Not in the Bible: Spiritual Leader, Head of the Home. Roles...
If you've been around the egalitarian/complementarian discussions for more than a minute, you've probably seen that they're very focused on two concepts- leadership and decision making.
The debate has been framed as a question of unilateral male authority vs. co-leadership, or wife only obedience vs. mutual submission.
So let's look at the Bible and see if any of the words complementarians use are actually there. Just to standardize things and so no one can accuse me of using some modern feminist version, I'm using the KJV, but by all means check the other translations and see what you find. Make sure you check the Greek and Hebrew- sometimes what you find in English, isn't actually there in the original languages.
Spiritual Leader- does not occur.
Leader- Used 3 times, nothing about marriage.
Leadership- does not occur
Role- does not occur.
Final Authority- does not occur.
Authority- no uses in the context of marriage.
Decision- 2 uses, nothing about marriage.
Obey- nothing in the context of marriage except 1Peter 3 about husbands who are not obeying God.
Head of the Home- does not occur
Complement- does not occur
Priest of the Home- does not occur
Priest- no uses in the context of marriage.
Cover- no uses in the context of marriage.
Covering- 1 use in the context of marriage- a pagan king tells Sarah that Abraham is a covering.
To be fair, we all use modern words and phrases to convey whole concepts and doctrines. After all, the word egalitarian isn't in the Bible any more than the word complementarian.
But many people learn these buzz words in church and just assume that somewhere the Bible surely must say these things! Part of the process of deconstruction is taking the tapes in your head from your parents, your church, books and other believers and questioning:
Are these things really in the Bible?
If not, why did people start using these words and phrases?
When?
Did they have an agenda?
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