Christian Views On Marriage - Family Headship

Family Headship

Christians hold a variety of views on the preferred relationship between husbands and wives. Much has been written concerning the meaning of "head" in the New Testament. The word used for "head," transliterated from Greek, is kephalē—which means the anatomical head of a body. Today's English word "cephalic" ( /səˈfælɨk/, sə-FAL-ik) means "Of or relating to the head; or located on, in, or near the head." In the New Testament, a thorough concordance search shows that the second most frequent use of "head" (kephalē), after "the structure that connects to our neck and sits atop our bodies," is the metaphorical sense of "source."

Some biblical references on this subject are debated depending on one’s school of theology. The historical grammatical method is a hermeneutic technique that strives to uncover the meaning of the text by taking into account not just the grammatical words, but also the syntactical aspects, the cultural and historical background, and the literary genre. Thus references to a patriarchal Biblical culture may or may not be relevant to other societies. What is believed to be a timeless truth to one person or denomination may be considered a cultural norm or minor opinion to another.