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Church a Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission A s C h r i s t S u b m i t s t o t h e Church A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission Alan G. Padgett K Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 3 5/2/11 2:42 PM These websites are hyperlinked. www. .com www.bakeracademic.com www.brazospress.com www.chosenbooks.com www.revellbooks.com © 2011 by Alan G. Padgett Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Padgett, Alan G., 1955– As Christ submits to the church : a biblical understanding of leadership and mutual submission / Alan G. Padgett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-0-8010-2700-0 (pbk.) 1. Sex role—Biblical teaching. 2. Submissiveness—Biblical teaching. 3. Servant leadership—Biblical teaching. 4. Bible. N.T.—Theology. I. Title. BS2545.S37P33 2011 220.8 3053—dc22 2011005204 Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are the author’s own translation. Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 4 5/2/11 2:42 PM Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction xiii 1. Living Gospel: Evangelical Approaches to Gender Roles 1 2. Mutual Submission and Christian Leadership: The Bible and the Ethics of Roles 31 3. Mutual Submission or Male Dominion? Christ and Gender Roles in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians 57 4. Mission and Submission: 1 Peter and the Pastoral Epistles 79 5. Headship and Head-Coverings: 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 from the Bottom Up 103 vii Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 7 5/2/11 2:42 PM viii Contents 6. Submission Today: Hunger and Thirst for Justice 125 Bibliography 133 General Index 145 Scripture Index 149 Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 8 5/2/11 2:42 PM Introduction t the heart of this study of biblical, evangelical ethics Ais a basic question: Does Christ submit to the church, his body and bride? Does Jesus our Lord provide us with an example of submission to others, in which he calls us to fol- low? My answer will be yes, and I shall show from Scripture that this is the view of the New Testament in general. In giv- ing a positive answer to this question, we need to distinguish between two types of submission. The first type (type I) comes from the realm of political and military struggle. This type of submission is obedience to an external authority, which can be voluntary but often is not. The second type of submission (type II) is one that comes from personal relationships and is often based on love or compassion. In this second type, submission is the voluntary giving up of power in order to take up the role of a slave, so that one may serve the needs of another person. The first type is external, hierarchical, and legal. The second type is internal, personal, and a kind of gift or grace. I will argue that Jesus submits to the church only in the second sense of the word. While those who follow Jesus may submit to the Lord in xiii Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 13 5/2/11 2:42 PM xiv Introduction the first sense to start with, a deeper discipleship will lead the Christian toward the second, interpersonal type. A second theme of our study will be the matter of gender roles. Recent scholarship among fundamentalists and more con- servative evangelicals has raised the issue of role relationships between men and women. This debate is the occasion of my thinking about this question from a biblical perspective. But I now see that the question behind this book is in fact broader than gender issues. When we comprehend the nature of discipleship in general and the concrete character of the love extolled in the Bible, we are in a better position to address the role relationships of men and women from a consistent Christian understanding. At the heart of this issue is the question of leadership. What does it mean to be a leader who takes following Jesus seriously? It is this larger question that we will pursue in this book, and in the light of which we will examine what Scripture has to say about male-female relationships. We start with a consideration of the origin of this debate among evangelicals and an overview of what it means to read the Bible as the Word of God in evangelical thought. Evangeli- cal in this book means having to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I argue that evangelical theology will read the whole of Scripture on any topic (a canonical sense) and not be satisfied with the teaching of any part in isolation. We read the whole of Scripture because we confess that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. This implies a concern not only for the original mean- ing of the text in its social and literary context (what I call the conventional sense), but also for the text’s meaning in the Bible as a whole (canonical sense). This Christ-centered, canonical sense of any biblical text is needed before we can rightly grasp its authoritative meaning for life today (contemporary sense). These arguments take us to the end of chapter 1. I next consider the very idea of an ethics of roles. This is a concept one finds used by so-called complementarian theolo- Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 14 5/2/11 2:42 PM Introduction xv gians, but they do not explore it very fully. Just what is a role, ethically? I argue that any ethic of roles necessarily involves time (narrative), character, and community. True, the way we live out some limited roles (say, being a lawyer) is external to a person’s character. The role may tell us nothing about what the person is actually like, morally speaking. Other social roles (like being a parent) display the moral virtues or vices of the actor. I argue that gender roles are the latter type—that is, morally direct roles. The way we act out our gender roles shows the world what our character is like. Having paved the way to consider Scripture, our study turns first to Jesus. In the Gospels we discover a consistent ethics of leadership, which also relies on the notion of a role. To be a leader, for Jesus, is to take up the role of a slave toward “the least of these.” Those in power use that power not for their own gain or security, but radically give it away in love and service to the other, especially to the people they are leading. Jesus not only teaches this to his disciples, he models it in the washing of their feet. The message, model, and ministry of Jesus set the framework for our reading of the New Testament letters, especially those of Paul. Rather than jump right to passages dealing with sub- mission, we first look to the main epistles of Paul, the central letters where he sets forth his theology and ethics. These major letters are usually understood to include Romans, Galatians, 1–2 Corinthians, and Philippians. How does Paul teach us to treat one another in the body of Christ, which is the church? Given the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, it is fascinating to see that Paul also adopts an ethics of roles. The Christian takes up the role of a slave in caring for one’s sisters and brothers out of love for Christ, giving of ourselves for the glory of God and the edification of the church. This notion is found throughout his letters, for example, “We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus” Alan G. Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. _Padgett_ChristSubmits_AVD_djm.indd 15 5/2/11 2:42 PM xvi Introduction (2 Cor.
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