gengwall

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.