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God - Christ - Man - Woman ...
Friday, Nov 22, 2013. Today, let us continue to think about a challenging topic: the relationship between men and women. We are currently trying to understand the biblical image of this relationship.
Modern Partnership …
Where do we start with our thoughts and our emotions? I have grown up in the modern world, with men and women being active in all different kind of professions. With women leading companies or states. With men taking an active part in raising children. I think that as a basis, I got to appreciate both men and women with their skills, in a large diversity of different jobs and activities!
When you try to learn about men and women in the bible, you run into different passages, which might not be the easiest to deal with. It seems to come from another world, another time, where women were considered inferior, and where men dominated social life and business life. But does the bible really teach, what people have thought it does? Did we use it in an adequate way? Before we come into a deeper discussion, let us have a look into one of the important passages:
2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1. Cor 11, 2-3)
One big question here is to understand: what is meant with “head of …”? When you dig a little into the exegesis of experts on this topic, you will find quite a broad range of interpretations. Some translate it as “authority”. Others more as “source”. There are others, who write “responsibility”. It seems clear, that all these words are part of the cloud of meaning, which “head” carries with it.
Authority …
Usually, further questions are of importance here. Are these sentences to be understood as universal order, for all times. Or do they refer to a particular cultural order in the area of Corinth 2000 years ago. Does God want to tell us something about men and women in general here?
Let us make another note. For our modern world, “authority” is a difficult term. In particular in Germany, we had very bad experiences with “authority” during the 2nd world war and the Nazi regime. Today, we can better live with the term “responsibility”. But still, we come to the question whether there is a particular special responsibility of man for his wife, such that the wife is not - in the same way - responsible for her husband? And does that lead to a particular organization of church life or social life?
Please do not expect that I resolve these questions here and now completely. That is not what I belive I can do. But I am following a particular thought, which I believe to be important on the road to understanding. My point is that “authority” the way God thinks about it is different from what we know about it in our human society. Our social and historical experience with authority is a bad one. And our conclusion is that authority is bad.
We do not have a sound and good understanding of what authority means, when God talks about it. We think about limitation, prohibition, supression, interdiction, pain. But is that what Christ is to us? He is rather: help, support, provision, love, truth, salvation, solidarity, joy. If Christ shows what God thinks about authority, then we have an open door, we can go through: We need to further develop our understanding of authority … otherwise we will fail to come to a sound, deep and adequate understanding of the biblical passages, which speak about the relationship betweenn men and women. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts