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BibleThinker

Pt. 8: Male Headship: Is it REALLY Biblical? - Women in Ministry Series

BibleThinker

Mike Winger

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.82.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2022

⏱️ 98 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's undeniable that the Bible explicitly teaches that a husband is the "head" of his wife. While church history has pretty much always believed this means the husband is the primary leader in the marriage and household, there has been serious pushback against this view from egalitarian scholars in more recent years. Time Stamps!! 0:00 - Intro 1. 10:33 - Part 1: Medical Claims That "Head" Means "Source" 2. 31:47 - Part 2: Bible Context Claims That "Head" Doesn't Imply "Authority" 3. 54:20 - Part 3: Church History Argument 4. 1:01:10 - Part 4: The Battle of Lexicons; does kephale mean authority? 5. 1:33:33 - Conclusions Their basic contention is that "head" doesn't mean what you probably think it means when you read it in Scripture as the description of the relationship between husbands and wives. They tend to offer 4 main arguments to support their case:1) In the Greek speaking world of New Testament times, general medical opinion was that the heart or liver controlled the body while the head was merely the "source" of nutrition. The egalitarians say that we need to factor in this popular medical understanding of "head" or we will mistakenly think the husband is the leader of his wife.2) Egalitarian scholars say that when you look carefully at Paul's use of the metaphor "head" and the specific context of the passages when it is used, you come to see that Paul is NOT meaning to imply anything about authority, but is speaking of nourishment or source. For instance, they will say that man is the source of woman in the sense that Eve was formed from Adam. Adam was her source.3) Surprisingly, some Egalitarians will actually share a quote from Chrysostom to show that one of the church fathers understood perfectly well that this term "head" didn't mean to imply authority. Catherine Kroeger, founder of CBE promotes this view, and many echo her.4) Finally, we get to the biggest one. They will claim that the Greek word translated "head" really means "source" and not "authority." I've found that egalitarians will repeatedly make very similar claims that ancient lexicons do not support the meaning of "authority" and that one very respected lexicon in particular (the LSJ) defends their case. I'm going to analyze each of these claims to see what the Bible really says about husbands being the head of their wives. This is super important, because it doesn't just impact who is in church leadership, it impacts every single marriage in the body of Christ! I can't overstate the practical impact of getting this topic wrong, so I have spent a ton of time gathering and, more importantly, researching to properly vet and test egalitarian claims about male headship. I'll give you the spoiler here in the description. On every single point they are very wrong, and even putting out blatant misinformation. I'll provide both analysis and evidence to support all this in today's video.‬ After years of being a bit confused about the topic of women in ministry, I set out to spend months researching the topic in great detail to produce this exhaustive teaching series on the topic. This is just part 8.

Transcript

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0:00.0

All right, I'm actually really excited for today's video.

0:06.4

This has been, this is one of those ones that's been like a mountain of work to prepare,

0:11.0

but that's what makes me excited about sharing it with you.

0:14.1

It'll be a long teaching today, but we're going deep, very deep on the topic of whether

0:18.3

husbands are actually the head of their wives.

0:21.5

Like is that a biblical idea?

0:23.0

Is that really what scripture's saying?

0:24.6

I mean, to give you like a brief overview for today's video, the Bible clearly says that

0:29.6

men are the head of their wives.

0:31.9

I mean, it says this very clearly, like nobody can really debate this, but many egalitarians

0:37.7

will take a different tactic and what they'll say is that we've misunderstood what that

0:41.5

word means.

0:42.5

And so when the Bible says head or Kefale in Greek, that it means something very different

0:46.5

than what most people today think it means.

0:48.6

Now, here's why this matters.

0:49.9

I want to lay out how important this is, how this, even though we're in this women in

0:52.8

ministry series, this is part eight in the series, there's a link below to the whole playlist.

0:57.4

Even though we're in this women in ministry series, yes, we have to talk about marriage.

1:02.3

It's because if you hold the egalitarian views consistently, I think that you will have

1:08.0

to say that husbands are not the leaders in the home.

1:11.0

They're not the head of their wives in the sense that typically people think of that

1:13.8

word and that there isn't any sort of authority invested in the husband that is unequal to

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