“Headship in the home, O.K. . . . headship in the church, no way!” That used to be the line that many CRC feminists pacified conservatives with. “At least they acknowledge headship in the home,” or so we thought. Since they have gained in numbers however, and in terms of control of many of our denominational power structures, they are able to come out of the closet. Now even headship in the home is out . . . at least a headship which implies anything beyond source or sacrificial servanthood.

   

The Committee for Women in the CRC, which actively promotes putting women into all church offices, held a “panel discussion” April 21st at the Calvin Seminary Auditorium on this topic of headship in the home and family. Those mini-lectures (all the panelists held the same position!) are to be followed up by another presentation on headship as it relates to church functioning.

The three panelists gave short presentations followed by general audience questions. Besides seeing no element of authority to headship in the home, the panelists had no problem with women in all church offices as well. Rev. Daniel G. Bos of Fellowship CRC in Grandville began with a lecture indebted to the writings of Marvin Hoogland, Patricia Gundry and Berkeley Mickelsen. His thesis was that words change meaning and that our idea of headship comes from reading our modern connotations of “head” into the Scripture. Originally, Rev. Bos claimed, “head” meant only source, origin, or enabler with no idea of authority. The main body of his talk consisted of a citing of headship passages from a February, 1981 Christianity Today article by Mickelsen in which that author interpreted the headship of the passages to imply no authority whatsoever.

When I first read the Mickelsen article over a year ago I was absolutely amazed at his exegesis. Let me give just a few examples for your consideration. As you read these ask yourself, “Is it the conservative who is reading an element of authority into the text or is the feminist interpreter, blinded by his enlightenment concept of equality, simply ignoring all mention of authority?”

1. “For in Him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Col. 2:9,10) Though Jesus is said to be the head of all rule and authority, “head” here means only life source, top or crown according to Mickelsen.

2. “He is the image of the invisible God . . . all things were created through Him and for Him . . . He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything He might be pre-eminent.” (Col. 1:15–18) Here, according to the author, “head” only means exalted originator and completer of the church. This is partly true . . . but is not the entire imagery surrounding the use of “head” reflective of one in supreme authority?

3. “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” (I Cor. 11:3) Here “head” is said to mean source, base or derivation. But as I examine the relationship of Christ to God (His Father) I see mutual submission, oneness, equality asserted and operating and yet total obedience of the Son to the Father. Note that this subjection of the Son to the Father is seen even in the consummation (I Cor. 15:28). One can see that Jesus’ total obedience to His Father’s headship implies that the Father is somehow in authority over the Son without the relationship of equality being destroyed or affected. 4. “. . . He made Him to sit at His right hand, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named . . . and He has put all things under His feet and has made Him the head over all things for the church, which is His body . . .” (Eph. 1:20–23) Here “head” means only top or crown according to Mickelsen, despite the admission of the author that “Paul here presents an exalted picture of Christ and His authority over everything in creation.” “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body and is Himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” (Eph. 5:22–24) “Headship” here means only loving, cherishing and enabling according to the author. Surely these elements are involved and emphasized, but do they cancel out verse 24?

What were Pastor Bos’ conclusions from all this? “There is no such thing as a headship principle for marriage and family . . . certainly then no headship principle should stand in the way of women as deacons, elders and pastors.”

The second speaker, Gertrude Beversluis of Ada, Mich., essentially reviewed her experience of the meaning of “head.” “The head verses seemed somewhat irrelevant. Whatever in them was incongruous to our faith fell along with Paul’s words on long hair into the ditch of culturally or historically restricted matters.” Denying the existence of a headship principle as “giving false weight to Paul’s metaphor,” she went on to state that, “insofar as Paul may extend in some places the metaphor to adapt to the two level marriage that he knew, be (Paul) was limited by his own culture and time . . . Where Paul’s interpretations are flawed by the patriarchalism of his day, then we have to just admit that and take them as being limited.” I ask you to consider where this type of hermeneutic will take us 5 or 10 years down the road.

The final speaker, Rev. Rensselaer O. Broekhuizen of 14th St. CRC in Holland, began by stating that he was the head of his wife. But after speaking of (1) submission to her out of reverence for Christ (2) his “savior–hood” of his wife (3) loving his wife (4) the fact that she is God’s image and Christ’s sister and (5) the authority over their children being parental and not limited to himself as husband . . . after speaking of these 5 qualifications he was “not at all sure where to draw the lines in terms of their spheres of influence” and he had “not needed to draw those lines because he married a Christian woman.” The closest he could come to a concept of headship was a “primus inter pares” or first among equals possibility. This speaker as well saw no Biblical problem with women in leading teaching church offices.

As I sat through the meeting I agreed with much of what was said … but I was and continue to be at odds with the main thrust of the lectures. Surely we have not emphasized enough the sacrificial love or the enabling aspects of the husband’s role in the past. But let us not conform to the world’s mold by pressing an increasing number of Christian marriages into the other extremity trap of distortion, that of total egalitarianism. John Alexander of IVP has stated it well. “God’s plan moves between those two extremes and calls for a Christ-centered husband and a Christ–centered wife to love, serve and support each other within an authority structure where Christ is head of both of them within His body and husband is head within the marriage.”

Paul Ingeneri is the Director of Education and Evangelism in the Seymour Christian Reformed Church ofGrand Rapids, Mich., and a student at Calvin Theological Seminary.