Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

by Douglas M. Jones III

To cone to the point, marriage is not an egalitarian institution. The Lord has determined, and has told us plainly, that the husband is the head of his wife. Through His apostle, He compared the marriage relation to that of Christ serving as the head of the Church. We, in the grip of modernity's individualism, think that means that the husband is supposed to be in charge. We believe that Paul was telling us that the man is "the boss." As a result, we have on the one hand a feminist reaction against this "truth" and on the other a fundamentalist macho-man embracing of it. But what this biblical teaching really means is that marriage is federal. Communicating this is difficult because our most common use of the word is limited to references to our federal government which is (in its essence) as anti-federal as can be imagined. We have not only lost the concept, we have destroyed the words which could enable us to recover it.