1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. 2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. 3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, [a] and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.Some of you readers—but I suspect fewer every year—remember when it was the custom in American Protestant churches (I had no familiarity as a boy with Catholic ones) for women to wear hats in church. In part, this was because women tended to wear hats whenever they dressed up. But it was also due in large measure to the traditional understanding of St. Paul's words in the first half of this chapter. Today there are two essentially different approaches to understanding these words of Paul's:
7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own [b] head, because of the angels.
11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.
13 Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.Footnotes:
- Or of the wife is her husband
- Or have a sign of authority on her
- that he was giving permanent and universal rules revealed to him by God for dress during worship, completely independent of a local culture's traditions, or
- that he was giving advice directed to a particular local situation, which was contingent on both the locale and the time period, even if that advice was built upon principles taken from both (OT) scripture and "nature".
Followers of the second school do not insist upon this rule. Woman may worship with heads either covered or uncovered. But both sexes should dress in a way that is modest and respectful—even if informal—and that encourages other worshipers around them to focus upon God and think pure and edifying thoughts.
As you know, in this day in which Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and adherents of other religions mingle freely with us, and "sensitivity" sessions are given in places of work to employees— dress requirements are everywhere important, not just among Jews and Christians. Dress is one of the ways that humans identify themselves with or distinguish themselves from others. Hippies loudly proclaim their liberation, but it is by their own dress—which is extremely uniform!—that they identify themselves with others who reject "bourgeois" and "uptight" citizens. So as we consider just what Paul is advising here, let us not unthinkingly reject all dress codes or norms. Let us rather think about what "message" the types of dress he refers to might have sent to those in Corinth—believers or not—who observed them.
Notice that Paul begins by a qualified word or praise for the Corinthian believers: "I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you" (v. 2). They were in fact doing some things quite well. They were observing several traditions that Paul passed along to them to regulate their behavior—both private behavior and corporate [church] behavior. Some Christians bristle at the very thought of traditions governing behavior. Such modern believers are not unlike some of the Corinthians in Paul's churches. Christ has set us "free" from the "traditions of men" which tend to obscure or pervert the clear meanings of OT scripture and of the principles of biblical ethics. Just as Jesus excoriated the Pharisees and scribes for "making void the Word of God by your traditions" (Mark 7:5-13), these people wanted nothing to do with "human traditions".
But first of all, we are not sure that by "traditions" Paul here does not mean (or at least 'include') scripture! After all, in the opening verses of 1 Cor. 15, he refers to the very essential points of the gospel as being "handed down" as "tradition". But secondly, just as Jesus commented upon—and therefore interpreted—certain passages of the Torah, thus creating his own tradition, so these additions to Old Testament scripture together with similar interpretations made by the apostles, including Paul, became a part of a body of recognized authoritative "tradition" in the earliest Church. And these "traditions" were circulated along with others about what Jesus had done and taught. The latter were eventually codified in the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Likewise some of the apostolic "traditions" that circulated alongside these were eventually incorporated in NT books, such as Paul's other letters, or the letters of Peter, James, John, and the Hebrews.
Traditions that are not today a part of Holy Scripture cannot enjoy the same authority. They are the opinions of good and sincere men, but not the Word of God. Such church traditions, including dogmatic theology, traditional liturgy, and even hymn texts, must always be tested against the teachings of Scripture. Any theological thinking—no matter how appealing or plausible—that does not agree with the Bible is wrong and should not be believed or taught or incorporated into worship services.
But now let's go back to Paul's "traditions". He doesn't specify which ones the Corinthians were following that he commended them for. But since right away he criticizes them for not following some that had to do with behavior in corporate worship, it is very possible that the things they were doing right were also in this realm. So what were these believers doing that Paul disapproved of? Apparently, some of the women believers were worshiping with uncovered heads, and some of the men believers with covered ones.
Why was this wrong? What in Paul's day was meant by a woman not covering her head in worship? Here we are helped by archaeological artifacts. To be specific, scenes of pagan worship on reliefs carved in stone.
A quote from one commentary helps to orient us in a general way:
Women’s hair was a common object of lust in antiquity, and in much of the eastern Mediterranean women were expected to cover their hair. To fail to cover their hair was thought to provoke male lust as a bathing suit is thought to provoke it in some cultures today. Head covering prevailed in Jewish Palestine (where it extended even to a face veil) and elsewhere, but upper-class women eager to show off their fashionable hairstyles did not practice it. Thus Paul must address a clash of culture in the church between upper-class fashion and lower-class concern that sexual propriety is being violated. (That Greeks bared their heads for worship and Romans covered them might also be significant, given the dual affiliation of Corinth as a Greek and Roman city. But because this custom was not divided along gender lines, it is probably irrelevant here.)Even the most "liberated" Modern Americans—especially the "Politically Correct" ones—should be able to relate to this, since they bend over backwards to respect the "modesty" rules of Muslim or Middle Eastern women, while mocking similar scruples held by native-born conservative Christian women! Obviously, there is something essentially arbitrary about deciding that a particular part of a woman's body is "unfairly" seductive to a modest man. It used to be just legs or bust lines. But in today's world of Muslim immigrants we see firsthand that even hair and neck should be modestly veiled.
But now let's return to Paul's reasoning and his recommendations. As he did in the case of the issue of eating food offered to idols, so here too Paul acknowledges that certain basic truths of the gospel indicate that there is full equality among believers in Jesus, whether they be Jew or Gentile, slave or free, man or woman. Such distinctions do not affect how God values a person. Although that is the case, there is no reason why a believing slave needs to enjoy the same privileges as a believing free man; he can continue to exist socially on a different level, knowing that before God he is on the same level as the free man. Similarly, although in Christ men and women believers are equal, they can and should continue to behave according to accepted gender roles. Being equal in Christ does not require that all believers enjoy identical social or administrative status. If respectable society expected a woman to dress in a certain way, and men in another, those boundaries should continue to be observed by believers, unless something about that dress inherently contradicts their moral character. Western missionaries during the 18th and 19th centuries were often offended by native traditions of nudity or semi-nudity, and attempted to impose western dress on converts. All that this accomplished was to drive a wedge between the new believers and their non-believing neighbors, so as to inhibit their ability to witness. The conventions of dress grow out of considerations that are often very subtle and difficult for outsiders to understand. Judgments about making changes should be undertaken with great care and patience and very reluctantly.
But Paul does not stop with the argument that "this is what decent people in your community expect". Rather he argues from a kind of theological basis. At the center of the argument is the account of the creation of humans in Genesis 2-3. The first woman Eve was created from a part of Adam's body (1 Cor. 11:8). Hence, she was in a sense derivative from the first man. Paul reasons that this symbolically suggests that within a marriage, in God's plan the man should be the leader (or "head"). In today's world, unlike the ancient world, married women often find employment outside the home and thus (more obviously—since it can be argued that even before this their housework constituted an essential and major part of the family's support) they share equally in the task of providing for the family financially. But in earlier times the man was traditionally the "Provider", and the woman the bearer of children and their teacher and nurturer. In the family circle the husband-father had God-given authority, and the woman's head cover was a sign of her husband's "authority" (verse 10).
But Paul hastens to say in verses 11-12, that other considerations show that both sexes are dependent upon each other. For as the first woman was "born" from the first man, so in all subsequent generations the children (including all the males) are born from a woman mother. Thus Adam named his wife Eve (Hebrew ḥavva), because she would be "the mother of all living beings." Paul says this in order to acknowledge that the rules he suggests for Corinth, while having a certain support from the creation account, must not be generalized so as to devalue women. In fact, in this very context he refers to women "praying and prophesying" in public.
So what in summary is Paul saying? He wishes the believers not to go to extremes in seeking to demonstrate their freedom and equality, but—as in the case of the food offered to idols—to be willing to give up privileges in order not to offend others, and in order to maintain a kind of public order that is respectable to the wider world. These are good considerations even today. In all this discussion, Paul does not command—he advises and reasons with his converts. And he urges them not to be "contentious" (v. 16). I would assume that this refers to persons holding either of the opposing views. Neither should be contentious. But Paul reminds them that there is no different custom observed by any of the local congregations he is familiar with (v. 16). So they should seek to conform to the general custom of all other churches.
ⓒ2008 Harry Hoffner
No comments:
Post a Comment