Yet Another Attempt to Justify What God Forbids: A Response to Cynthia Westfall, “Male and Female, One in Christ”

Later in Andy’s article…

The heart of her argument is simply not what Paul intended to communicate in Galatians 3:28. Her argument wrongly assumes that male headship is a result of the fall and not part of God’s original good creation.[17] But the main weakness of her argument is that she misreads the immediate literary context. She then concludes that Galatians 3:28 has necessary social implications that contradict other passages in Scripture (e.g., 1 Cor 11:2–16; Eph 5:22–30; Col 3:18–19; 1 Tim 2:9–15; 1 Pet 3:1–7).

I'm currently preaching through Genesis 1-11. We're spending a few weeks working through what Genesis 1-3 teaches us about God's design for marriage and family. I see four main ideas regarding marriage in Genesis 1-3: partnership, headship, permanence, and intimacy.

To prepare for my message on headship, I've been reading through sources such as the JBMW, the Priscilla Papers, and books and journal articles by Schreiner, Köstenberger, and Grudem.

I'm curious how Westfall does understand 1 Cor 11:2–16; Eph 5:22–30; Col 3:18–19; 1 Tim 2:9–15; 1 Pet 3:1–7. Does she dismiss them out of hand? Does she consider them to be applicable only to those specific cultural contexts?

There is some more info at Andy’s blog:

https://andynaselli.com/yet-another-attempt-to-justify-what-god-forbids…

His Eikon article is a response to a Westfall’s chapter in Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives (Amazon affiliate link… https://amzn.to/44yswO7)

I don’t know if she goes into Genesis at all in that volume.

Thomas Schreiner has a detailed review of one of her books in Themelios: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/paul-and-gender-a-…

There are some brief mentions of her take on Genesis, but there doesn’t seem to be much.

So I don’t know if she goes into Genesis 1-3 in much detail in that volume either. Maybe. It does seem likely that she goes into several of the other passages in Paul that you mentioned.

Thanks, Aaron. I just purchased Discovering Biblical Equality through Logos. It has been fascinating tracing the threads of evangelical feminism starting in the 1970s through to today. I spent a considerable amount of time last week reading the back-and-forth regarding the concept of headship. Here's how the conversation has gone:

P1: Head = authority.

P2: No, head = source.

P1: No, across all extant Greek sources head rarely if ever = source.

P2: In several ancient Greek sources I found head = source.

P1: No, the ancient Greek sources you're referencing use a synonym for head, not the actual word head.

P2: Well, in certain early church fathers, head = source.

P1: No, your misquoting or selectively quoting the early church fathers. What about these passages from the same church fathers where head = source?

P2: A later obscure Greek lexicon shows that head = source.

P1: One later obscure Greek lexicon written 900 years after the NT was written doesn't prove head = source. In the LSJ and BDAG, head = authority.

P3: You're both wrong, head = preeminence or prominence.

P1: Why be coy? Doesn't preeminence or prominence indicate some sort of hierarchy exists? Why not just say head = authority?

P2: Christ does away with hierarchal structures (a la Gal. 3:28). Any hierarchal structure based on gender is bad. Therefore, head must = source because it can't = authority.

P1: What about all the linguistic evidence that clearly demonstrates head = authority?

P2: All that evidence is really irrelevant. What matters is that Christ does away with authority structures in the home and church based on Gal. 3:28.

P1: What about all the NT passages where Paul and Peter speak to the authority structures in the home and church?

P2: They are either too obscure to make a definitive statement about what Paul or Peter meant, were not written by the real apostles, or they were only applicable to the immediate cultural context in which they were written. Regardless, Gal. 3:28 and Eph. 5:21 are crystal clear and should override everything else the Bible says about gender distinctions, roles, or hierarchy in the home and church.

P1: I don't think Gal. 3:28 and Eph. 5:21 mean what you think they mean.

P2: Of course they do. If you don't agree, you're on the wrong side of history, just like those who misused the Bible to condone slavery and racism.

The Greek term used for head is kephalē, which typically refers to the physical head resting on the neck. In Hebrew, Latin, and English, head can be used metaphorically to indicate “leader.” It is difficult to make the case that it refers to “leader” in Greek, for we have almost no evidence of this. Lexicons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggested “source” as a possible metaphorical meaning, but not “leader.”

Lynn H. Cohick, “Loving and Submitting to One Another in Marriage: Ephesians 5:21–33 and Colossians 3:18–19,” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural & Practical Perspectives, 199–200.

I just read this article. This quote is so misleading that if you didn't know the literature she's referencing, you'd think this was a strong argument.

In one of the footnotes found in this excerpt, Cohick quotes Grudem's articles in an attempt to prove her statement about having "almost no evidence" to support head = authority or leader. Grudem does make the statement that out of all the Greek instances of head, 49 (or 2.1%) refer to head = authority. However, she fails to note that Grudem in the same article says there are zero instances where head = source when it refers to a person. She even quotes Cervin in her footnote to disprove head = authority, yet Cervin in the same article she quotes states head <> source either. Rather, Cervin states head = preeminence or prominence.

She then continues by stating that 19th and 20th-Century Greek lexicons "suggest" a head = source metaphorical meaning. Again, she is misquoting / selectively quoting these Lexicons. Yes, head can metaphorically mean source, but only in the plural and not referring to people. The NT passages in question have head in the singular and in reference to people.

It's hard for me to take an article like this seriously based on how she abuses the source materials she's quoting to support her argument.

Awesome summary brother thank you. A while ago I spent a little time studying this and came to the conclusion that the goalposts were constantly being moved to justify a position.

It does seem to go in circles, doesn’t it?

Authority can’t be right because headship is not authority because authority can’t be right.

Authority can’t be right because Gal 3.28 & Eph 5.21 are against authority because authority can’t be right.