Transfiguring Headship: A Contemporary Figural Theology of Gender

Debates over women’s ordination to ecclesial office have signaled deep differences within the church’s understanding of sexuality and gender. In Western Protestant contexts, much attention in these debates has focused on a select set of Pauline texts where the man is deemed “head” of the woman/wife (e.g., 1 Cor 11:2–17; Eph 5:21–33), and the woman/wife deemed under the “authority” of the man (e.g., 1 Cor 14:34–35; 1 Tim 2:11–15), with male “headship” understood to denote “leadership” and “authority,” chiefly. The relation of male to female is thus conceived fundamentally as a relation of authority and submission. By contrast, I argue that the “head” figure emerges in the Old Testament as a synecdoche which denotes the whole person, the “head” conceived chiefly as the “representative” member of the body (not the “leading” or “authoritative” member). Moreover, I argue that the “head” figure is taken up as such in the New Testament, as a christological figure, where Christ is conceived as the true Head (viz. representative) of his body, the Church (e.g., Eph 5:23). In this way, the man as “head” and the woman as “body” are re-presented as figures who stand, together, in typological relation to Christ. The man and woman, together in their one-flesh union, signify Christ—totus Christus—as a Head-and-Body corporeal unity. Where the man is presented principally as the “representative” of the one-flesh union, after the pattern of Christ-the-Head, the woman is presented as the “glory” of that union, after the pattern of Christ-the-Body, the Church. In this perspective, the modern “headship controversy” has significantly obscured the meaning of headship, theologically defined. What is needed at present, then, is neither an account of headship that foregrounds gendered relations of authority and submission, nor an excision of male headship tout court from Christian faith and practice, but rather a theological retrieval of the “head” figure, specifically as a christological figure. As such, the scriptural head-and-body figure offers both a point of departure for developing a theology of gender, and stands as a sign of the gospel—good news for women and men alike.

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