I found the above paragraph very touching. You are insightful, a gifted wordsmith and communicator.

1 Cor 11 has an interesting play on the man as “head” as well. Paul toys with the words by referring to a metaphorical head and a literal head. He’s a poet in some passages and, I think, should be read as one. And that’s the passage where ‘head’ is spoken of as ‘honor’ (not ‘authority’) most clearly.

No worries on getting in the mindset… after all, so many other things are going on right now in your life that require attention. But you’ll get back into it one of these days, if for any other reason, to stand in the gap for our awesome women.

From what I remember of Sumner, she sees the head/body imagery as a metaphor for the one flesh relationship in marriage. You may not be making that step, and deciding that we need to take one more step back and not even assume that there is a connection in metaphor to head and body (?). There is definitely metaphors going on with the idea of a total person, and that may be something worth looking into to flesh out more openly.

I’m liking this study though. It is just hard, for some reason, for me to get in this mindset recently. But I do think you are making important insights, I really do.

Good point about different time periods and how the metaphors of “head” and “body” can be morphed. As recently as the colonial period, men were seen as better caretakers of children than women. But today many would find that grossly unnatural.

I must confess I haven’t read Sumner. Jonalyn has shared some of Sumner’s views with me, but none of the ones in this post were gathered from her. Largely this is from meditating on the text and study. If Sumner and I overlap, then I feel I’m in good company (she is a friend of ours too!).

Now a challenge: Where is the wife called the “body” in Eph 5? The church is called the “body” of Messiah. The man is to take core of his wife as he takes care of his own body. But Paul doesn’t mention a wife as a “body” in his head analogy. We assume it to complete our own thought process. But it isn’t mentioned by Paul. Maybe he intended it that way.

If “head” means honor, then there’s no need to give wife a “body” status as it could stretch the meaning of head too far for Paul’s audience (which audience already has done!).

I think that’s interesting.

I think Sumner nailed it when she suggested this head/body language as a metaphor of one flesh. However, one thing I would like to see (which may have been talked about and I just missed it) would be why husbands get “head” and wives get to be “body”. It is kind of nick-picky but still something worth noting.

I also think it is interesting how we do not view the head/body language to mean the views of men and women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (I think this is the right time period. I need to brush up on my studies…). Women were sensual ones, which was very taboo in those times. Men, on the other hand, were the spiritual and contemplative ones. Now it is the exact opposite! It is just interesting to me since that kind of interpretation is not so likely to be held anytime soon, yet could easily be taken to mean that if desired.

Just something that popped into my head.

As for vulnerability, this is Paul’s idea, not mine. And Jesus demonstrated better than anyone that loving vulnerability actually comes from health and strength. It’s a misnomer to attach only one connotation to the idea of vulnerability, like to those who cannot choose it. Every time a soldier goes into the field of battle, he makes himself vulnerable to bullets. Every time Mother Teresa reached out to the sick, she made herself vulnerable to sickness. Would we call soldiers and humanitarians weak? We usually call them heroes.

In the context of husbands and wives, I see Paul showing that mutual vulnerability (in words of submission and love) is the stuff of a healthy marriage.

And it is from this vulnerability that life happens. I challenge you to step back a moment and really take in the meaning rather than be defensive and only look at a thing one-sidedly.

Thanks for your post.