Male-Headship Part 1
When I was in college, I attended a lecture given by an artist who was trying something very interesting…if that is the word for it. He was using the swastika in his paintings. He was a Christian, of Native American heritage and he explained in his lecture that the swastika was both a Native American symbol, and used in Christian art, long before it became associated with The Third Reich. His goal was to reclaim this ancient symbol. As I listened to this man talk, I could not help but feel that, sadly, he was fighting a losing battle. While we may thank God that Hitler lost World War II and his diabolical plan to take over the world was not realized, I think we have to concede that he did win the swastika. It is indelibly linked with the Nazi party.
As I think about this I cannot help but wonder if certain theological terms have been likewise completely and utterly subsumed by those of a specific persuasion. Can we hear the word “elect” and not assume that it is somehow a “Calvinist” word? Can we hear the term “male-headship” as anything other than a “Complementarian” term? (Let me at this point go out of my way to state very clearly that I am not in any way trying to link either Calvinists or Complementarians with Nazis!) I would like to argue briefly here (and hopefully start some dialogue) that Arminians need not shy away from the concept of election and God choosing – after all, Paul didn’t (see Ephesians 1:4) – and similarly might we see male-headship as fully biblical rather than belonging to one specific theological strain. I will deal specifically with the issue of male-headship here.
“Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.” (Ephesians 5:22-24 NRSV) Ohhh you got me! There it is in black and white, men get to make all the decisions and women simply must obey and follow! It’s so clear…or is it? I feel that at this point it is necessary for us to go back to the first three rules of biblical interpretation: context, context, and…context. How quickly we forget what comes immediately before and after these verses, or at the very least how quickly we isolate these verses from their context – and I believe we do so to our detriment.
Paul begins this section of his letter to the Ephesians not in 5:22 but in 5:21, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” We are to submit to one another. All of us! Wives you are to submit to your husbands, and husbands you are to submit to your wives. (When is the last time you heard a sermon on husbands submitting to their wives?) As an example of what this mutual submission looks like then, Paul provides us Vv. 22-24. But neither does this section of text end at V. 24, it goes on.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” (Ephesians 5:25-28)
Now here is my concern. I think that all too often we look at Vv. 22-24, and we tell women that they must take these verses very literally. They are to treat their husbands “just as” the church treats Christ. In every particular they must be subservient. There is a hierarchy. No one would doubt that Christ is over (that is to say better than) the church and so likewise men are over women. And yet when we come to Vv. 25-28 we understand that a loose metaphor is at play. No one would suggest that every man is Christ – we certainly don’t purchase salvation for our wives and neither are we looking to lay down our literal lives (“just as” Christ did.) Rather Paul is using a biblical analogy to explain that our love must be really strong. Brothers and sisters, we cannot have it both ways! We must read the instructions to both women and men with the same interpretive lens. Either Paul is being painfully literal here to both groups – an awkward, dare I say blasphemous suggestion – or he is giving two analogies as examples of what mutual submission looks like. I think when we go this route we may find ourselves back on the right track.
So what is “male-headship”? I would say it is a small part of a much larger analogy that Paul uses to explain how husbands and wives must submit to one another. I will leave it there for now in the hopes that I have stirred the pot sufficiently to generate some dialogue. I hope to return to this subject next time and discuss if the English word “head” is really helpful here (I don’t think it is) and to ask the question; which is easier to “be subject”, or to “love”?