New Book Weighs Egalitarian Claims on Headship and Submission

How does the Bible define submission and headship? Does the Bible teach that husbands and wives are to submit to each other in the home? Are both husband and wife to serve as head of the home?

In his new book Headship, Submission and the Bible: Gender Roles in the Home (College Press), Jack Cottrell gives definitive biblical answers to those questions. Cottrell focuses on three biblical texts that exist at the center of the contemporary debate over gender roles in the home: 1 Corinthians 11:3-16, Ephesians 5:21-33 and 1 Peter 3:1-7. 

A veteran scholar, Cottrell provides an expert defense of the church's historic teaching on complementary gender roles in the home and shines clear light on the exegetical fallacies of the feminist/egalitarian interpretation of biblical texts on submission and headship.

"Since these terms (headship and submission) give every appearance of establishing a hierarchical or complementarian approach to gender roles, and since they have traditionally been interpreted this way, it has been very important for feminists to provide an alternative way of interpreting these biblical concepts," Cottrell writes.

"Thus over the last few decades they have labored to develop a new, revisionist paradigm for headship and submission, one that is consistent with their basic philosophy of egalitarianism."

Cottrell serves as professor of Theology at Cincinnati Christian University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a member of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).

This work is the third volume in Cottrell's ongoing series evaluating egalitarian hermeneutics. The first, Feminism and the Bible, serves as a general introduction to feminism and its overall hermeneutic. The second work, Gender Roles and the Bible, examines the theological framework of biblical feminism, and unpacks the effects of creation, the Fall and redemption on gender roles.

The argument of Cottrell's latest work is divided into two main sections, one dealing biblically with submission, the other looking at headship. Within each sections, Cottrell writes on key topics such as the egalitarian concept of "mutual submission" (an exegetical novelty peculiar to post-feminist Christianity, he argues), the meaning of hupotasso (Greek for ‘submit') in light of egalitarian claims of mutual submission and kephale (‘head') in light of the egalitarian attempts to redefine the biblical term "head."

In the latter chapters Cottrell unpacks the purpose of Christ's headship (salvation) as well as the manner of the Lord's headship (love). Cottrell interacts with egalitarian scholars throughout the work and concludes with a chapter on practicing headship in the home. Husbands are to love their wives in a way that is faithful to the Gospel and the infinite love of Christ for His church, he writes, because, Christ Himself serves as the model for authentic headship in the home.

"Nothing is more important in the husband-wife relationship than the husband's learning to use his headship in a loving, serving, Christlike manner," he writes. "Wives are commanded to submit (Eph 5:22, 33), but it is very difficult for them to do this when the husbands set themselves up as selfish, oppressive, domineering, all-controlling dictators. Some husbands mistakenly think that such ‘macho' masculinity is a sign of strength, but in fact it is more a sign of weakness, insecurity, fear, and lack of self-confidence.

"Christ is the one who established the pattern for true headship, and Christ through His Holy Spirit can equip every husband with the strength to conform to this pattern. Let us not forget that ‘Christ is the head of every man' (1 Cor 11:3). As such, He wants to encourage and empower every husband to develop his own innate potential for true headship. When a husband accepts this responsibility and follows in the footsteps of his own Head, he will then be the kind of husband to whom a wife can submit with relief, confidence, and pleasure."

Headship, Submission and the Bible is available through College Press.