Authority by another name?

It seems that complementarians who recognise that authority and submission/headship have been overworked or abused just can’t seem to let go of the idea of authority. Jonathan Leeman, editorial director for 9Marks and co-host of the Pastors’ Talk podcast, and the author of Authority: How Godly Rule Protects the Vulnerable, Strengthens Communities, and Promotes Human Flourishing, in an online article titled “What Authority Does a Husband Have over His Wife?” attempts to differentiate between the “authority of counsel” versus “the authority of command.”

In doing so, Leeman makes the observation that there is no enforcement mechanism in the husband’s authority of counsel as opposed to the father’s authority of command; nevertheless, he says, “Wives are called to submit in the same way children are called to submit.”¹—I cannot imagine how a wife reading that would feel.

Moreover, he goes on to say that the purpose of the husband’s authority is to “win her towards oneness.” In working this out, he then likens the husband’s authority to that of an evangelist seeking to win souls for Christ. In the same way that the evangelist says, You must repent and believe, but you cannot enforce the call, so too must the husband with the wife. Rather, he is to draw her towards oneness in a “compelling, loving, gentle, patient, understanding way.”

This seems to me to be far from what Paul is saying. Firstly, she is already one with him through marriage; secondly, growing together as a couple will not be achieved by the sense that one has authority over the other, even if it is the authority of counsel. However “beautiful,” as Leeman puts it, the possibilities of this “authority of counsel” that he argues for it is still authority and submission—the doctrine of headship.

The complementarian approach to Paul, therefore, becomes about the issue of power and authority, which in turn means position and who has it and exercises it, but that is not where the New Testament goes in relation to marriage, family, or the church. The New Testament focus upends the thinking and practice of the world, indeed the natural bent of fallen humanity, and instead focuses on servant-hood as opposed to power and authority, family over organisation/structure. The problem is that we can easily opt for a ‘sanctified’ version of the old in marriage and the church, something that Paul never intended.

PLease keep an eye out for my next book, Headship: False Doctrine or For Real?

1 Jonathan Leeman, “What Authority Does a Husband Have Over His Wife?” Crossway.org, February 4, 2024. https://www.crossway.org/articles/what-authority-does-a-husband-have-over-his-wife/