gengwall

NN – How is Matt 28:18 related to the marriage relationship of Christ and the church? Conversely, where is authority in view in the Christ/Church marriage relationship outlined in Ephesians 5, 2 Cor 11, or Rev 19:7? You are superimposing relationships – Christ to the world in one case, Christ to the church in another – and assuming the dynamic is the same in both. Furthermore, you completely miss, or conveniently ignore, Paul’s use of metaphor when he speaks of the head and the body. The fact that we have a meaning of authority in the English word “head” is irrelevant. The fact that we have authority structures in human relationships is irrelevant. What must be demonstrated is that there is authority of the literal anatomical head over the anatomical body. Without that, it can not be proven that Christ as the metaphorical head over the body has any authority over that body.

In a metaphor, the characteristics of the vehicle (literal anatomical head and body) are assumed by the tenor (Christ/husband, church/wife). If hierarchy and authority are not attributes of the vehicle, then they can not be assumed to be attributes of the tenor. It doesn’t matter at all that those attributes are spoken of in other contexts; they are foreign to this context. Authority is never even in view when marriage, whether Christ to His church or generic husband to wife, are spoken of in scripture (1 Cor 7 excepted, where authority is reciprocal), in the context of the head/body metaphor.