The Meaning of Head in the Bible — Wayne Grudem

This message was given at the Building Strong Families Conference held in Dallas, TX March 20th through the 22nd of 2000. This conference was sponsored by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Family Life Ministries.

Following the message there will be information on how to order additional materials on building a strong family.

Thank you. Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks for your word, what a great treasure it is. And we thank you for every word of your word. You have caused to be written exactly what you wanted. And we believe that it is all God breathed.

The Meaning of “Head” in the New Testament

And so when we look at this one word for head, kephele, Lord, we're looking at a word that you chose to put in your word, that we would understand it. We ask that we would understand it rightly, and that you would teach us not only content, but also throughout, that you would guard my heart and lips and the rest of our hearts and lips, that our reactions to what others have said would be in accordance with your heart and your mind.

Amen. I'm going to talk in this seminar about the meaning of the word head, particularly the word, specifically the Greek word kephele in the New Testament. Some of you are aware that a number of years ago, about 25 years ago now, there was a new interpretation of passages such as Ephesians 5 .23, where it says, the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church.

And of 1 Corinthians 11 .3, where Paul says, I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. These verses created a difficulty for an egalitarian view of marriage, because if the word head had been correctly understood, as it always had been understood, to mean one in authority, then the egalitarian argument fails.

The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. The husband is in authority over the wife, as Christ is in authority over the church. If the word head, or the phrase for person A to be the head of person B, if it meant in the first century to be one in a position of authority over person B, then we don't even need to have a conference.

The argument is over. The debate is finished. It says there's a unique authority that belongs to the husband. So it is absolutely essential to the egalitarian position to find another meaning for this word, or at least many egalitarians thought it was.

The “Source” Interpretation of Kephale

And so what happened a number of years ago, particularly, well, in 1952, there was a little article published by a man named Bedale, B-E-D-A-L-E, in which he said, well, there are a couple of examples in Greek where the word kephalae means source.

It's applied to the source of a river, for instance, in Herodotus. And in fact, the large lexicon, the Little and Scott lexicon for classical Greek, did at one point mention this meaning, source, for kephalae.

I'm going to ask, just as a point of information here, how many of you have had at least some Greek? Yeah, a great majority of you, okay. And I'm going to ask also, is Dwing, I don't have a marker board here or an easel.

Is there a possibility to get a blank overhead will do, okay, that's enough, thanks. Although Bedale in the 50s said, well, this doesn't diminish the idea of authority, there is still authority with the head of Christ is God, or the head of the woman is the husband, the husband is the head of the wife.

There's still authority there, but there's some sense of derivation too. It was just a novel idea that he proposed, and nobody made much of it. Until more than 20 years later in the 1970s, then egalitarians began to promote the idea that head meant source, apart from any idea of authority.

Nobody in the history of the church before the mid -1970s, as far as I know, had ever held that view, that head meant source without authority when applied to persons. But the evidence cited was the entry in the Little and Scott Lexicon, where it talked about the head of the river, and said the source of a river, and then they were quoting something from Herodotus and something from poetry called Orphic Fragments, and I'll get to those in just a few minutes.

But that was the sum of the argument, the Greek Lexicon by Little and Scott, and then the evidence from Little and Scott where they cited Herodotus, the historian, and the Orphic Fragments, two examples for this word head meaning source.

Now what happened was egalitarians then began to run with that and say, well now head means source in a lot of places. The husband is the head of the wife is an allusion to Adam and Eve, so that Adam was the source of Eve, and the head of Christ is God means that the Father sent the Son into the world.

He was the source of sending him into the world for the incarnation. So there was some appeal to that meaning in those verses, and it was then to destroy the idea of authority in those passages. That was the background to this.

Grudem’s Research into Greek Usage

As that went on, I one day was at Bethel College in Minnesota teaching, and George Knight came to lecture, and I said to him, George, you know, somebody really needs to do a study of this word head in the Bible.

I think, George, that you should do that, and he said, well, no, you should do it. I said, no, I don't want to do that. But anyway, the idea simmered, and eventually I decided to do some research on the meaning of this Greek word kephele, head.

And at that time, I heard about a computer database called TLG, which is Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, and it had all the words that were ever written in ancient Greek in this database. It was put together at the University of California, Irvine, and they had about 50 or 60 million words of Greek text from 8th century B .C., Homer, the earliest Greek writer, on to about the 4th century A .D.

So I wrote a letter to them and said, could I get a printout of all the instances of the Greek word kephele, head? And they said, well, you could, but it would be over 12 ,000 examples. And then they said, perhaps you would like our basic text package, which includes representatives from various points in history and most major authors, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, the New Testament, and many other examples.

And it's representative of the kinds of literature and the historical scope. So I said, OK, well, how many examples would that be? And they said, well, that would be just over 2 ,000. So they sent me the printout and I went over to the library and started to work.

And I looked up every example of kephele in that list, in all of those ancient Greek authors and to see how the word was used. And in the course of that, I read more stories about one soldier cutting off another soldier's head than I ever want to read in my whole life.

Those ancient Greeks did a lot of fighting. And the vast majority of the cases were just referring to the literal head of the body. But I found about 50 examples where kephele, head, referred to a person in authority.

The Roman emperor was referred to as head. A general of an army was called the head of the army. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the heads of the tribes of Israel were called heads, and the word was kephele there.

David was head of the Gentiles when he ruled over them. And in the New Testament, of course, Christ is the head of the church. Early Christian literature, the bishops were the heads of the churches. And the husband is the head of the wife.

In all these examples, and there were about 50 of them, there were cases where the person who was said to be the head of another person or group was one in a position of authority. So I wrote that up and I said, I found no cases where head, when applied to persons, meant source.

Well, what about those two examples that were in the Little and Scott lexicon? Those two examples were from Herodotus. And in Herodotus, the Greek historian, he talks about the sources of the Pyrrhus River.

I can't remember correctly the name of the river, but the sources of a river, and it's plural. And so it's plural, the source, and the Little and Scott lexicon, D-D-E-L-L, Scott, says, in plural, source of a river, but in singular, mouth of a river.

And what was happening in this case, as I looked at it, was Kephalé was simply being used in a fairly common sense to mean the top or the end point of something. So in plural, the sources of a river were the end points where it began.

And in singular, the mouth was called the head as well. This was not surprising, because in Greek literature, when you had a building with a column, the top of the column was called the head of a column.

Why would they do that? Whatever gave them that idea? Hm? Yeah, it's an analogy to a human being. Our head is at the top of our body. Now you look at a column holding up a building, and the top point is called the head of the column.

Right? Or, even in describing vegetables, the top of a radish is called the head of a radish in Greek literature. The top point. Or, in the Septuagint, the poles, remember the priests used poles to carry the Ark of the Covenant?

And those end points of the poles are called the heads of the poles. And so, the meaning end point was commonly attested in Greek. And to say that the Greek word kephale, when applied to a river, could speak of the source of the river, or the mouth of the river, was not a surprise.

But it didn't really mean source or mouth, it just meant end point, and it was applied to that position by virtue of where it was in the location on the river. Moreover, the people who quoted this Little and Scott lexicon misused it in two ways.

Because there were two separate categories in the definition of kephale. One was applied to persons, and the other was applied to things. Well, this was in the things category. Not with regard to persons, when we have the husband as the head of the wife, that's persons.

Moreover, look what happens here. Little and Scott says, in plural, head means source, but in singular, the mouth of a river. Now I ask you, what about Ephesians 5 .23? If you're going to use this definition, let's use it in the right way.

The husband is the head of the wife, kephale. Is it plural or singular? Okay, so if you want to take the wrong definition from Little and Scott and apply it to that verse, you might as well apply it consistently and correctly and say the husband is the mouth of the wife.

Makes no sense at all. Okay, so that was a misapplication. But it was still there, and people continued to use it. So I wrote up this article and published it. Survey of 2 ,336 examples. Said here are 50 examples, 49 or 50, where a person in authority is the head.

No examples where a person is called the source of another person. Oh, and I told you the Herodotus example. There was another one. I'm skipping it. Orphic fragment. It's 4th century B .C. poetic literature about this Orphic religion that had something to do with worship of snakes and things like that.

Orphic fragment has this quotation where it says Zeus is the kephale. Zeus is the middle. And Zeus, from whom all things come. Or in whom all things are perfected. In that case, it is applied to a person.

A personal deity in Greek religion. But there again, I think it means beginning. Or first in a series. It doesn't mean source. That is, Zeus was the first one of the gods. He's the middle, and he's the one at the end.

Even in this case, it certainly doesn't mean source without authority. Because Zeus is the main god in Greek mythology. He's the top dog. The leading deity. But I think here it means Zeus is the beginning or the first.

And he's in the middle, and he is the one through whom perfection comes. He's the beginning, middle, and end. It doesn't really mean the one from whom other things come. The meaning first in a series, the beginning of a series, also fits here very well.

And that's an established meaning for kephale. So I found no examples where it meant source without authority. I wrote it up in an article, and then other people began to respond to that and interact with it.

And at that point, I, after a few years, gathered up all those responses and wrote a 70-page analysis of their responses and published that in the back of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Appendix 1, The Meaning of Kephale, had a response to recent studies.

And the academic debate continued. But a number of people were saying, well, that article settled it. Now, what has happened since then? What has happened since then is that in some circles, there have been egalitarians, such as Craig Keener, who have said, yes, Grudem has shown that kephale can mean authority anyway.

But others have not. And what I'm going to focus on today is an article by Catherine Kroeger. K-R-O-E-G-E-R. Catherine Kroeger. She is the founding president of Christians for Biblical Equality.

And Catherine Kroeger is sort of my counterpart in that other organization. She's been the kind of driving force behind Christians for Biblical Equality. She has a Ph .D. in classics from the University of Minnesota.

So she knows Greek quite well. And Catherine Kroeger was chosen by InterVarsity Press to write the article on head for a reference book called Dictionary of Paul and His Letters. How many of you are familiar with that, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters?

There's Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, and there's a third one. And she has the article head in there. And in this, she writes the following. And so I'm going to start with Transparency One.

Chrysostom and the Meaning of Authority

This is headship in the Trinity after she discusses some other materials that I'll come back to in a little while. She says, by the Byzantine era... Can you see this in the back? Can you read this from the back?

Hold up your hand if you can't read it. All right. I'm going to ask, while I'm speaking, if we could move this back about three feet and I'll just keep on talking and we'll see if we can increase the focal length for it.

So she says, by the Byzantine era... That's into the Middle Ages, but not New Testament. Kefale had acquired the sense of chief or master. Although the English word head can mean that, it was rarely true in Greek and New Testament times.

And now, can we... And then she says, the contemporary desire, I'm right here, to find in 1 Corinthians 11 -3 a basis for subordination of the son to the father as ancient roots in response to such subordinationism.

And now she's using a word for a heresy, subordinationism. Subordinationism, which claims that the son is an inferior being, a lesser being than the father, isn't fully God. In response to such subordinationism, church fathers argued vehemently that for Paul, head had meant sword.

Athanasius, in Armin 26 -335, in Athema 26, Mingna, PG 26 -740b. Now, what is this? Athanasius is a church father. The Mingna series, PG, is this hundreds of volumes of Greek text from the church fathers, many centuries of the church fathers.

It's only in Greek, published in Paris in mid -1800s, and it takes a pretty large library to have a collection of that. But that's what she's quoting from. Cyril of Alexandria, and gives the reference of Basil.

Theodore of Mopsuestia, and even Eusebius were quick to recognize the danger of an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 -3, which could place Christ in a subordinate position relative to the father. And then she goes on and says, John Chrysostom declared that only a heretic would understand Paul's use of head to mean chief or authority over.

Rather, one should understand the term as implying absolute oneness and cause and primal sword. This is a standard reference book from InterVarsity Press. This article, therefore, will have wide influence.

When I read it, I, of course, didn't know what those quotations said until I looked them up. But this sentence concerned me, and I raised my eyebrows. John Chrysostom declared that only a heretic would understand Paul's use of head to mean chief or authority over.

The reason I wondered about that sentence was the phrase, authority over, is kind of a strange phrase. It didn't sound to me like a phrase that early church writers would use. It sounded to me more like a modern phrase.

In fact, it reminded me of an article I had written. And the article was titled, Does Heffalay Mean Source or Authority Over? A survey of 2 ,336 examples. And I wondered, I thought, it is quite puzzling that the ancient church father, John Chrysostom, would have written an article saying that my view was wrong.

Long before my time. So I thought, hmm, I really have to look at this. So, again, she's quoting the Dean series, 61, 214, and 216. Now, it took some doing to track it down. But I'm going to put it up here in English translation.

And I have all this stuff, the Greek text of all of it as well. In fact, could I have that whole folder just for a second? That's what it looks like. And it was some work to track it down and to coordinate it with an English translation.

But when I did, it came up with Transparency 2 here. And I'm going to keep coming back to one, so if you have one nearby. And Transparency 2, then I don't think I'll need to tell you this. Here it is.

Chrysostom says,. But the head of the woman is a man, and the head of Christ is God. Here the heretics rush upon us with a certain declaration of inferiority. And so here, Chrysostom is talking about the heretics.

In the controversy of the 4th century, in that context, it was a Trinitarian controversy. And people were saying that only God the Father was fully God and the Son was a lesser being. He was created. The great heavenly creature, the Son and the Holy Spirit were created.

And the Arian, who denied the full deity of the Son, said that there was a time when the Son didn't exist. And their phrase was, There was when he was not. That is, there was a time when he was not. And he's the greatest creature, but he's still a creature.

And they denied the full deity of Christ. This heresy of Arianism is what Chrysostom is talking about. And he's saying,. The head of Christ is God. The heretics rush upon us with a certain declaration of inferiority.

They're saying the Son is a lesser being than the Father. Which, out of these words, they contrive against the Son. But, says Chrysostom, they stumble against themselves. For if the man be the head of the woman, and the head be of the same substance with the body, and the head of Christ is God, and that same substance is homoousios, which in the 19th Creed, this is of the one substance, the one being with the body.

If the head be of the same substance with the body, and the head of Christ is God, the Son is of the same substance with the Father. So he turns it around on them and says,. This proves that the Son is fully divine.

Nay, they say, it's not a being of another substance which we intend to show from him, but that he is under subjection. What then are we to say? Now, I've left out a few lines which I digress, but it does not affect the substance of the quotation here.

And then he says,. For what if the wife be under subjection to us? It is as a wife, as free, as equal in honor. And the Son also, though he did become obedient to the Father, it was as God, as the obedience of the Son toward the Father is greater, so his liberty is greater.

And so he is yielding obedience as free, yielding obedience. For with us, indeed, the woman is reasonably subjected to the man. So Chrysostom says, The Arians say, Well, the Son is under subjection to the Father.

And Chrysostom says, Yes, but it's voluntary. Just as a wife is free and equal in honor to us. So he says there's subordination, there's obedience from the Son to the Father. Now, where in that sentence or that paragraph does Chrysostom say, Only a heretic would say that head means authority over.

You see, he says the Son obeys, but he voluntarily obeys. That implies that the Father is the one in authority over. He is assuming that head means one in authority. Are you following me? Is that clear?

He doesn't differ with that at all. He says, Yes, the Son is in subjection, but it's voluntary. And so similarly with a wife, a reason is reasonably subjected to us. Now, so I found this and I copied the Greek and I copied the English text and I wrote to Catherine Crager and I said, Catherine, I can't find in this sentence that you quoted.

I can't find where Chrysostom says head doesn't mean authority when only a heretic would say that. He assumes that head does mean authority here. Do I have the right quotation? And she just sent me back the same quotation in Greek text and said this is the one I'm quoting.

While I was in Chrysostom, I thought of a couple of things. You see, if Chrysostom had ever wanted to say that head didn't mean one in authority, here's the perfect opportunity. He could have said head doesn't mean one in authority.

Only a heretic would understand Paul's use of head to mean one in authority. But he doesn't say that at all. He agrees that the son is obedient to the father, but says that the obedience is not servile like a slave, but free like that of a wife who is equal in honor.

The Importance of Transparent Scholarly Citations

I thought I should add one other comment. In a reference work intended for a general public as well as an academic audience, it is courteous to cite references in a way that enables others to look them up and evaluate them.

This statement from Chrysostom exists in English translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, which is widely available. You can buy it from CBD quite cheaply, and it's in all public libraries that are older libraries anyway.

The citation could have been given as Chrysostom, Homily 26 on 1 Corinthians, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, Series 1, Volume 12, Page 150, and it would have taken only a few minutes for any reader to locate in most any library.

And then PG 61 .2 .14 could have been added for a Greek reference, but the reference was only given as PG 61 .2 .14, a reference in Mingnet, Patrologia Graeca, which took a considerable amount of time to locate and coordinate with English translation, which has a different numbering system.

I doubt that even 1 of the readers of the Dictionary of Paul and his letters could ever have found and understood this paragraph from Chrysostom, or could ever have discovered that the quotation, in fact, does not exist.

And this reference was easy to locate compared with others in this article. What is the reason for citing references in a way that makes them most difficult to locate? Evangelical scholarship, at its best, should aim for the procedure Paul used.

Paul said, by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. While I was working in Chrysostom, I thought I would look at a few other examples of his word kephalae, which I didn't do for my earlier studies, to see if there might be any other instances where Chrysostom used the word kephalae to mean a person in authority over.

Chrysostom’s Other Uses of Kephale

This would add to my 50 examples that I had earlier. And admittedly, it's 4th century AD, but it's still quite relevant. He's interpreting the New Testament. And so now I'm going to do the next Transparencies 3 to 11 and just read these briefly to you.

And by this time, Trinity had the T .L .G. database and I could search it, print it out. Consider, nevertheless, that it is homily 26 on 1st Corinthians. Consider that she is a woman, the weaker vessel, whereas you are a man.

For therefore, were you ordained to be ruler and were assigned to her in place of a head that you may bear with the weakness of her that is set under you. Make then your rule glorious, and glorious it will be when the subject of it meets with no dishonor from you.

You know, there's stuff here in Chrysostom you could preach on Sunday morning. He's saying, you're the authority, but don't dishonor your wife. Care for her, love her. All right? But here, look, head is equated with ruler.

Head and ruler. Okay, the next one. This is homily 5 on 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. Page 397. For how is it not absurd in other things to think yourself worthy of the preeminence and to occupy the place of the head, but in teaching to quit your station?

He's saying, husband, you should be the teacher as well. In other things, you're the head. In teaching, you have responsibility. The ruler ought not to excel the ruled in honor so much as in virtues. For this is the duty of a ruler.

You are the head of the woman. Let then the head regulate the rest of the body. In the head are the power of directing and the rest of the body is appointed for service. But the head is set to command.

So let us rule the women. Let us surpass them, not by seeking greater honor from them, but by their being more benefited by us. See, the connection of being head and being one in a position of rule. Right?

Go on. Here's a homily on Ephesians. In order that when you hear of the head, you may also not conceive of the notion of supremacy only, but also of consolidation, and that you may behold him not as supreme ruler only, but as head of a body.

This is referring to Christ. You see the connection of Christ who is the head and has the rule, archaic, and he is the ruler, archon, and he is the head. Okay? Let us reverence our head, a head to whom all things are put in subjection.

Okay? Go on. Charlie's helping me here in many of these transparencies. I appreciate it. In virtue. He's saying, Husbands, your wives are more virtuous than us. They're more moral. They're more obedient to God.

This is a shame. What a shame. We hold the place of the head and are surpassed by the body. We are ordained to rule over them. Not merely that we may rule, but we may rule in goodness also. Does he think that...

I mean, would he say only a heretic would say head means one in authority? In authority over? The husband... Here's Ephesians commonly as well. The husband occupies the place of the head and the wife the place of the body.

The husband is the head of the wife and Christ is the head of the church. He had already laid down beforehand for man and wife assigning to each their proper place to the one that of authority and forethought, the other that of submission.

The head is one in authority. Okay? Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands. Here again, still further on Ephesians. This is interesting. The wife is a second authority. It's not head, it's arche there, which will be important later.

The word arche can also mean beginning or it can mean authority. The wife is a second authority. Let not her demand equality for she is under the head. Nor let him despise her as being in subjection for she is the body.

And if the head despise the body, it will perish. She reverences him as being the head. Hence, he places... God places the one in subjection, the other in authority that there may be peace for where there is equal authority there can never be peace.

The ruling power must of necessity be one. Go on. Head, head, head. Authority, authority, authority. Not heretic, heretic, heretic. She is the body, not to dictate to the head but to submit herself and obey.

Down here, we talk about teachers. Them that sin reprove in the sight of all is that the rulers are in a sickly state for if the head be not sound, how can the rest of the body maintain its vigor? This is teachers in the church.

Here are the teachers in the church who are, he says, rulers. They are the head. All right? Again, position of authority over the church. Well now, I found one place in Christendom where a woman was called the head of another person.

Headship and Authority in the Household

I never found this in all of the rest of Greek literature. And here it is. But, you say, the whole tribe of slaves is intolerable if it meet with indulgence. True, I know it myself. But then, as I was saying, correct them in some other way.

Not by the scourge only and by terror, but even by flattering them and by acts of kindness. If she is a believer, she is your sister. Consider that you are her mistress and that she ministers unto you.

If she be intemperate, cut off the occasions of drunkenness. Call your husband and admonish her. Et cetera. Even if she be drunkard, or gossip, et cetera. You have her for the partner of your life. Train and restrain her.

Necessity is upon you. It is for this that you are the head. Regulate her, therefore. Do your own part. He's talking to women and he's saying to them, you are the head. Head of whom? A slave or a servant woman in the household.

You are the head. Therefore, train. And he's even asking them to take care in that situation, in that society. But the significant point for us is the one place in which a woman is called the head is with respect to a servant girl or a slave who is under her authority.

So even in this case, the word head means one in authority over. Not heritage. Okay. So that was, that is the instances of head in Chrysostom. Now, what should we make of Prager's statement that John Chrysostom declared that only a heretic would understand Paul's use of head to mean chief or authority over.

It is simply false. Not only did Chrysostom never say this, he also regularly used kephalé to mean one in authority over. With regard to Christ's authority over the church, the father's authority over the son, church leader's authority over the church, and most frequently a husband's authority over his wife.

Now if I can go back to page one. What about Dr. Prager's other references to patristic texts, which she induces to support her claim that the church fathers argued vehemently that for Paul, head had meant source and they were quick to recognize the danger of an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 .3 which could place Christ in a subordinate position relative to the father.

We can examine these now. They are as follows. Athanasius, two quotations, Cyril of Alexandria two, Basil one, Theodore of Massouestia one, and Eusebius two. The first thing to notice is that four of these eight citations are found in one paragraph on page 749 of Lamp's patristic Greek lexicon.

Jeffrey Lamp edited this. I'm talking about lexicons here. Jeffrey Lamp has something called patristic Greek lexicon. It's after the time of the New Testament, all the church fathers. And it says. And in fact, Professor Lamp was one of the two examiners on my doctoral dissertation at Cambridge many years ago.

But in this lexicon, these references, four of these are found in one paragraph in that lexicon. And that is here on page transparency 13. This paragraph gives examples of Kephalae as equivalent of Archaic.

Could we see transparency 13? Oops. Oh, here's the list of the examples. I'm sorry. I'll come back to that in a minute. Now the next transparency. I'll keep these up here. Here's Lamp's patristic Greek lexicon, page 749.

And he's saying. In exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 .3, Kephalae is used as equivalent of Archaic. And here we have Athanasius, Cyril, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Cyril again. And Athanasius, Cyril, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Cyril again.

Those four are right from this page in the lexicon, the exact references. But Archaic is itself an ambiguous word. It sometimes means beginning. John 1 .1 and Archaic in the beginning was the word. Genesis 1 .1 and Archaic in the beginning.

God created the heavens and the earth. It can mean beginning or Archaic is Mark 1 .1 the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean, just the first thing. Or it sometimes means ruler or authority.

As in some of those quotations from Chrysostom, remember, she is the second Archaic, a second ruler. And so it sometimes means authority. It can mean beginning or authority. To find examples of Kephalae used as the equivalent of Archaic doesn't prove anything.

It doesn't prove that for the church fathers, Kephalae meant source. Okay, now we look at these quotations and I'll just look at some of them so we'll take the next transparency. Eusebius, here are a couple of her examples.

This is a little bit smaller. You can't see it. I'll just read it anyway. The great apostle teaches that the head of the son himself is God, but the head of the church is the son. How is he saying on the one hand the head of Christ is God, but on the other concerning the son that he gave him to be head over all things for the church?

Is it not, therefore, that he may be leader and head of the church, but of him the head is the father? But if there is one ruler, and here R .K. means ruler, and head, how could there be two gods? Is he not one alone?

The one above whom no one is higher is God the father. Neither does he claim any other cause of himself. He has acquired the familial unbegotten unbegotten deity from the monarchical authority as the father, and he has given to the son his own divinity and life, who through the son has placed all things in subjection.

Now how does the father relate to the son? He sends him, he appoints him, he commands, he teaches, he commits all things to him, he glorifies him, he exalts him, declares him king of all, has committed all judgment to him.

In other words, the head of Christ is God, does not diminish the fact that there is one ruler, God the father. That's not saying that Kephalé means source. That's establishing the sense of Kephalé as ruler.

We'll look at another one here. That was Eusebius here. Basil, the beloved is as the son of a unicorn. This Basil, PG 30, 80, 23, this nowhere exists in English translation, and as with some of these other quotations, this was a lot of work.