What We’ve Gotten Wrong About Headship

The Apostle Paul teaches that “the man is the head of the woman” (1 Cor 11:3; also Eph 5:23). This is a tactless and ugly saying to the modern ear. In spite of its perceived tactlessness, still many continue to uphold “male headship” as an enduring sign of true orthodoxy—even, for some, as the litmus test for true commitment to the authority of God’s word. And while I certainly believe that Christians are to affirm male headship (at least in some way, as I will explain), I am also aware that it is all too easy to uphold male headship in a harmful manner, while missing the purpose for which it stands. Headship, I will argue, is all too easily heard as a word of offence, and understandably so.

Getting It Wrong: The Modern Terminological Turn

Getting male headship wrong is almost inevitable in our day, and this is not so much because the biblical teaching is obscure (it isn’t!), but for historical and cultural (not to mention hamartiological!) reasons.

In Western cultures, generally, the head, as the house of the brain, is conceived as the centre and source of all knowing, willing, choosing, and acting. In the present social imaginary—where the uppermost positions of social authority are specifically conceived as “heads” (whether of states, schools, corporations, families, etc.), there is no bodily counterpart equal in perceived prestige, proficiency, or prominence to the head. In this context, headship can only mean mastery and superiority.

Contrast this with the ancient Hebrew imaginary of the Old Testament, where the heart is the source and centre of all intellectual, emotional and volitional activity. In such a context—where the source of one’s being and acting is centered not in the head but in the heart—even while headship denotes a certain “prominence” in relation to the rest of the body, such prominence will be better understood in terms of complementarity, not superiority.

Moreover, in this Hebrew metaphorical context, the notion that the head might “order the body around” is metaphorically incomprehensible, since the head cannot act on its own volition. Volition comes from the heart, with the head serving its interests. Here, the head is not even the obvious “leader” of the body; nor is it inherently in “authority over” the body. Instead, the head is truly and more modestly one part of the body—again, bound to serving its interests.

In short, when the head is conceived as the unequalled, supreme and domineering part of the body—as is arguably the case in Western cultures—male headship suggests inequality, supremacy, and dominance of the head over the body, the man over the woman.

And this “terminological turn” isn’t the only problem with contemporary affirmations of male headship.

Getting It Wrong: The Modern Industrial Turn

The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries brought with it a Sexual Revolution. Before this, economic production was centred in the household, with women and men taking on complementary tasks—in some places, for example, the men tending the fields and the women tending the animals; in other places, the opposite; and in every place, men and women together sharing in the toil of household production. Nearly nowhere were men and women expected to do the same things in the same spaces. Rather, work was everywhere gendered work, and with it came gendered formation in every other sphere: education, worship, domestic and public duties.

With industrialization, however, a new kind of human was being formed. No longer was man defined as homo artifex (“man the artist-producer”) but as homo economicus(“economic man”), defined by economic productivity, dislocated from the domestic sphere. Now, the domestic sphere was unprecedentedly denigrated, even as it became unprecedentedly identified as the woman’s sphere. And the economic sphere largely became the prerogative of men. In this newly imbalanced gendered arrangement, the male “head” now had unprecedented power and prestige, with unique access to attaining social and economic worth in the newly established economic realm, displaced from the home.

In sum, (1) where the head became defined as the bodily member of incomparable worth—the centre of life, intellect, emotion and volition—and (2) where the head became identified with economic productivity and social esteem, “headship” has now become a category that is all too easily used in service of an imbalanced gendered arrangement.

Getting It Right: The Ancient Near-Eastern Correction

But this was not always so. Headship has not always signified authoritative rule or social superiority. Instead, in the Hebrew-language context of the Old Testament, the head is the representative member of the body. 

Surveying the standard lexicons, most biblical scholars agree that the Old Testament head (rosh) is a synonym for “chief” or “leader.” However, while rosh is not without these connotations in the Old Testament, I argue that rosh is most fundamentally about representation, not leadership or chiefdom. This becomes clearer when the head is set in the context of Hebrew organ symbolism.

The head is one part of a broader Hebrew anatomy of emotion and thought, of being and doing, in which bodily parts represent more than mere vehicles for the inner psychic life. Bodily organs were understood as intimately tied to human emotions and actions. In this living anatomy, the innards were typically presented as the locus of emotion, with compassion coming from the bowels, joy from the liver, and discomfort from the kidneys. Hands were associated with power and skill (Gen 16:6–12), and the face with encounter and presence (Gen 32:21; Exod 33:14–15). Various anatomical parts also manifested a moral dimension. Eyes, for example, can be haughty, greedy or benevolent (Prov 21:4; 22:9; cf. Matt 6:22-23), while the healing of one’s “navel” and “bones” comes from turning one’s eyes from evil (Prov 3:7-8). Fat is a lamentable buffer against God’s commands (Ps 17:10; 119:70); and kidneys are examined by Yahweh for malice or goodness (Ps 7:10; 11:2; 26:2; 73:21). It is not incidental, in this perspective, that the foreskin of the male sex organ is associated with “the flesh” of sinful nature, needing to be cut off.

Now, if joy resides in the liver, mercy in the bowels, goodness (or malice) in the kidneys, and if thinking, feeling and acting all arise from the heart, what role, then, does the head play in the schema of this living Hebrew anatomy? Here, the head principally functions as a synecdoche for the whole person, the representative member of the body.

As the most prominent (“topmost”) member of the body, the head represents or “sums up” the rest of the body (see Exod 30:12; Num 1:2, 49; 4:2, 22; Ps 139:17; Prov 8:26). So, when a census is taken, men are counted “head by head,” the head indicating the whole person (Num 1:2), with each “father’s house” represented by a single head (Num 1:4). The whole familial “body” is in this sense present in and with the head. This is why Moses, for example, can say of “all Israel” that they drew near and heard the voice of God, when in fact it is only the “heads” of the tribes who drew near (Deut 5:1, 23). The head is the representative member who sees, hears, and draws near on behalf of the whole body. Understood this way, whatever power is held by a head is bound up with the interests of its body. Here, it is not the head-as-leader who represents the household, but rather the head-as-representative who has certain leadership functions, delineated according to his status as head of a body.

Conclusion

In sum, the modern notion of “headship” has developed in the West as a term that primarily denotes rule or leadership. This is a departure from the meaning of “head” as set forth in the Old Testament, and taken up in the New. While the “head” once included (as a corporeal metaphor) connotations of unity, responsibility, mutuality, and representation, in the Western tradition, these are largely overshadowed, if not entirely eclipsed, by notions of headship-as-rule, connoting supremacy and authority, defined in modern secular terms. In short, the “head,” originally understood as the representative member of the body, has evolved into “headship,” an office denoting leadership and rule over an entity distinct from itself. In this way, affirmations of male headship are susceptible to unwittingly affirming a male-dominant ideological framework, and so unwittingly getting it wrong.

In the next article, I will set forth a positive vision for what a scriptural vision of headship entails, in accordance with the Scriptures of Israel, and transfigured in Christ.