The Comp Egal Debate: A Distorted View of Headship

There is more than one way to read scripture. One way is to read a given passage historically, in terms of its specific cultural context. This is an illuminating method, but it does not really treat a passage of scripture as scripture, i.e., as a text to be squared with all other texts deemed as scripture, and as a text whose sense and weight are determined by its “openness” to illuminating an overarching metanarrative – sometimes referred to as a regula fidei – itself derived from scripture.

On the basis of a canonical approach to reading scripture, Sarah Sumner identifies a distorted view of headship taught by unilateral complementarians:

[The problem is] when the word head is misinterpreted as “ruler” or “chief” instead of as “servant leader.”

If by the term servant leader, it is meant that the husband serves his wife by exalting her in the way that God exalts Christ to the highest seat of power, and Christ exalts the church to reign with him in oneness over “all things,” then servant leader could almost be synonymous with head. [p. 67]

She does not leave at that, but the point is well-taken. A consistent strength of the Sumners’ forthcoming book is its insistence on defining terms like head within a theological and christological framework provided by scripture. If and only if this is done, New Testament passages which speak of the husband (man) as the head of the wife (woman) are interpreted in a theologically responsible manner.

Bibliography

Jim and Sarah Sumner, Just How Married Do You Want to Be? (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, forthcoming 2008) The key chapters are entitled “Two Popular Models of Marriage” (Chapter 2), “A Deeper Understanding of Headship” (Chapter 3), and “A Biblical Model of Marriage” (Chapter 4).

Here is a complete list of posts in this series:

• What is the Debate between Complementarians and Egalitarians really about?
• The Comp Egal Debate: Honesty is Such a Lonely Word
• The Comp Egal Debate: What does it mean that “the husband is the head of the wife”?
• The Comp Egal Debate: A Distorted View of Headship
• The Comp Egal Debate: A biblical definition of a wife’s submission to her husband
• The Comp Egal Debate: A “purely” historical take on Ephesians 5:22-33
• Sarah Sumner on the Need for Integrity in the Comp Egal Debate