A Key to Understanding Salvation Through Jesus: Federal Headship
Key Concepts
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The notion of “headship” may be more familiar to my Protestant readers than to my Catholic ones, but for anybody not up to speed, I’ll start by summarizing the idea generally, and then we can look at how the idea is relevant in Biblical theology.
So first, what is "headship"? The word signifies that an individual not only has authority to judge and direct the activity of a "body" of people under him, but that he also stands as a representative on their behalf. It implies that there is a sharing of merits and demerits between the two.
Even today, the concept of headship is vestigially present in, for only one example, the United States presidency. One reason why election season is always a waking nightmare, and why the actions of the president elicit such strong emotion on both sides, is that he is seen as a “head.” There’s no getting away from him. His actions affect the nation as a whole, and in some way, for good or ill, he represents and speaks for all of us to the world.
Headship is central to the entire biblical narrative. God's dealings with groups of people based on the actions of individuals would seem capricious without the concept of headship. But with it, the logic of the New Testament's presentation of the fulfillment of God's promises of salvation in Jesus become quite intelligible.
In the Old Testament, for example, because Adam failed in his charge to serve God by protecting and tending the garden, God cursed his seed- namely, the whole human race. Because of Noah's faith, the human race was preserved from total destruction in the Flood. Because of Abraham's faith, the nation of Israel is promised God's predilection and blessing. Because David sinned by taking a census of Israel, God made him choose one of three calamities that would befall the whole nation. Examples could be multiplied.
Now, the New Testament addresses itself broadly to two problems: first, the covenant with Israel which was meant to make them a "light to the nations" (Isaiah 49), but which had been broken and needed dealing with before the second problem could be addressed: the renewal of creation and the bringing of all the nations of the world, (not just Israel this time), into God's covenant family.
It answers both questions by appealing to the headship of Christ over both Israel, and humanity as a whole.
Matthew, being the expert theologian-author that he is, establishes headship as the undergirding to his whole presentation of the story of Jesus. The other evangelists of course presuppose Christ's headship as well, but in Matthew it is most obviously and consistently apparent.
As God dealt with peoples through their heads in the Old Testament, Matthew makes it impossible for the reader to miss from the very beginning of his Gospel that Jesus is 1. a new patriarch, a new prophet, a new head, and as such, 2. a surrogate for the nation of Israel. Therefore, God will deal with the people who gather around Jesus through Jesus himself, because he is their head. These two threads can be discerned fairly easily throughout the Gospel once you know to look for them, and they bring the whole picture of the gospel story into much clearer relief.
The first chapter of Matthew opens by placing Jesus within a long line of major and minor patriarchs of Israel. This is not to say that every name in the genealogy is that of a patriarch per se, but that it is a string linking the major leaders of Israel together, and climactically terminating with Jesus. Matthew’s implication is obvious: we have in Jesus another patriarchal leader. A new head.
It is telling that Matthew summarizes the genealogy by breaking it up into three divisions: Abraham to David, David to the deportation of Israel to Babylon, and from the deportation to Babylon to Jesus. No mention of a return from Babylon. What is implied by Matthew is that Israel is still in "Babylon," i.e. still in exile, and what is further implied is that if Israel is still in exile, then another sort of Exodus will be necessary. And if another Exodus, then another great prophet like Moses.
The angel Gabriel next refers to Joseph as the son of David, again signaling to the reader that we have not only a new prophet according to the pattern of Israel's greatest prophet- Moses, but a new king according to the pattern of Israel's greatest king. Other more subtle references to Moses and David punctuate chapters 1 and 2 (and the rest of the Gospel). But then Matthew noticeably shifts gears away from identifying Jesus only with major individual figures in Israel's history, to identifying him with the whole nation itself.
With the visit of the gentile wise men following the star and carrying their treasures in chapter 2:9-11, Matthew subtly reminds the reader of the prophecy of Isaiah 49:2: "...I will make you a light to the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth," and Isaiah 60:
Arise! Shine! your light has come, and the glory of the Lord shines upon you. See, a darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples ("gentiles"), but the Lord rises upon you and His glory appears over you. Nations ("gentiles") will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn...the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations ("gentiles") will come.
Next, the flight of the holy family into Egypt of course reminds the reader of Israel's exile there, and Herod's slaughtering of the innocents calls to mind the killing of the sons of Israel by pharaoh. Importantly, he quotes from Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt I have called my son."
In its original context, by “son,” Hosea is referring to Israel. But Matthew uses it in reference to Jesus. But the point is not that Matthew changes the meaning from Israel to Jesus, but he adds Jesus to the meaning already present. That is to say, Matthew identifies Jesus with Israel. In Jesus, Israel is reliving its relationship with Yahweh.
The baptism of Jesus and his time in the desert seal the deal for the reader who can't help but have the crossing of the Red Sea and Israel's desert wandering in mind. Strictly, these quotations and allusions in their contexts all apply to Israel as a corporate body, but Matthew applies them to Jesus himself.
Matthew does more with this project throughout his gospel but the point is clear: Jesus personifies Israel, which is a function properly understood only of biblical headship.
This is where the New Testament is ingenius in its presentation of Jesus as a federal head of Israel: it needs to do no violence to the primary sense of the Old Testament stipulations and promises given to the nation of Israel, while being able simultaneously to present their "fulfillment" in the story of Jesus. Insofar as Jesus takes on the role of head and therefore proxy for the nation, he acts on its behalf. In this way, he is able to take upon himself the necessity of satisfying the terms of the broken Mosaic covenant and annulling it by his death (since a contract is void upon the death of one of the parties), and is able to establish a new covenant for all those who "belong to him:" this time not only Israel, but all humanity. This is precisely the argument put forward in the 9th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews.
Paul makes explicit the significance of the headship of Christ in his epistles to the Corinthians (especially 1 Corinthians 15), and Ephesians (chapter 5), departing from the importance of the Mosaic covenant established only with Israel in chapter 4 of his epistle to the Romans for the new and universal covenant offered to all men established by Christ:
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. As by the one man's disobedience, all were made sinners, so by one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. (Rom 5:18-19)
Here, Paul is comparing the headships of Adam and Jesus with respect to the entire human race.
The problem as he describes it is that Adam as our natural head has implicated all those whom he represented (namely, all humanity which is descended from him) in breaking the primordial covenant of Eden, and the solution given is that Jesus is made a new, supernatural head of humanity, supplanting the unrighteousness of Adam with his own righteousness, and faith is the means by which one becomes a member of this recreated humanity under Jesus (Rom. 5:1-2). He elaborates on the effect of this righteousness in 1 Corinthians 15, namely, the reversal of the death resulting from Adam's sin:
Since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ the firstfruits, and then when he comes, those who belong to him.
With the concept of headship, the atonement that Christ offers in our behalf and the grace of rebirth available by means of faith in him is explicable as being entirely consistent with God's M.O. throughout the whole Biblical narrative. It’s not just theological inside baseball: a detached and campy 16th century scholastic debate about the metaphysical mechanics of sacrifice and justification, all while pressing scripture into hard service as proof text.
The Bible is much more interesting than all that.