The Head of Christ is God?

Last Friday night at Hope Youth, we looked at 1 Corinthians 11. It’s a pretty controversial passage and I expected lots of questions, especially from our older youth. What got me really excited—some of our senior girls were asking about verse 3 and what it means for our doctrine of the Trinity. (Today, they’re officially my favourite group.)

1 Corinthians 11:3 says:

But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.[1]

Our youth were asking what it means to say that God is the head of Christ. Isn’t Christ also God? Wouldn’t that mean that they are equal? How can they be equal and yet different?

Well, it just so happened that on Sunday, I was preaching on Philippians 2. And it also just so happens that Philippians 2:6–7 have often been used to help make sense of how the Bible can speak of Jesus as equal to God and yet different to God.  

It reads:

6 [Christ Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 

It also just so happens that this week I gave a lecture on my main man Augustine of Hippo. This means that I’m very much in the mood for bustin’ some Augustine.

Augustine uses the language of Jesus being in “nature/form of God” and in the “nature/form of a servant” to make sense of what the Bible teaches about Jesus. We call this his “form rule”. Here’s a little passage from Augustine’s big work on the Trinity, De Trinitate:

And this rule for solving this question in all the sacred scriptures is laid down for us in this one passage of the apostle Paul’s letter, where the distinction is clearly set out. He says: Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal to God, yet he emptied himself taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, in condition found as a man (Phil 2:6). So the Son of God is God the Father’s equal by nature, by condition [that is, be becoming a man] his inferior.

In the form of a servant which he took he is the Father’s inferior;
in the form of God in which he existed even before he took this other he is the Father’s equal.

In the form of God, the Word through whom all things were made (Jn 1:3); in the form of a servant, one made of woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Gal 4:4). Accordingly, in the form of God he made man, in the form of a servant he was made man.[2] 

In the form of a servant, however, he is less than the Father, because he himself said The Father is greater than I (Jn 14:28); he is also less than himself, because it is said of him that he emptied himself (Phil 2:7).[3]

In the form of God, all things were made by him (Jn 1:3);
in the form of a servant, he himself was made of woman, made under the law (Gal 4:4).

In the form of God, he and the Father are one (Jn 10:30);
in the form of a servant, he did not come to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him (Jn 6:38).

In the form of God, as the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son also to have life in himself (Jn 5:26);
in the form of a servant, his soul is sorrowful to the point of death, and Father, he said, if it can be, let this cup pass by (Mt 26:38).

In the form of God, he is true God and life eternal (1 Jn 5:20);
in the form of a servant, he became obedient to the point of death, the death even of the cross (Phil 2:8).  

In the form of God, everything that the Father has is his (Jn 16:15), and all yours is mine, he says, and mine yours (Jn 17:10);
in the form of a servant, his doctrine is not his own, but his who sent him (Jn 7:16).[4]

So there’s the principle that helps Augustine work it all out. Some passages talk about the Son in the form of God, others in the form of a servant.

And then, when we get to Book 6 of De Trinitate, Augustine uses this kind of thinking to make sense of 1 Corinthians 11:3. He writes:

But here again, if only the three all together can be called God, how is God the head of Christ—that is, on this supposition, the trinity the head of Christ—when Christ is included in the trinity to make it three?

 Or is it that what the Father and the Son are together is head of what the Son is alone? The Father and the Son together are God, but only the Son is Christ, especially as it is the Word already made flesh who is speaking in the lowliness by which the Father is greater, as he says himself, For the Father is greater than I (Jn 14:28).

So it might be that his being God, which he has in common with the Father, is head of the man mediator which he alone is.[5]

The important take away: the Son is very much equal to God, especially in his divinity. At the same time, he is less than God in his humanity, when he takes on human flesh. And it’s in this second sense that Paul can say that God (the Father) is the head of Christ (the Son).

Augustine, you’ve done it again.

Notes:

[1] All translations are from the NIV.

[2] Augustine, The Trinity: Introduction, Translation and Notes, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 5, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century 1 (Brooklyn: New City, 1991), 1.7.14.

[3] Augustine, The Trinity, 1.11.22.

[4] Augustine, The Trinity, 1.11.22.

[5] Augustine, The Trinity, 6.9.10.