A CLOSER LOOK AT WOMEN'S ORDINATION #07: HEADSHIP

by Ty Gibson

The concept of male headship is the second piece of evidence offered in favor of male-only ordination. The problem here is that the Bible never speaks of the pastoral role as a headship position.

Not once.

In fact, to apply the language of “head” to the pastor is a grave theological error with heavy implication. Let’s think this through carefully, allowing all that the Bible says about headship to inform us.

There are a total of seven biblical passages that employ the word “head” with reference to headship. Five of these designate Jesus Christ as the One and only Head of the church. The remaining two tell us that the man, as a husband, is the head of the woman as his wife, thus limiting the role to the marriage relationship. But—and this is crucial to know—not one text employs the word “head” with regards to the pastoral position or in any relation to ordination.

Emphasis, not one!

Here are all seven headship passages:

“And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be Head over everything for the church” (Ephesians 1:22, NIV).

“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15, NIV).

“And He is the Head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy” (Colossians 1:18, NIV).

“He is the Head over every power and authority” (Colossians 2:10, NIV).

“They have lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow” (Colossians 2:19, NIV).

“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior” (Ephesians 5:23, NIV).

“The Head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the Head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3, KJV).

“I wish you to know that of every man the Head is the Christ, and the head of a woman is the husband, and the Head of Christ is God.” (1 Corinthians 11:3, Young’s Literal Translation).

In these seven texts we have before us everything the Bible says about headship!

As already stated, we are immediately struck with an obvious and glaring fact: the word “head” is never used to designate the position of the pastor or elder in relation to the church, nor is the word ever used in relation to ordination. In the light of the current debate regarding women’s ordination, please pause and let this register: the idea that the pastoral position is one of headship and, therefore, all pastors must be males is completely absent from Scripture.

But some claim that the final passage quoted above (1 Corinthians 11:3) deals with men and women in general, suggesting that all men have headship over all women. Of course, those who claim they believe this would quickly reveal that they do not believe it in practice if I were to suddenly begin positioning myself in headship over their wives. Paul is saying, as the English Standard Version renders the text, “the head of a wife is her husband.”

How is it, then, that those who oppose women’s ordination consider “male headship” as biblical evidence in favor of male-only ordination?

We can only guess, with all graciousness and respect, that they have inadvertently overlooked the absence of any biblical linkage between headship and the pastoral position. Basically, they have taken hold of the word “head” and applied it without biblical warrant to the pastoral role and thus inserted it into the topic of ordination. It is an exercise in innocent extrapolation, but it is not sound exegesis. So yes, the concept of male headship is present in Scripture, as we’ve just read, but it is exclusively applied to the husband-wife relationship and is never applied to any person’s position in the Church of God—other than Jesus Christ.

The headship argument against women’s ordination employs the same Bible study methodology that is used when Sunday-keepers oppose the Sabbath by pointing to “first day” language in the New Testament. Upon examination we discover that there are a total of eight New Testament passages that speak of “the first day,” but not one of them says anything about the first day being the new day of worship. Similarly, there are a total of seven New Testament passages that use the word “head” with regards to the idea of headship, but not one of them employs the word to describe any human leadership role within the Church. What this amounts to is a complete absence of biblical evidence that pastors occupy a headship role to the Church. They simply do not. Christ alone is described as the “Head” of His church, which is composed of a membership that includes both men and women, all of whom constitute the corporate bride of Christ. That’s literally all the Bible says about headship.

But think this matter through a little more deeply, because the claim that the pastoral position is one of headship is not only unbiblical, it’s dangerous.

Biblically speaking, there is no intermediate category of heads that exist between Christ and His church; there is no human layer of officiants to be regarded as husbandly heads between Jesus and His bride. Describing the relationship between Himself and His church, Jesus explicitly stated, “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren” (Matthew 23:8, KJV). There is no sense in which Adventism—as a Protestant, priesthood-of-all-believers church—has any designated head or heads among its members. Understanding the exclusive nature of the headship position in the church, Ellen White explicitly stated:

“Christ is the only Head of the church” (Manuscript Releases, vol. 21, p. 274).

And again:

“Let it be seen that Christ, not the minister, is the head of the church” (Signs of the Times, January 27, 1890).

And again:

“God has never given a hint in His word that He has appointed any man to be the head of the church” (The Great Controversy, p. 51).

And yet again:

“The Lord Jesus is the one spiritual Head, and we are the members of His body” (Review and Herald, March 19, 1895).

This present inclination among us to sharply distinguish clergy from laity and elevate the pastoral position with language of headship and privilege over other church members is decidedly papal. Refusing to allow women to occupy the ordained role on the premise of headship dangerously assumes that all women are under the headship of all men, which the Bible nowhere states. Also, refusing to allow women to occupy the ordained role on the premise of headship assumes that half the members of the church (the female half) do not hold priesthood-of-all-believers status by interposing a human headship, composed of men, between the women members of the church and their Lord. The Bible nowhere explains this kind of arrangement. One must move out of Adventism into Catholicism to have ministers in this role.

The crucial thing to understand regarding headship is this: the Bible does not teach that males in general are in a headship position to all women in general, but only that the individual husband is in a headship position to his individual wife. The husband-wife relationship is then carried over into the church symbolically in the form of Christ, our spiritual husband, being named the Head of the church, His spiritual wife, which is composed of both men and women.

This is a major and potentially dangerous oversight on the part of those advancing male headship as an argument against women’s ordination. They employ the biblical concept of headship as evidence that women cannot occupy the ordained role because, they say, it would violate the biblical truth of male headship. But the fact is, there is no passage of Scripture that articulates the concept of male headship in relation to ministry, church organization, or ordination. Rather, headship is only spoken of with regards to marriage and there is no scripture that makes it transferable into church relations.

For the logic to remain consistent, if the ordained minister occupies the role of head to the church, then he occupies that role to all the un-ordained members, both males and females, which would place the pastor in the spiritual role of husband to the bride of Christ. This is the very thing that we, as Protestants, reject in Catholic ecclesiology. The ordained minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church most emphatically does not occupy a headship role to the church.

We conclude, then, that there is no biblically-informed need for concern that ordaining women would usurp the male headship role, because not even the men who occupy the pastoral position possess a headship role to the church. What we should be concerned about, however, is moving the Adventist Church in a direction that would define the pastor in headship terms, because that would constitute elevating the clergy to the position of Christ. Said another way, there is no headship role to preserve or protect, except that of Christ Himself. Ordaining women would, in fact, be an affirmation of the priesthood-of-all-believers ecclesiology we professedly adhere to as Protestants, and it would sharpen our perception of the pastoral role as simply a full-time, vocational extension of the role all church members have as a priesthood-of-all-believers community.

What happens, then, to male headship if we ordain women?

It remains, as precisely what the Bible says it is—the husband is the head of the wife and Christ is the Head of the Church!

For the church to acknowledge women pastors by the laying on of hands would simply affirm a ministerial calling to preach the gospel and win souls to Christ in a vocational capacity. It would alter nothing in a woman’s ontological makeup or home relations. If a woman is ordained as a vocational soul-winner, her husband is still her husband and she is still his wife. All the husband-wife dynamics remain the same. He is still called upon by God to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, and she is still called upon to voluntarily submit to his selfless leadership within the secure relational environment of his husbandly love (Ephesians 5).

But let us be certain of this: the Bible nowhere reasons that since the husband is the head of the wife in the home, therefore only men can occupy the ordained role in the church. That Bible verse simply does not exist. The idea is a forced construct that lacks even one biblical passage. I am the head of my wife, not the head of every other man’s wife in addition to my own. And I have a hunch that all my married brothers in Christ want to keep it that way.

We conclude, then, that the headship argument against women’s ordination amounts to a sheer absence of textual evidence. All we have before us in Scripture regarding headship is seven passages, five of which inform us that Jesus alone is the Head of the church, while the remaining two tell us that the husband is the head of the wife, with not a single verse that articulates headship in relation to either ordination or the pastoral position. Sure, we can construct an arrangement of words and ideas to manufacture an argument that forbids the ordination of women. But there is nothing in the plain reading of the biblical text that equates to a straightforward mandate on the issue.

Original published: https://lightbearers.org/blog/a-closer-look-at-womens-ordination/