First, let's define "blasphemy": from Answers.com
- A contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning God or a sacred entity.
- The act of claiming for oneself the attributes and rights of God.
What brought this question on?
Paula, from Words of a Fether, wrote on a set of sample wedding vows from Bible.org, saying,
Especially repulsive is no. 12.
Here is the text of the sample:
Male
I love you, ______, and I thank the Lord for the love that has bound our hearts and lives together in spiritual fellowship of marriage. I will love, honor and cherish you always. As we enter upon the privileges and joys of life's most holy relationship, and begin together the great adventure of building a Christian home, I will look to Christ as Head of our home as I have looked to Him as Head of the Church. I will love you in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, in sorrow as in joy, and will be true to you by God's grace, trusting in Him, so long as we both shall live.
Female
I love you, ______, and I thank the Lord for the love that has bound our hearts and lives together in spiritual fellowship of marriage. I will love, honor, cherish and obey you always. As we enter upon the privileges and joys of life's most holy relationship and begin together the great adventure of building a Christian home, I will look to you as head of our home as I have looked to Christ as Head of the Church. I will love you in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, in sorrow as in joy, and will be true to you by God's grace, trusting in Him, so long as we both shall live.
Paula's take:
Sorry, bible.org, but that makes the husband a blasphemer (taking the place of Christ in the life of another person) and the wife an idolater (looking to a man instead of Christ). This abominable trend in the churches has infected influential leaders in the Christian community, and it’s spreading rapidly. Those men love to “keep their place” and to be “head over” someone, especially women. We women are expected to spend our lives stroking their delicate egos, making them little gods over us, and believing it’s God’s divine order. (the bolded text is my emphasis).
My take, let's compare Scripture to the sample vow (just the "repulsive" part):
(Scripture): Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
(the vow): I will look to you as head of our home...
(Scripture):For the husband is the head of the wife...
(the vow): as I have looked to Christ as Head of the Church...
even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Scripture goes on: Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Paula called her post "Vows and Wows". I agree.
It's a "wow"...when wedding vows that reflect Scripture are called repulsive, blasphemy and idolatry.
I wonder if it would be blasphemy if the bride quoted (as her vow) Ephesians 5:22-24 directly from Scripture, the groom quoted (as his vow) verses 25-28 and the pastor quoted the rest?
I wonder....
Paula goes on about Bible.org and complementarian belief that a wife should submit to her own husband, as to the Lord, and as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands:
Now evangelicals can take their place beside Muslims, Jews (traditional rabbinical views), Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses in making women truly subhuman.
I repeat: wow.
And I am truly saddened.
Sue
Technically, yes, it is idolatry. The husband acknowledges that Christ is the head of the home. Then the wife acknowledges that her husband is the head of the home.
The passage in Eph. 5 starts at verse 21.
There is absolutely no reason why verse 21 should not be interpreted as mutual submission. I realize that some people believe that the core of the gospel is that some classes of people should submit to other classes of people, but that runs against other verses in the Bible.
If you are to practice mutuality in other aspects of the Christian life, it might be good to practice mutuality in marriage as well.
Ellen
The "mutual submission" is not identical submission.
Scripture says that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church; you say that is idolatry.
That about says it all.
Eloquorius
Hey, Sue: The "submission" debate can't be frame around Eph. 5 alone. 1 Peter 3 and Col 3:18 consistently convey the headship/submission structure. It think Peter's warning in 1 Peter 3:6 ("if you do what is right and do not give way to fear") really nails it: this is a battle over fear. If the husband's authority were unchecked and absolute, you would have more basis for the fear. But his leadership is held in check (by both the civil authorities and the church, if they're doing their jobs) and by the Word.
Finally, I wish we'd all stop framing this as a "submission" debate -- it's not. Both sides say the wife should submit. The issue is whether the husband serves as authoritative head (complementarian) or as co-authority in the marriage (so-called egalitarianism). We should instead frame this debate for what it is: The Anti-Headship debate. And if we can rightly frame this as the headship debate that it is, then the discussion of headship will cause us to focus more on the Head, Christ. But as long as we make this a fear-dominated, woman-centered, submission-focused debate, they truth will be more elusive.
Sue
No, we disagree on the meaning of the word "head". I am having fun seeing how Grudem put together all his evidence for his kephale study. The man should get an award for fiction.
Ellen
Are there any other biblical instructions directly to women (or men) that you would consider blasphemous to have in a wedding vow? Faithfulness could be framed as putting marriage as the idol (just as unfaithfulness to God is framed as adultery).
hmmm.
Ellen
Regardless of what "head" means, it is the reason given that wives should submit to their husbands.
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church"
Not because culture says so, wives should submit...NO! The wife should submit...for the husband is the head....
Not only that, but the depth of submission is indicated as well:
"Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands."
Is this blasphemy?
Sue
I have never framed this as the headship debate. Headship is in scripture. I frame it as the "male authority" debate. However, I think of it as the "male authority heresy,"
There is not even one scripture that in any way shape or form, gives the male authority over the female. This is a form of paganism - outright paganism.
My points are this.
1. Submission does not have to be to an authority. There is the concept of mutual submission in ancient Greek literature.
2. While the wife is told to submit, the husband is not told to have authority, but to sacrifice.
3. Head does not mean, and never has meant authority over.
4. 1 Cor. 11:10 says for the woman to have a token of her own authority on her head. Anything else makes a mockery of the Greek.
5. 1 Tim. 2:12 says that a woman is not to dominate over her husband. This word parallels the word used in Gen. 3:16 that the curse is that the husband will lord it over the wife. Explicitly the scriptures tell us that men and women should not dominate each other.
6. The only time ever, ever, ever, that authority is mentioned between men and women, it is mutual, in 1 Cor. 7.
7. The submission in 1 Peter is a submission to a non-Christian partner and is a form of Christian suffering.
Ellen
So what your saying is that we have a history of 2,000 years of a church based on heresy and (since God wrote the Law of Moses) thousands of years of paganism in which only men were ordained to priesthood.
you wrote :3. Head does not mean, and never has meant authority over.
Never? NEVER? (thinking of the Greek)
You're sure. NEVER.
Sue
Well, among the 50 or so quotes that i have read through, there are one or two where "authority" is debatable, (in the Septuagint. Nothing at all in classical Greek.) For some reason no one ever quotes them so I wonder if there is some argument against them also. In my view they are just on my list of still unresolved.
Actually, I wasn't expecting the study to be as bad as it was. I have all along given Grudem the benefit of the doubt. But none of the citations that he has supplied on Gender blog show "authority over" as a meaning that is contained within the word kephale. There is no reason at all to attribute the meaning authority to kephale.
And, yes, for almost 2000 years slavery was accepted on one level or another. I don't find it surprising at all that the church has had some wrong beliefs.
There were also different periods in church history where women had roles of authority, but never the priesthood because of ritual impurity - menstruation.
So abbesses, women in charge of convents, sometimes in charge of coed convents, had a priest under them to consecrate the sacraments.
History is a mixed bag. The Puritans flogged women preachers in the 17th century so that set women back a bit.
I don't find it at all surprising or demoralizing that the church has practiced something wrong all this time. This is a basic fact of life.
I find it more shocking that the male authority teaching is grounded in a software search which so severely misrepresents the truth. If Grudem can convince people from his study, and this is why I had to leave my church, because my minister just said that he believed Grudem's study, then what hope is there for the church.
Ellen
Let's continue to use the words "heresy", "idolatry" and "blasphemy"...those appear to be the new favored words.
Like...I don’t find it at all surprising or demoralizing that the church has practiced heresy all this time. This is a basic fact of life.
I have read few lexicons where the meaning "authority" isn't at least mentioned. Where it is not, there is a very clear agenda.
Ellen
At any rate, remember the topic of the post.
Sue, what other direct instructions in Scripture to either husbands or wives would you consider blasphemy and idolatry?
Sue
I have read few lexicons where the meaning “authority” isn’t at least mentioned. Where it is not, there is a very clear agenda.
So now you are accusing the Liddell Scott Lexicon of an agenda. Have you looked at the omitted citations on my blog. Do you actually defend that kind of thing? What proof, any piece of proof, do you have that kephale could mean authority at the time of the NT. I am sure it must be there somewhere, there must be small chance that that notion is an option. But I can't find it. If you can give me this evidence, I would appreciate it because it is taking me a lot of time to track down.
So far, the evidence I have seen is a chimera.
Ellen
Sue, what other direct instructions in Scripture to either husbands or wives would you consider blasphemy and idolatry?
Oh...yes. I'll give you Liddell-Scott.
Although, Grudem (although I rarely cite him) quotes from a letter from P.G.W. Glare (editor of Liddell-Scott) that basically says that Glare agrees with Grudem that the omission of the possibility that kephale could mean "authority" was a mistake. If Glare did not write this letter, this goes beyond shoddy research and goes into outright dishonesty.
Sue, are you calling Grudem an outright liar? That Glare never wrote the letter?
Sue, you know the lexicons way better than I do. is there ANY lexicons that disagree with you that you find even a hint of credibility in?
Sue
Eloquorius,
I have witnessed outrageous violence in the Christian home. The fear is of something that really happens.
I read Greek. The fact that notions of authority are imposed on the Bible where it does not belong is also real.
Sue
First,
I think that the comment about blasphemy was referring to when the head of the home is Christ for the man, and the husband is head of the home for the woman. It sounds blasphemous to those of us who were taught that Christ is the head of the home.
-----
About Glare,
I did not say that Grudem misquoted Glare's letter. What we can see is that Glare bases his assessment re: authority on the fact that,
kephal? is the word normally used to translate the Hebrew r'osh, and this does seem frequently to denote leader or chief without much reference to its original anatomical sense
But that is false information. When kepahle means leader, then it is translated with a word in Greek meaning leader. There is only one exception that I find for this, and that refers to Jephthah. I don't know why that exception, but of 180 examples, all the rest of the time rosh is translated by another Greek word. A few times kephale is retained when there is use of figurative speech or metaphor, sometimes during prophecies that are hard to interpret for anyone. But there is absolutely no parallel between the use of rosh in Hebrew and kephale in Greek.
My guess, and this is my guess, is that Glare, who is an editor of Greek and Latin lexicons, does not know any Hebrew at all. So I think he got the wrong impression somehow about there being a correspondance between rosh and kephale which does not exist. Just as there is not a direct correspondance between kephale and head.
However, Grudem did misrepresent all the examples on the gender blog. Why did he say that "David was called the head of the people" when the text says that David is the head of the gentiles. David was not the leader of the gentiles. Maybe, kephale has the same meaning there as in Philo, that David is prominent above the gentiles, he is more illustrious.
Grudem cannot change the quote and expect people to believe him.
I don't find credibility in lexicons. Credibility is only found in the examples which the lexicons provide. That is why quoting the examples correctly is so vital.