Daniel HAYTER

05/01/2007

Head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11: Are they timeless or culturally specific?

1 Corinthians 11:1-16 (ESV) 1

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. 2Now I commend you because you remember

me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. 4Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonours his head, 5but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head--it is the same as if her head were shaven. 6For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. 7

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but

woman is the glory of man. 8For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. 11

Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman;

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for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things

are from God. 13Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, 15but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. 16If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.

Introduction

1 Corinthians 11: 1-16 is one of the most controversial passages in the Bible and people’s explanations are therefore often taken for granted. At a first glance, it looks like Paul, is simply instructing the Corinthians on what they should wear and what their hairstyles should be like, but Paul is aiming at a much bigger issue here,

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one which we shall discover later on. The difficulty of this passage resides in the fact that Paul is writing nearly 2000 years ago and that the culture is completely different. So as Christians our struggle is to find out if head coverings are just a cultural thing or if we must apply it as a timeless truth. A text of this difficulty and of this importance (it is after all part of the God’s holy word) deserves a closer looking at. We must be very careful and proceed with great care and organisation. First of all, let’s have a look at the context of this letter and the culture that Corinth is part of.

The Context of this letter

The first epistle to the Corinthians was written for multiple reasons. Parts of the letter help us guess that Paul is answering questions sent to him in another letter from the Corinthians to Paul. These questions concern marriage, celibacy and food offered to idols mainly. However due to Paul’s tone in some parts of this letter, we can fairly confidently claim that Paul had heard disturbing rumours about certain practices of the Corinthians and he is rebuking them for them. Paul also says that he has heard rumours of divisions in the church and he is worried about these. Paul is therefore writing to a rather immature and socially unstable church which abuses their freedom, and his aim is to put them back on the right path. When reading from the Bible, we mustn’t isolate the part we are reading from the rest. It’s important to notice what comes before this part of the letter. Just before Paul gives what would seem instructions on head coverings, he deals with the issue of eating meat sacrifices to idols. This actually is very helpful because it starts with a very radical: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons”(v.21) and this looks like Paul is saying that it is a sin to eat food sacrificed to idols. However in the verses following this statement, Paul explains this in a different way and says: “If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience-- I do not mean your conscience, but his.”(v.27-29). He explains that if you eat meat offered to an idol it is not a sin. What is wrong however is to eat the meat if someone who is with you has 2

just told you that the meat was sacrificed to and idol, not for your own consciences sake, but so that the person watching you does not see the wrong heart attitude. This will help us understand chapter 11 easier. Let’s also take a look at what comes after the passage. Paul starts by saying in verse 17: “But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse”. Let’s not neglect the first word: But. This is extremely important because it helps us understand that Paul was not rebuking the Corinthians severely about the head coverings, rather he is giving them instructions. This was not some scandalous thing that had happened, however from verse 17 onwards it was a serious moral issue. Understanding this should help us see a more peaceful style in Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians about propriety in worship, and the text will not have such a condemning feel to it. In the rest of this letter there are also other parts dealing with could-be cultural issues. For example in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says that Women are to remain silent in the Church and ask their husband about anything they did not understand when they get back home. This seems to be saying that women should not say anything in Church. However, in chapter 11 Paul was talking about Women prophesying and he was not forbidding women to contribute in church life. Therefore the easiest way to understand this part of Corinthians is to see that Paul is talking about orderly worship and that he does not with there to be disorder caused by women chatting or interrupting during the “sermon”. This was actually what used to happen in a lot of Churches: The women would sit at the back and chat. This shows us that we mustn’t just take everything the Bible says literally and out of context, but we must also consider the culture of the time. Indeed, the culture at that time was one that would have seen married women in a public place without head coverings as a disgrace. Corinth was under roman control when this letter was written and married women always covered their head in public. Also, women who had short or shaved hair were usually prostitutes. The Roman culture was imminent in every town that the early churches were based in, but head covering was also a Jewish tradition. Understanding the culture will also help us discover if Paul is talking about a cultural issue or a timeless one. In the whole bible, however there seems to be no other mention of head coverings. There certainly does not seem to be a law dealing with this issue. So it seems like there is no God-given law that would oblige women to cover their heads. 3

Study of the passage

Let’s now study the passage to find out what Paul is aiming at.

Verse 1-2: In verse 1 and 2 Paul starts by encouraging the Corinthians to imitate the way he acts (notice that he doesn’t say “do what I say” but “do what I do”: he puts into practise what he preaches) and encourages them by commending them for remembering the traditions. This shows that Paul is not setting himself up to rebuke them sternly or anything but only to guide them.

Verse 3: Paul starts building up his main argument here. He says a lot about different people’s “heads”. The meaning of the word “head” here is crucial to understanding this verse. The word head in Greek would arguably have to meanings: Authority and source, leading to these 2 understandings of this verse: -“But I want you to understand that the Authority of every man is Christ, the Authority of a wife is her husband, and the Authority of Christ is God”. -“But I want you to understand that the source of every man is Christ, the source of a wife is her husband, and the source of Christ is God”. These 2 verses have very different meanings, so it’s important not to overlook the possibility of head meaning source. However according to Grudem’s research on the use of this word in Greek, the word head is used as “authority” in almost every other case and not only in the Bible. I would think it’s a safe bet to say that in this passage the word head is referring to authority rather than source. Indeed why would Paul use such an obscure word to describe source if that wasn’t the primary meaning of that word? So from here we can take the first understanding of this verse. A way to interpret this verse is to think that Paul is using a sort of decrescendo (i.e.: Christ superior to Men (this is true) and Men superior to Women), however nothing in this verse implies that Paul is saying that women are at the bottom of the scale and Paul himself denies this in a lot of his writings. It is much more likely that Paul is referring to the fact that a married man is the head of his household, and this is not an authority 4

of superiority at all. Indeed Paul then says that the head of Christ is God. We all know that Christ is equal to God yet submits to him and is God. My understanding of why Paul says that God is the head of Christ is actually to counterattack any people who would say that women we inferior to men. So basically Paul has just laid down the different headships to make it clear who has authority over whom without denying equality between the sexes.

Verse 4: “Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonours his head”. Let’s break down this verse. “Every man who prays or prophesies with his head uncovered”: what situation is Paul talking about here? Had he just been talking about praying, then this verse would be much harder to interpret. Paul is also talking about prophesy which he sees for “building up the Church”: “The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.”(1 Corinthians 14:4, used with permission). Paul is talking about the Church meeting together and not one’s quiet prayers alone in secret (you can deduce this also from the context of the letter. Let’s now take the second part of the verse: “with his head covered dishonours his head”. Another meaning for dishonouring is disgracing (NASB). Paul is basically saying that a man praying or prophesying with his head covered shows lack of honour towards his head. Which head though? Paul’s double use of head might not have been involuntary. I would tend to think that Paul could have meant physical head (which probably would mean “oneself” rather than one’s actual head) and Authoritative head here at the same time. So Paul could be saying that he who prays with his head covered dishonours both himself and Christ which is logical because if you disgrace Christ you are equally disgracing yourself (his Authority).

Verse 5: The meaning of the beginning of this verse is to be taken as the same as verse 4, but this time applying to women and to their head/authority. The interesting part of the verse is at the end: “it is the same as if her head were shaven”. There is more than what could look like simple irony on Paul’s behalf here. The NASB tends to suggest a further implication than just shaved hair: “for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved”. The NASB explains that she is the same as the 5

women who has shaved her head. In the Roman Empire, prostitutes shaved their heads, and Paul is very possibly saying that those who don’t wear head coverings are just the same as prostitutes. This seems very harsh, but just what would Paul associate with prostitutes? A prostitute obviously does not submit to a husband and therefore looking like a prostitute would tend to show that you are not submitted to your husband, which is what the Bible teaches. Surely the church of God wants to show that married couples have a godly marriage. If the wife’s external appearance is showing a lack of submission to her husband, then what will people outside the church think of the church? This verse is starting to help us understand the purpose of the head coverings and why they were so important.

Verse 6: This verse continues on from the last part of verse 5. If a woman will not cover her head, then she should have it shaven. What sort of tone of speech is Paul using here? Is it an instruction or is this just a way of saying: “Well if she’s going to uncover her head, she might as well go the whole way and shave it all off.” I would tend to think that Paul is doing the latter. He does not sound like he is saying that a women MUST shave her hair off if she uncovers it whilst praying or prophesying, it sounds more like he’s trying to show them how outrageous this would seem to people: “well if you insist on disgracing yourselves publicly, why stop at just uncovering your hair?”. I’m not saying this is a right interpretation, but to me it seems to fit with the verse before. Paul then repeats that it’s a disgrace to have shaved hair for a woman, so to avoid disgrace she might as well wear a head covering. It seems more and more that Paul is not getting at head coverings as much as simply having an honourable appearance and showing mutual submission in church life and he is underlining how disgraceful it is for a woman not to wear a head covering. Note also that Paul is also pretty clearly referring to married women and not just women in general, I think this can show that he’s actually worried about people seeing wives that don’t look submitted to their husband rather than people seeing women with heads uncovered. This is not an anti-women attack from Paul, who actually promotes what would seem outrageous freedom for women to the average Jew in other letters (e.g: Women and Men are both equal in Christ).

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Verse 7-9: Here Paul says that since Man is made in God’s image and is his glory, he should not cover his head. Maybe so that creation can see God’s glory displayed. However he doesn’t seem to include women in this. Paul looks like he’s referring to Genesis 1, where it says that God created man in his own image. But Genesis 1 also says that God created man, male and female: There is no distinction between sexes when it talks about us being created in God’s image, so why does Paul just refer to men when talking about the glory of God? I do not think he is denying women being the glory of God. However in the whole bible it’s very clear that men and women have different roles, even though they are equal. Another thing that we must remember is that Paul was anointed to understand things from the scriptures that seem very difficult, so maybe there is a wisdom in what Paul is saying that makes it hard to understand. Taking these 3 verses as a whole, you can see that Paul is explaining that women and men are different, firstly in the way they were created:”For man was not made from woman, but woman from man” but also in what they were created for: “Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” So I don’t think these verses are to be taken as excluding women from being the glory of God, but rather making a distinction between what they were made for. The fact that woman was made for man, does not make women inferior to men, and Paul insists on this from verse 11.

Verse 10: This all leads to the point Paul is trying to make. Man has authority over women (not dominion), and how are we going to make this visible. Paul says that the women should wear a “symbol of authority” on her head. Notice once more that he doesn’t say head covering but “symbol of authority”. Now the definition of symbol is: “Something used for or regarded as representing something else; a material object representing something, often something immaterial; emblem, token, or sign.” Now if a woman is wearing a head covering what does it show according to Paul? The head covering is basically a physical way of showing that she is submitted to her husband, and in that culture that was the standard sign of submission. Paul then adds “because of the angels.” What on earth does Paul mean? Why suddenly add something to do with angels? Some people say that this is added here because the angels also cover their heads when they worship God (referring to books like Isaiah), however I’m not 7

sure this is the right interpretation in this case. Indeed, if it was, then all people should cover their heads. The word angel can also mean “messenger” here, a person sent to observe and report. It’s implied in the bible that angels cannot see your thoughts as God can, so if a “messenger” sees a women prophesying without a head covering it won’t be able to see the person’s heart attitude and might take the wrong conclusion.

Verse 11-12: Paul now explains that even though woman was created from man, mankind is now born from woman and that in God, women and men are not independent but equal in God’s eyes and both have complimentary parts to play in God’s plans. Paul Finishes by saying that all things are of God, reminding the Corinthians that they were all created by the same God.

Verse 13: Paul isn’t just content with explaining this to the Corinthians; he wants them “judge for themselves”. He asks them to look at this issue themselves. “Is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered?” Paul uses the word proper, and not godly, moral or even lawful. They are to judge if it is proper and not if it is sinful. Is it seen as wrong to pray with your head uncovered, what will other think about your attitude when they see this? This looks like Paul might be implying the same thing he wrote about in the chapter before: is what you are doing helpful to others or not?

Verse 14-15: These two verses seem mysterious. Wasn’t Paul just talking about head coverings? Why now move on to hair length? Paul refers to nature itself, obviously meaning natural inclinations taken by men and women over time. What he says about it being a disgrace for men to have long hair and women short hair it true of just about every civilisation over time, up until when he was writing the letter (even if there were some exceptions). This was certainly true in the first century in Corinth. It does not seem like the Corinthians had a problem with hair lengths, but I think Paul is 8

referring to this to add to his argument about head coverings rather than adding that women should also have long hair. He could be explaining that it is natural for a woman to have long hair because that is what human instinct would tend to suggest, so in the same way it should be natural for women to cover their heads if this is what is usual for humans. Hair is given to women as a covering Paul explains, so a covering is a natural thing for women. But to be honest, without being sure of the context it is very difficult to explain why these two verses are here.

Verse 16: Paul explains that it is a custom for women to cover their head in every church that has been planted, which tends to indicate the fact that it is not culturally specific. However all the churches were under roman control, meaning that some elements of roman culture were present in each of the early church? So this verse doesn’t rule out the fact this could be culturally specific, as it could have been a culturally specific thing in the whole of the Roman Empire.

Conclusion

So what should we conclude then? Is this culturally specific or timeless. Let’s go with Paul’s way of working. Everything is lawful, but not everything is useful and could trouble other people’s consciences. So, we can say that there is no condemnation for women who wear or do not wear head coverings when praying, however, what are non Christians likely to think about women praying or prophesying without head coverings. Remember that during the first century head coverings were a sign of submission to one’s husband. Nowadays, head coverings would probably be seen as extremist and is probably more likely to scare people than to inspire their respect. So it seems that civilisation’s feelings on this issue have changed over the centuries. Secondly, there is absolutely no mention of it being a sin to pray without head coverings in the whole of the Bible. It looks like in the case of the church in Corinth, it is an “external symbol of an internal attitude”. The internal attitude that Paul was getting at was to not use you freedom anyhow, but to think about other people and if what you are doing is helpful to them or if it is showing disgrace (e.g.: women who do 9

not look submitted to their husbands). The fact that there is absolutely no mention of head coverings in worship anywhere else in the Bible makes it seem culturally specific.

So it looks like we have passage dealing about how husbands and wives are to display their different roles in a visual way in public places that is not a stumbling block for non-believers. It seems therefore that this is a culturally specific custom and that the question we should be asking ourselves is not specifically “should woman cover their heads?” but rather, is our external appearance reflecting a healthy heart attitude of submission to authority inside the church?

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