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Abuse, authority, and headship: deconstructing a “corrective” (part I)
I’d like to comment on another article that can be found at the CBMW website, written by Steven Tracy. His views are characterized as “soft” complementarian and offered as an example of “reasonable” complementarianism to those who complain that complementarianism promotes tyrannical husbands. I have read several of his articles and appreciate a good deal of what he has to say. However, he makes many of the same errors that the “harder” complementarians do, which I will attempt to show in this post.
(Based on my past posts and comments plus this one, you may wonder whether I’m CBMW-bashing. Well, you could call it that, but my aim is to critique. Or, perhaps more accurately, to deconstruct. As I’ve said elsewhere, I believe in the complementarity of man and woman, in the headship of the husband, and that woman was made for man from man and is his glory. But, I do not see these things in the way that the complementarians I’ve read do.)
In ”I Corinthians 11:3: A Corrective to Distortions and Abuses of Male Headship”, Tracy makes some great statements about “loving equality,” but mixes them in with language that does not, ultimately, grant this loving equality. In other words, some of his statements contradict others. He seems to truly want to support loving headship yet also to hold on to patriarchal ideas, maintaining an incorrect definition of male headship and saying that it (the definition) doesn’t really mean what it really means...as if he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He seems to want to soften the abuses themselves in advocacy of a kinder, gentler male headship, which is really a kinder, gentler male dominance.
For example,
...physical and sexual abuse by men is shockingly prevalent in our culture. Abusive men often cite male headship/female submissiveness to justify their abuse. Ultimately, this is based on a perverted assumption of male superiority....Sadly, these Christian men grotesquely distort biblical headship. Male headship defined as harsh authoritarian domination of an inferior is destructive heresy that may lead to sinful and immoral actions. The Trinity teaches us that headship and submission are founded within an intimate love relationship among equals, not coercive domination by a superior.
I am surprised that he says harsh authoritarian domination may lead to sinful and immoral actions...does he really mean this? It IS sinful and immoral, and most definitely leads to more sinful and immoral action. Destructive heresy is sinful and immoral! (And destructive, and heresy.)
He also sets Trinitarian theology as the model, or example, of relationships among people, but I think this is a mistake (as is its reverse), because the analogies do not hold; they cannot be completed as dialed. There are too many differences between the Godhead and people. Only if Scripture explicitly lays out such analogies or equations may we adopt them, in the specific ways they are laid out. (For example, God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman. This is a specific equation.)
Tracy asks,
Does the New Testament explicitly describe headship in marriage in terms of an intimate love relationship between equals? In Eph 5:22-33 this is precisely what we find. While a different analogy is used here (the husband and Christ) than Paul uses in 1 Cor 11:3, the point in comparing the man's headship over the woman to Christ's headship over the church is to emphasize loving intimacy. Husbands are specifically commanded to exercise their headship by loving their wives "as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Eph 5:25). This is the strongest love declaration imaginable. Truly biblical headship is expressed in sacrificial, loving intimacy. Gender equality in biblical headship is developed in the latter portion of the passage, where Paul calls on husbands to love their wives as their own bodies (5:28). Just as a husband nourishes and cherishes his own body, so he should express his headship over his wife by loving and nourishing her (5:29). Gender equality is further emphasized in 5:31, where Paul cites Gen 2:24 - "and the two shall become one flesh." Biblical headship takes place between a man and a woman who are equally made in God's image. Only equals can experience a "one flesh" relationship. Biblical headship is based on loving intimacy between equals.
I wholeheartedly agree that Eph. 5 describes headship and submission in marriage as a love relationship between equals, and that truly biblical headship is expressed in sacrificial, loving intimacy. But using language such as "the man’s headship is over his wife," and speaking of a man exercising authority over his wife, blurs this picture of equality. (In other words, he spoils an otherwise beautiful paragraph!)
How does one exercise headship? Do I exercise motherhood, or am I a mother? Do I exercise wifehood, or wifeliness, or am I a wife? You see, if a husband is the head of his wife, he is the head of his wife. He doesn’t exercise something that he has; he acts as something that he is. Husbands are not heads over their wives, they are heads of their wives.
And even if they do not exhibit loving, sacrificial giving of their lives, their wives are to submit to them as their head in a quiet, respectful manner so as to win them over, as stated in I Peter 3.
Such quiet respect might also involve quietly refusing or leaving, in the case of abuse.
Is it the word "over" that you have an issue with? Maybe it's just a matter of semantics or cultural context, but I understand the phrase "husbands are heads over their wives" to be the same as "husbands are heads of their wives". Think of the head of a team, or the head of a company; there's inherent authority involved when one is tasked with leading. The one who is the head of the team (or company) is head over the team (or company). And I would argue that one exercises headship by performing the tasks involved within the role of being head (from a corporeal point of view). Yet I don't see how having that authority "over" another corrupts the notion of headship.
First Rusty,
Let me assure you that there is not even one example in Greek of an expression parallel to
"head of a team, or the head of a company"
There is "man is the head of woman" and so on, but there is not one example of organizational structure being described this way in Greek. It just doesn't happen.
The best example I have ever seen is that David is "head of the Gentiles". What does that mean? Probably that Israel will have a special place in the world. But it doesn't seem to relate to authority within an unity. David is never described as he head of his own people.
Head really seems to mean something unique whenever it is used in Greek.
The idea of authority over is rare in the scriptures. I wish someone would quote one but they probably can't find it. Luther was clear that Christians do not exercise authority over, but authority on behalf of. The male authority movement is wishful thinking.
"The idea of authority over is rare in the scriptures."
This is one reason I think that there is word redefinition going on in this debate.
I do not read Greek, but it seems to me that the definition you posit for "head of" simply does not fit with the context of scripture (and if it does, why has it not been widely known?). If the term "head of" means what you claim, then why does the context of scripture deal with submission, authority, respect, kingship, etc.? Virtually all of those attributes involve some sort of hierarchical structure, whether it be a qualitative or quantitative hierarchy.
Now, if by "authority over" you mean the sinful use of authority, then I would certainly agree with you. And that's why I question whether or not it's the word "over" that is the stumbling block. I see the responsibility of "authority over" as equal to "authority on behalf of" when it is exercised (?!) in accordance with the parameters that scripture mandates (i.e., in true, giving love, for the building up of the body, without regards to selfish gain, ambition or greed). I do not see the word "over" as necessarily denoting a qualitative difference between someone who has authority and those they have authority over.
"The male authority movement is wishful thinking."
That's an interesting comment, but I'm questioning the understanding of "authority" and not, strictly speaking, "male authority".
Rusty,
I want to apologize for being so abrupt above. It is, however, true that the phrase "head of _____" does not occur in Greek to represent an organizational structure of any kind. As I said, if it did, someone would quote it.
That means we don't know what "head of____" means in Greek. We all have to start with a blank slate and some possiblities.
Submission can be used in Greek in reciprocal and non-authoritative situations in Greek. There are commands in Greek writing outside the Bible where Christians are commanded to submit to one another, the strong to the weak and the weak to the strong. So we cannot assume authority from the word submission.
So ... this is why Bonnie is working so hard from the ground up. We have to give up preconceptions.
I don't have all the answers but certainly there was one Greek theologian, Cyril of Alexandria, who wrote,
Therefore of our race he become first head, which is source, and was of the earth and earthy. Since Christ was named the second Adam, he has been placed as head, which is source, of those who through him have been formed anew unto him unto immortality through sanctification in the spirit. Therefore he himself our source, which is head, has appeared as a human being: indeed, he, being by nature God, has a head, the Father in heaven. For, being by nature God the Word, he has been begotten from Him. Because head means source, He established the truth for those who are wavering in their mind that man is the head of woman, for she was taken out of him. Therefore one Christ and Son and Lord, the one having as head the Father in heaven, being God by nature, became for us a “head” accordingly because of his kinship according to the flesh.
I believe that this interpretation has been very influential on egalitarians.
This is one source of ideas on how to interpret "head."
If you want to look at authority, can you think of the only time Paul talked about having authority. Just once is it translated authority - to build up, not to tear down.
He did not say that he had authority over people. The expression "teaching authority" has a history in some Catholic document of the 19the century, I believe.
I think that teaching authority is what Christ had. He really knew the scriptures. Authority comes from knowledge, truth, accuracy, fidelity and consistency with the scriptures. It is not a position that you can have over people.
This is just my idea. I start with knowing what is not in the Bible and how much has been added. I take that away and then ask - what does it mean? I don't really know that.
Rusty,
In the writing I've been doing of late, I risk being pigeonholed, or assumed to be part of a camp or to be arguing for a pre-existing school of thought that someone, somewhere, has already championed.
But I'm not. As far as I know, anyway.
I would hope that what I write would be read for what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
My issue with the debate is not a matter of semantics. It is a matter of ideas, of ways of thinking, of attitudes. Of understanding Scripture. There are assumptions being made in the school of thought I've been writing about, as I attempt to show in my posts. And I think these things matter, or I wouldn't write about them.
I felt myself getting all warm and fuzzy as you pointed out the ontological nature of headship vs the functional...the "is" against the functional. That makes so much sense to me...and in the ontological sense I think we can look closer at the ontological Trinity in our comparisons.
