Should Women have a Spiritual Head other than Jesus?

[mike]

So maybe I should ask the question this way,
Should women have a spiritual head (a human one) who is submitted to Jesus?

They should submit to the church leaders, who are men. Regardless of what Charity people believe, they don’t need a designated man to play their own personal head.

I agree. I've seen the concept applied in a Charity church, and it worked out really badly, even disastrously in a few instances. A mild example is of a young lady who moved into a Charity church to teach school, about an hour or so from home. She boarded with a young couple only slightly older than her. The husband of the household intimated that he would serve as her spiritual authority, even though her father lived just an hour away and regularly saw his daughter. The young lady's father was unimpressed to say the least. I saw this played out in a couple of other scenarios, some of which seemed to be fine and some which were literally ridiculous and some disastrous.

[joshuabgood]

Re OP:

My answer is no. I get queasy when folks start speaking "spiritual authority" language. Usually they mean power to make you do as I say. And that is the power of the scribes. Not the authority that Jesus spoke with. Jesus never compelled or demanded submission through coercion.

[PeterG]

Does submitting to a church as a whole (both men and women) fill this role of a spiritual head?

Why wouldn't it? Maybe I'm missing something, but anything more than that seems extrabiblical at best and misogynistic at worst.

What if the church is not unified in their advice? Does the woman pick the advice that seems the most helpful? Or should she submit to the leader's advice?

I don't see how this situation is different for a woman than for a man.

[Neto]

Red flags everywhere. I automatically think of the instruction that the older women should teach the younger women. (Yes, it goes on to say "...to be subject to their husbands", so maybe then some would think this doesn't apply to single women?)

Opinion: I think that the safest "arrangement" would be for teaching and any necessary direction to come through the older 'sisters' of the congregation. I don't think that the 'submit to the elders' directive should be applied to one-on-one consultation (where the 'consultee' is a woman). If a leader has no wife, or if she is not able or willing to participate in consultations with other women, then he should not be doing it.

[Josh]

Red flags everywhere. I automatically think of the instruction that the older women should teach the younger women. (Yes, it goes on to say "...to be subject to their husbands", so maybe then some would think this doesn't apply to single women?)

Opinion: I think that the safest "arrangement" would be for teaching and any necessary direction to come through the older 'sisters' of the congregation. I don't think that the 'submit to the elders' directive should be applied to one-on-one consultation (where the 'consultee' is a woman). If a leader has no wife, or if she is not able or willing to participate in consultations with other women, then he should not be doing it.

Shouldn't teaching and direction be coming from the pulpit and shared with the whole congregation?

[Neto]

Red flags everywhere. I automatically think of the instruction that the older women should teach the younger women. (Yes, it goes on to say "...to be subject to their husbands", so maybe then some would think this doesn't apply to single women?)

Opinion: I think that the safest "arrangement" would be for teaching and any necessary direction to come through the older 'sisters' of the congregation. I don't think that the 'submit to the elders' directive should be applied to one-on-one consultation (where the 'consultee' is a woman). If a leader has no wife, or if she is not able or willing to participate in consultations with other women, then he should not be doing it.

Shouldn't teaching and direction be coming from the pulpit and shared with the whole congregation?

Yes. I thought that the question was in the context of individual teaching, where it might not be fitting in a mixed setting, or where it was dealing with personal questions.

[Ernie]

Red flags everywhere. I automatically think of the instruction that the older women should teach the younger women. (Yes, it goes on to say "...to be subject to their husbands", so maybe then some would think this doesn't apply to single women?)

Opinion: I think that the safest "arrangement" would be for teaching and any necessary direction to come through the older 'sisters' of the congregation. I don't think that the 'submit to the elders' directive should be applied to one-on-one consultation (where the 'consultee' is a woman). If a leader has no wife, or if she is not able or willing to participate in consultations with other women, then he should not be doing it.

Good thoughts...

So which of the following do you think is accurate?

English Standard Version
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Berean Study Bible
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

[RZehr]

I'm not sure which is more accurate as far as translation goes. But the Berean is closer to how I understand the natural roles we have been given. But I could be wrong, and am open to be persuaded.
But this natural order should never be stretched into saying that each single women needs her own personal man to play an authority figure/spiritual head.

[Bootstrap]

I'm not sure which is more accurate as far as translation goes. But the Berean is closer to how I understand the natural roles we have been given. But I could be wrong, and am open to be persuaded.
But this natural order should never be stretched into saying that each single women needs her own personal man to play an authority figure/spiritual head.

A quick footnote, then I will bow out of this thread again.

The Greek word can mean either, so we have to go by context and our best understanding of the passage as a whole. This may be obvious to all involved.

[Neto]

Red flags everywhere. I automatically think of the instruction that the older women should teach the younger women. (Yes, it goes on to say "...to be subject to their husbands", so maybe then some would think this doesn't apply to single women?)

Opinion: I think that the safest "arrangement" would be for teaching and any necessary direction to come through the older 'sisters' of the congregation. I don't think that the 'submit to the elders' directive should be applied to one-on-one consultation (where the 'consultee' is a woman). If a leader has no wife, or if she is not able or willing to participate in consultations with other women, then he should not be doing it.

Good thoughts...

So which of the following do you think is accurate?

English Standard Version
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Berean Study Bible
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

I agree with Boot (that the Greek word can be fairly translated as either 'husband' or 'man'), and with RZehr (that I think the Berean translation/interpretation is best - He actually just said that it fits his understanding of the text best). Here's the reason why I think that the Berean translation is CORRECT: Paul would have known that what he was writing might be ambiguous, so I think that if he had meant 'husband' he would have included the possessive pronoun 'her'. I think that the context here also is speaking in symbolic terms, not specific ones, so that the sudden switch to the specific human relationship (husband) is a bit jarring. In other words, I don't think that the meaning is 'a man' either, in the sense that every woman needs to identify as being under some man or another. (If I get tagged as a liberal for saying this, fine. I'm a big boy, and I can take it.)