Thanks for your reply and gracious pushback, Daniel. Good observations as always. I’m not sure I’ll get time to respond in full over the weekend.
So here areA couple of quick clarifications:
No on both counts. My issue is more with the implications and the issue of going beyond scriptural images and teaching.
My understanding is that it is more than an analogy or illustration. But rather than that the marriage relationship is patterned on trinitarian relationships. This is an issue for me on two levels:
- I believe the Son is only subordinate to the father in redemption not from eternity.
- It upends biblical images. Eg. The church is always describe as the bride. Yet gender roles based on ESS makes Christ analogous to the bride. Nowhere in the Bible is that connection ever made.
I ask have no issue with human relationships pointing to trinitarian qualities per say (see my previous post’s reference to Bavinck). What I take issue with is the implication that gender relationships between men and woman are grounded in Trinitarian hierarchy predicated on ESS. I see no biblical basis for this.
As to parents and children I have no issues with parents taking their queue from the relationship between the father and the son and trying to emulate those qualities. I do and have taught the same. But nowhere in the Bible is it said “Children should Submit to their parents as Son always submits to the Father”. Again, the bible’s teaching is that wives submit to their husbands not because they are acting like the Father, but because they are acting like Christ.
Again, analogies and illustrations are one thing, saying that things must be a certain way because ESS is quite another. I believe that it very, very, very bad to teach men that they operate in their marriages like God the Father and not like Jesus.
Finally, I do apologise if I over stepped in my use of the word toxic. Not my intention. There is so much popular misunderstanding about complimentarianism already, that I get frustrated that people like Wayne Grudem are not helping.
If you want to know more of the nuts about bolts, a lot of this stuff broke on the Mortification of Spin blog a few years back. Imagine many of the posts can still be found with a quick Google.
Hope that helps clarify a bit.