gengwall

Tiffany – I certainly endorse your view that human marriage and Christ/Church marriage are being paralleled, most notably because Paul says so. I would quibble that Christ/Church is the model, not earthly marriage, but I suspect you mispoke. And I would agree also that “we as wives [and husbands] need to figure out what the relationship of Christ and the church is to look like and build our doctrine from there.” The question remains though, is there only one relational paradigm between Christ and the Church? Is the Christ/Husband-Church/Bride relationship the same as the Christ/High Priest-Church/Flock relationship? I would argue that it is not at all. And so, I would amend your comment to read “”we as wives [and husbands] need to figure out what the MARRIAGE relationship of Christ and the church is to look like and build our doctrine from there.” when we are talking about marriage. And I would further argue that in that context of marriage, scripture never points to Christ as the authority over His bride.