CBMW On Making Decisions With Your Wife

Complementarians are not always as quick, however, to recognize the same perversion in heavy handed male authority in which males treat women as inferiors by making decisions unilaterally, selfishly, and insensitively. Teaching which emphasizes female submission without equally emphasizing the man's responsibility to delight in his wife and share with her as an equal partner distorts male headship. The Father's headship over the Son teaches us that biblical headship makes submission not a matter of mere duty, but a delightful response from a woman who is loved, partnered with, and trusted as an equal.

While complementarians by definition believe that God has given the man final domestic and ecclesiastical authority, the woman as the man's equal is given significant and varied authority (the right or power to do something).¹ While it goes beyond the scope of this article to flesh out the full extent of female authority, we should note that in Scripture godly women have authority to proclaim the gospel (Acts 1:8; Phil 4:2-3), prophesy (Isa 8:3; Acts 2:17-18; 21:8-9), run a household (Prov 31:10-31), manage commercial enterprises (Prov 31:10-31), give men corrective accountability (1 Sam 25:18-38; Luke 18:1-8; Acts 18:26), and serve as co-laborers with men in ministry (Judges 4; Rom 16:1-6, 6; Phil 4:2-3).

1 This is the definition of ἐζουσία, used in John 5:27 to indicate "authority."

Excerpt from "I Corinthians 11:3: A Corrective to Distortions and Abuses of Male Headship"by Steven Tracy - http://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-8-No-1/A-Corrective-to-Distortions-and-Abuses-of-Male-Headship