Sovereignty, patriarchy and headship

Some thoughts…

When studying and writing for my masters dissertation on headship and submission I was provoked by the thought that maturity is not achieved by structures of authority and submission – far from it. In fact relationships were never designed to function that way. It is the nature of fallen humanity to emphasise and expect such structures. Such structures create a tidy world. Such structures put people in their various boxes.

But, and it’s a big one! The nature of salvation, the new creation and the outpoured Spirit changes all that – or at least it should. The christian and the church were never intended to function like a fallen world, in fact, throughout the New Testament, beginning with Jesus, we are told we are not to function like the world.

In his book Classical Arminianism, F Leroy Forlines, points out that Calvinism can be defined as ’cause and effect’ and Arminianism as ‘influence and response’. In Calvinism, God is the sovereign cause, everything else is the necessary effect (determinism). Whereas, in Arminianism, the God who is sovereign, graciously influences, and the response is ours to make.

It struck me that patriarchy/authority and submission, operates in much the say way as calvinism, authority is the cause, submission is the expected effect, which perhaps explains why complementarianism is popular among Calvinists. I did consider including this in my dissertation, but it requires further research.

The former creates a controlled world with everything in its place (I think of Wayne Grudem’s lists of roles and responsibilities for men and women), the latter a free world of varying possibilities.

The former produces the appearance of maturity based on fulfilling certain roles and responsibilities with man as the head, exercising authority, and the woman as the one who obeys (I think of The Sound of Music – a well ordered world, but lacking in so many other ways). The latter calls for us all to submit to one another, to learn from one another, and in doing so to grow and flourish in love and unity.