Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper

Author:John Piper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Spirituality, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Religion
ISBN: 9781590521199
Publisher: Multnomah
Published: 1989-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

M A R R I AG E

This was the popular view in Paul’s day, according to Heinrich Schlier, as is evident from Stoic sources besides Philo.11 Therefore, contemporary critics are wrong when they claim that “for Greek speaking people in New Testament times, who had little opportunity to read the Greek translation of the Old Testament, there were many possible meanings for ‘head’ but ‘supremacy over’

or ‘being responsible to’ were not among them.”12

“Supremacy” is precisely the quality given to the head by Philo and others.

But most important is that Paul’s own use of the word head in Ephesians 1:22

“unquestionably carries with it the idea of authority.”13

In Ephesians 1:20–22, Paul says:

[God] worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated

him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is

named.… And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head

over all things to the church.

Even if the word head could mean “source” as some claim,14 this would be a foreign idea here where Christ is installed as supreme over all authorities. Nor is it at all likely that this idea was in Paul’s mind in Ephesians 5:23, where the wife’s “subordination” suggests most naturally that her husband is “head” in the sense of leader or authority.

But, let’s suppose that “source” were the sense of head in this passage. What would that mean in this context? The husband is pictured as the head of the 11. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittle (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 3:674.

12. Alvera and Berkeley Mickelsen, “Does Male Dominance Tarnish Our Translations?” Christianity Today 22, no. 23 (5 October 1979): 25.

13. Stephen Bedale, “The Meaning of kephal -e in the Pauline Epistles,” Journal of Theological Studies 5

(1954): 215.

14. Among others, Gilbert Bilezekian, Beyond Sex Roles, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1985), 157–62; Catherine Clark Kroeger, “Head,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F.

Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1993), 376–7. But Wayne Grudem has shown that this is an extremely unlikely meaning for the singular use of head in Paul’s day. See “The Meaning of Kephal -e (“Head”): A Response to Recent Studies” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 425–68, 534–41, as well as his more recent, “The Meaning of kephal -e (“Head”): An Evaluation of New Evidence, Real or Alleged,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44, no. 1 (March 2001): 25–65.

215

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