Not katakyrieuein but typos Domination, pattern, and a New Testament criteriology of power for Christian leadership
Abstract
Critical leadership studies and postcolonial theology increasingly read servant and stewardship models as benevolent domination. This study asked whether the New Testament itself supplies criteria distinguishing formative authority from domination. Taking 1 Peter 5:1–4 as seed text and corroborating it across Titus 1:7, Mark 10:42–45, Luke 22:25–26, Galatians 3:24–4:7 and Ephesians 4:11–13, it derived a fourfold criteriology. Power becomes counter-formative when it violates its basis, its mode (katakyrieuein rather than typos), its term (suspending the father’s prothesmia), or its telos (producing dependents rather than mature heirs). Two findings proved decisive: Galatians 4:1–2 subordinates the dominus to the oikonomos, so the colonial charge misidentifies its target; and Luke 22:25 exposes benevolent domination from within the text, since dominating rulers are precisely those called benefactors. A violation does not abolish the norm it violates but presupposes it. The criteriology is a text-derived normative construct; empirical testing in Indonesian church and theological education is the ensuing research agenda, not undertaken here.
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