What are the main themes in the creation account? Authority? Leadership? Equality? Are these the words that most correspond to our sexual design and our relationships in marriage and the church? Lee-Barnewall challenges the way we read into the Genesis account with our own arguments by asking the reader to look at it in a literary perspective. She notes what is central to the text. There is to be unity between Adam and Eve.

 
When it comes to relationships, the contemporary usage of the wordhead usually has a silent honcho at the end of it. And that really isn’t anything new. Even in antiquity, the head of state or household had greater status and priority over the body. In her book Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian, Michelle Lee Barnewall explains, “The head played perhaps the most critical role in the survival of the body. As a result, a vital concern was to protect the head at all costs” (155). The people would valiantly sacrifice themselves, by the thousands if need be, to protect their beloved king. Barnewall quotes Seneca

In his defense they are ready on the instant to throw themselves before the swords of assassins, and to lay their bodies beneath his feet if his path to safety must be paved with slaughtered men; his sleep they guard by nightly vigils, his person they defend with and encircling barrier, against assailing danger they make themselves a rampart. (Clem. 1.3.3)

…Nor is it self-depreciation or madness when many thousands meet the steel for the sake of one man, and with many deaths ransom a single life…(Clem. 1.3.4). (155)

As it was the duty of the people to protect the head at all costs, self-preservation was a priority of the head, knowing that the “common good” of the people was dependent on his welfare. Lee-Barnewall introduces a second aspect to the tradition of the head explaining that, “as ruler, [he] was not called to be the one who loves but rather was more deserving of being loved” (156). So the self-sacrifice of the people for his security was an act of their love for their ruler. He was the head honcho. “The superior physical placement of the head was symbolic of its leading role in the body and resulted in specific behavioral expectations for both parties” (156).

This history, and I think our own natural defaults in thinking, is why Ephesians 5:21-33 is meant to be a shocking portion of Scripture. Barnewall comments that “we would expect Paul to instruct the wife, the body, to be willing to sacrifice for the husband, the head” (157).  This would be the common way of thinking and make rational sense to the audience. However, Paul then teaches a complete kingdom reversal.

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