head over body or is the authority aspect outside of the metaphor. I think you will find tha Christ’s authority is expressed over “principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named”. CHrist’s authority is oevr the world and is for the benefit of His body.

It is also important to continue reading into chapter 2, for the passage continues as Paul speaks specifically of the body.

Eph 2:1-2 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the [fn] course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

The “all things” that chapter one speaks of, which Christ is over, are all things of “the world”, which we were once a part of. But no more.

2:4-5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead [fn] in our transgressions, made us alive together [fn] with Christ (by grace you have been saved),”

And especially don’t miss this

2:6 “and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”

Not only is Jesus’ authority over the world exercised for the benfit of His body, /but we will share in that authority!

Chapter 2 ends with some great and encouraging words. The metaphor has changed to a temple, with Jesus the cornerstone. We are the remains of the building, in a sense, the body of the temple, “growing” up from that cornerstone. We are still part of the whole, not outsiders who the cornerstone is in authority over. Notice, even in the temple metaphor, how the language is very similar to the head/body language of Col 2:19.

Eph 2:19-22 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the [fn] saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner (kephale/head) stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

In the final analysis, the question that needs to be asked is – “is the authority in Eph 1 being expressed within the head/body metaphor, creating a hierarchy, or outside of it creating a symbiosis that benefits and joins in that authority”. What say you Craig?

I’ll add to the above, bringing it full circle….

The greatest way a man can express true masculinity, feel “manly”, and appear absolutely, irresistably “studly” to his bride is to live a life of sacrificial love as Paul exhorts us to do in Ephesians 5.

“gengwell, I know quite a few comps who cannot stand Eldridge for the reasons you give: Fleshly/worldly. one comp I know and like a lot says it is fairy tale stuff. What if that “beauty” has a masectomy or a horrible disfiguring accident. Then what?”

True. I actually was a little more blunt in my critique of the section “A Beauty To Rescue” in the book. I said – “what do all the ugly damsel’s in distress do in Eldredge’s world?”

I should make my position clear. I think “Wild At Heart” is an important book and I can recommend it, but with a big caveat regarding the afore mentioned section and an even bigger warning to not fall prey to pride and selfishness when exploring one’s masculinity. Scirpture, especially our current passage, needs to be used to temper any man’s testosterone rush when reading “Wild At Heart”.

Let’s see what one must believe to imply and assume authority in support of a comp position.

One must believe that hypotasso universally involves submission to an authority even though it is clear in scripture and other ancient Greek writings that that isn’t the case.

One must believe that hypotasso universally means “align under” (i.e. that “submit” is the universally proper translation), even though it is clear in scripture and other ancient Greek writings that that isn’t the case.

One must believe that kephale universally means “boss” or some other authoritarian position in a hierarchy even though it never means this in Greek as evidenced by both Septuigint translations and other Greek writings.

One must believe that kephale in the anatomical sense is in authority over the anatomical body even though this does not reflect the Greco/Roman physiological thought of the ancient world nor can it be scientifically supported with today’s advanced knowledge.

One must believe that “head of the body” is synonymous with “head of the house” even though the two concepts are completely unrelated (and even though “kephale of the house” is not an ancient Greek idom).

One must believe that Christ allways operates in an authoritarian paradigm with the Church even though this is demonstrably false in the NT.

One must believe, as Cheryl points out, that authority from God can, itself, be implied.

If a person can bring themself to believe all of these things despite the overwhelming evidence in scripture, science, and lingusitics to the contrary, (or can bring themself to ignore the evidence), then it is relatively easy to imply authority in Ephesians 5.

” It is impossible to have “implied” authority in God’s kingdom. It is also impossible to have “implied” sin for the woman. God does not operate this way as it is against His nature.”

This is it in a nutshell. Comps must believe that implied authority is allowable since their only argument is that authority is implied in “submit” and in “head”.

Kay – Eldredge has an abnornmal and quite fleshly, IMO, obsession with physical beauty. I wrote a series of posts on my blog a while back on Christians’ ungodly focus on beauty and a response to some parts of “Wild at Heart” and, even more so, the companion book “Captivating”, took up one whole post in the series.

But even more to the point of this post is the marriage-impacting reaction that some men have after reading “Wild at Heart”. I wrote another short post entitled ” ‘Wild at Heart’ does not mean abandon my family” after I personally witnessed a rather disturbing scene between a couple in a very dangerous time. I will not go into detail because the participants may chance across my writing this (they follow my blog) .

But, I will say this. Although I believe “Wild at Heart” is an important book because I agree with Eldredge’s premise that masculinity has gotten a very bad rap in our culture and the degradation of masculinity needs to be addressed, I think the book has inspired some unintended consequences. Men must not forget that masculinity has its dark side too. It is one thing to rediscover your wild side, it is quite another to use that discovery to fuel a Genesis 3 style “rule” over your wife. Yet that is the route that many men take on their exploration.

TL – don’t get me started on Wild At Heart.

Would I like it if my wife deferred to me in all decisions? Absolutely! Does that mean I actually want her to? Absolutely not! Why? Because sometimes I am ignorant and sometimes I am shortsighted and sometimes I am ruled by my flesh and sometimes I am downright dumb. Conversely, sometimes she is intuitive and sometimes she is insightful and sometimes she is led by The Spirit and sometimes she is downright brilliant. Why on earth would I trust me to decide everything for us when we do such a better job at it.