Susanna Krizo

Here are two excerpts from my book which deal with the question of the subjection of the Son to the Father and how it relates to the assumed subjection of the woman to the man. (I didn’t feel like re-writing the text again, which is why is so great to have the copyright to an already written text!)

Chapter 8
Kephale is given the meaning “authority over” in 1 Corinthians 11:3 in order to create a hierarchy in which the man rules over the woman. But although complementarism models the woman’s subjection after the Son’s assumed subjection to the Father, in the early church, as the inferiority of the woman was incorporated into theology, the subjection of the woman became the model for the subjection of the Son in the many heresies that challenged the church. Thus we find that in Arian theology, Christ owes thank to humans for He was believed to have been made for them.

“First, the Son appears rather to have been for us brought to be, than we for Him; for we were not created for Him, but He is made for us; so that He owes thanks to us, not we to Him, as the woman to the man. ‘For the man,’ says Scripture, ‘was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.’ Therefore, as ‘the man is the image and glory of God, and the woman the glory of the man,’ so we are made God’s image and to His glory; but the Son is our image, and exists for our glory. And we were brought into being that we might be; but God’s Word was made, as you must hold, not that He might be; but as an instrument for our need, so that not we from Him, but He is constituted from our need.”

The early church theologians of the patristic era refused to make the Son subject to the Father although they subjected the woman to the man. Chrysostom, for example, explicitly refuted the heresy of the Son’s inferiority and subjection, which was modeled after the subjection of the woman.

“But the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” Here the heretics rush upon us with a certain declaration of inferiority, which out of these words they contrive against the Son. But they stumble against themselves. For if “the man be the head of the woman,” and the head be of the same substance with the body, and “the head of Christ is God,” the Son is of the same substance with the Father. “Nay,” say they, “it is not His being of another substance which we intend to show from hence, but that He is under subjection.” What then are we to say to this? In the first place, when any thing lowly is said of him conjoined as He is with the Flesh, there is no disparagement of the Godhead in what is said, the Economy admitting the expression. However, tell me how thou intendest to prove this from the passage? “Why, as the man governs the wife, saith he, “so also the Father, Christ.” Therefore also as Christ governs the man, so likewise the Father, the Son. “For the head of every man,” we read, “is Christ.” And who could ever admit this?”

Chrysostom argued that it was impossible for kephale to mean “authority over,” for had Paul meant to speak of rule and subjection he would have used the example of a slave and a master instead of marriage. Neither did Chrysostom agree with those who found a similarity between 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5, for if we were to understand kephale in the same way in both, “extreme absurdity will result.” Therefore he argued that we should reject “these particulars,” and “accept the notion of a perfect union, and the first principle,” and even here recognize that which is “too high for us and suitable to the Godhead, for both the union is surer and the beginning more honorable.”

Gregory of Nazianzen called the subjection of the Son to the Father “a new theology,” indicating that it was not part of the apostolic tradition.

“For as these low earthly minds make the Son subject to the Father, so again is the rank of the Spirit made inferior to that of the Son, until both God and created life are insulted by the new Theology. No, my friends, there is nothing servile in the Trinity, nothing created, nothing accidental, as I have heard one of the wise say. ”

Yet, Thomas R. Schreiner maintains in his essay Head Coverings, Prophecies and the Trinity that there is subordination within the Trinity, because “the Son has a different function or role from the Father,” and because “the Son willingly submits Himself to the Father’s authority.” This subordination to authority is seen in that the “Father commands and sends; the Son obeys and comes into the world to die for our sins.” Schreiner attempts to prove the subordination of the Son from 1 Corinthians 15:28, but by doing so He contradicts himself, “It is clear that this subjection of the Son to the Father is after his earthly ministry, so how anyone can say that there is no hint of a difference or order or role within the Trinity is difficult to see.” But if the subjection of the Son begins after his earthly ministry, how could the Son have been subject to the Father before his incarnation? Because complementarists give kephale the meaning “authority over” in 1 Corinthians 11:3, they create a triple subjection of the Son, which resembles the twofold of the woman found in the Summa, for if the Son was subject to the Father from the beginning, his subjection became less voluntary after His incarnation and will become even less voluntary after He delivers the kingdom to the Father. But such a concept is not only absurd, it is impossible, for how can the Son be forced into subjection? Tertullian rejected the subjection of the Son due to the impossibility of the proposition.

“Since therefore he [Marcion] is obliged to acknowledge that the God whom he does not deny is the great Supreme, it is inadmissible that he should predicate of the Supreme Being such a diminution as should subject Him to another Supreme Being, for He cases (to be Supreme), if He becomes subject to any. Besides, it is not the characteristic of God to cease from any attribute of His divinity – say, from His supremacy. ”
…

Chapter 9
The twofold subjection of Thomas Aquinas altered the translation and interpretation of 1 Corinthians perhaps more than any other chapter in the Bible; consequently it is considered one of the most difficult chapters to interpret. Thomas R. Schreiner writes in his essay Head Coverings, Prophecies and the Trinity, ”The difficulties with this text could lead one to say that it should not be used to establish any doctrine or teaching on the role relationship of men and women.” Although he is correct in rejecting the proposition that we should not use the chapter, he rejects also the interpretation of the chapter which removes the inherent difficulties.

As the woman’s subjection as a created order was challenged, 1 Corinthians 11 was re-interpreted to reflect the change, or, rather, the return to the theology of the early church. Instead of rule and submission, the text was viewed as teaching the interdependency of men and women based on their equality as a created order. Because 1 Corinthians 11 is one of the cornerstones of complementarian theology, the re-interpretation has not been accepted largely due to the false interpretation of the word kephale found in verse 3.

“Another argument used for the translation “source” in 1 Corinthians 11.3 is that Paul says woman came from man in verse 11:8, and this obviously suggests the idea of source. Surely this understanding of verse 8 is correct, but verse 8 does not explicate the meaning of head in verse 3. Instead, Paul uses this argument from source to prove that woman is the glory of man.”

Schreiner neglects the connection of eikoon (“image”) and kephale (“head”) in verse 7 because he gives kephale the incorrect meaning “authority over.” “A beginning” and “a first principle,” the meanings Chrysostom gave kephale in his homily are synonymous to an archetype of which the other person is an image, “for images are the forms of their archetypes.” According to Origen, “The true God, then, is ‘The God,’ and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. But the archetypal image, again, of all these images is the Word of God, who was in the beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God.” Gregory of Nyssa explained, “[T]hen all the Cause beyond, which is God over all, is found through Our Lord, Who is the Cause of all things; nor, indeed, is it possible to gain an exact knowledge of the Archetypal Good, except as it appears in the (visible) image of that invisible.” In other words, the archetype is the source of the image, which possesses the characteristics of its source.

According to Gregory of Nazianzen, the same attributes that are found in the archetype must also be found in the image. However, the image is not an identical copy of the archetype, as described by Theorodet (d. 458) in a dialogue between Eranistes and Orthodoxus.

Eran.—The type must have the character of the archetype.
Orth.—Is man called an image of God?
Eran.—Man is not an image of God, but was made in the image of God.
Orth.—Listen then to the Apostle. He says: “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God.”
Eran.—Granted, then, that he is an image of God.
Orth.—According to your argument then he must needs have plainly preserved the characters of the archetype, and have been uncreate, uncompounded, and infinite. He ought in like manner to have been able to create out of the non existent, he ought to have fashioned all things by his word and without labour, in addition to this to have been free from sickness, sorrow, anger, and sin, to have been immortal and incorruptible and to possess all the qualities of the archetype.
Eran.—Man is not an image of God in every respect.
Orth.—Though truly an image in the qualities in which you would grant him to be so, you will find that he is separated by a wide interval from the reality.
Eran.—Agreed.
Orth.—Consider now too this point. The divine Apostle calls the Son the image of the Father; for he says “Who is the image of the invisible God?”
Eran.—What then; has not the Son all the qualities of the Father?
Orth.—He is not Father. He is not uncaused. He is not unbegotten.
Eran.—If He were He would not be Son.
Orth.—Then does not what I said hold good; the image has not all the qualities of the archetype?
Eran.—True

A copy is called a “shadow” in the New Testament (Heb. 8:5). For example, the Law was a shadow of Christ, whom Paul portrays as the body or true substance (Col. 2:17). A shadow is the opposite of an image (Heb. 10:1) for whereas the copy is temporary and is destroyed when the substance is provided (Heb. 10:9) an image co-exists with the archetype, its source. Thus, as the image of the Father, the Son is similar to the Father in essence and power, but He is not the identical to the Father, for He is not unbegotten. The man is in the image of God in the inner person, but he is enclosed in a body, whereas God is a spirit. The woman is also in the image of God in the inner person for she is a human being, but her body is in the image of the first man, wherefore it is different from his.