1. Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11:1–16
Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11:1–16
One passage generally acknowledged to address a specific cultural situation is 1 Corinthians 11:2–16. Paul presents four basic arguments for why married women should wear head coverings in church worship services: the order of the home, the order of creation, the order of nature itself, and church custom. Although many churches would use arguments like these to demand the subordination of women in all cultures, very few accept Paul’s arguments here as valid for covering women’s heads in all cultures. “Men preaching and teaching is something for all cultures,” they say, “whereas women wearing head coverings was only an issue back then.”
This seems to me a curious form of reasoning, however: the same argument Paul uses in one passage for forbidding women to teach he uses in another passage to argue that married women (i.e., nearly all adult women in his day) must cover their heads in church. In the one passage, Paul does not want the women of a certain congregation to teach; in the other passage, he wants the women of a certain congregation to cover their heads. We take the argument as transculturally applicable in one case, but not so in the other. This seems very strange indeed.
Someone who advocates women’s subordination may object that Paul would understand that styles of apparel are different in our day than they were in his, so that a modern woman could attend church without a hat, and a man might even venture to wear one. But to this we would reply that Paul would understand that styles of ministry, the educational level of women, and the moral and social significance of women teaching is different from what it was in Paul’s day, and that he would therefore approve of women teaching in church.
In this chapter I will address only 1 Corinthians 11, examining the nature of head coverings and each of Paul’s arguments for why the Corinthian women ought to wear them. Because some of Paul’s arguments in this passage are difficult for modern readers to follow, the discussion will necessarily be involved at times. But the basic points of his argument are not difficult to grasp.
INTERPRETATIONS OF 1 CORINTHIANS 11:2–16
The following survey of views is not exhaustive, but it is representative of the different sorts of positions that other writers have taken concerning this passage.[1]
Some deal with this troublesome passage by excising it entirely, claiming that a later writer inserted it into Paul’s letter.[2] In one major academic journal, a scholar argued that this passage was an interpolation (an insertion);[3] another scholar responded, “No, it’s not”;[4] and still another scholar responded, “Oh yes, it is.”[5] Those who feel that the passage is an insertion argue that it is not consistent with the way Paul thinks elsewhere, a thesis that is more than a little questionable. But even if the text stood in tension with what Paul writes elsewhere, we must remember that it was not uncommon for ancient writers to write things that sometimes stood in tension with each other; modern writers do the same thing, especially when they address different issues.[6] And the textual basis for removing this passage is impossibly weak.[7]
Other scholars accept the passage as authentic but ask whether its instruction is specific to that culture or universal in its import. At least one scholar does suggest that Christian women should still cover their heads in church today,[8] and I admire his consistency on the matter, even though I disagree with him. Less consistent, though surely more popular, is the view that a head covering was simply the ancient cultural manifestation of a wife’s subjection to her husband; the head coverings are no longer necessary, but the subjection is.[9] My objection to this approach is: how do we know that the subjection was not also cultural?
Those who view Paul as reflecting the standards of his culture vary in the extent to which they accept his teaching here as valid for all cultures. Ramsay suggests that Paul was merely a child of his age on the matter of head coverings, but that his eternally valid view is presented in Galatians 3:28, “in Christ there is . . . neither male nor female.”[10] Perhaps more sympathetic to the Paul of 1 Corinthians 11 is the related view of Morna Hooker:
Because it seemed to Paul (conditioned as he was by his Jewish upbringing) that the only way of avoiding scandal in the particular social conditions of first-century Corinth was for women to wear something on their heads in public, women continued to be expected to wear hats in church for almost 1900 years thereafter. Could there have been a greater distortion of the spirit of Paul, who insisted that religion was not a matter of law, than to turn him into a great lawgiver?[11]
One increasingly common view is that Paul is refuting a Corinthian view that women in the congregation should cover their heads, and is arguing that the women should resist this requirement.[12] But this view strains our sense that Paul could write clearly; although Paul sometimes cites Corinthian views before qualifying and correcting them, the whole tenor of this passage is that he does indeed want the Corinthian women to cover their heads.
A related and more likely position is that while Paul acknowledges these women’s authority over their own heads (11:10), he calls on them to submit to the head coverings so as not to cause offense.[13] This position has in its favor the entire preceding context of surrendering one’s own “rights” (the same term Paul uses in 11:10 for “authority”) to avoid causing others to lose faith in Christ.[14] Since 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 address various issues raised by the practice of food offered to idols, with Paul using himself as an example of sacrificing one’s own rights in chapter 9, this makes the most sense of the passage in the context. In the rest of the chapter Paul returns to a discussion of eating, although there he states his case far more forcefully than he does regarding head coverings, because the next issue is less morally ambiguous (contrast 11:2, 17).[15]
What then do we make of Paul’s arguments in 11:2–16? I will argue later in this chapter that Paul’s arguments here (as often elsewhere) are meant to persuade his readers in terms of the logic of their own culture. Paul was a masterful missionary, and he was skilled enough in debate to understand the Corinthians’ own views, and to probe the Corinthians for consistency until he could persuade them to change their positions. This does not mean that his logic is the same sort of logic a Christian philosopher would use today. Had any one of his arguments here been an absolute, unambiguous, universal proof, Paul could have settled for one argument instead of four.[16] As Gordon Fee notes, Paul here appeals to “shame, propriety, and custom” rather than to outright declarations or commands; this is a cultural issue, not a “life-and-death matter” like the abuse of the Lord’s Supper.[17]
WOMEN’S HEAD COVERINGS IN ANTIQUITY
When we speak of head coverings, we are normally speaking of a shawl that covered a woman’s hair instead of a face-veil. Although some of our evidence, especially from the eastern Mediterranean, may suggest the use of face-veils such as now are in vogue in traditional Middle Eastern societies, most of our evidence points to a covering that concealed only the hair from view.[18] Since veils were one kind of head covering, we subsume evidence for them under our discussion below on head coverings in general.
Some scholars have argued that neither a veil nor a shawl was in view in this passage, but rather hair put up high on one’s head instead of being let down. For example, James Hurley suggests that the accepted custom of wearing one’s hair up in church was being violated by controversial women who were letting their hair down.[19] He cites 1 Timothy 2:9 (which addresses wealthier women who are showing off their faddish hairstyles in church) to show that women in Pauline congregations did not wear veils.[20] But we might cite the same passage to show why Paul wanted them to cover their heads—to avoid showing off their fashionable hairstyles in church! Hurley’s position is problematic, as Fee points out; if an “uncovered” head simply means “having her hair down,” how is “the man’s not covering his head in v. 7 . . . the opposite of this?”[21] It is thus clear that head coverings, not merely long hair, are in view.
In this first section of our discussion of the custom of head coverings in antiquity, we start with the possibly related question of the seclusion of women in some aspects of Greek culture.
Seclusion of Women in Classical Antiquity
The practice of women covering their heads in public may be related to the old Greek tradition that restricted women in many ways to the domestic sphere.[22] In theory, at least,[23] women in fourth century BCE Athens could not go to the market and were not to be seen by men who were not their relatives.[24] The orators especially attest the separation of male and female spheres of life in classical Athens,[25] and “one speaker in court seeks to impress the jury with the respectability of his family by saying that his sister and nieces are ‘so well brought up that they are embarrassed in the presence even of a man who is a member of the family.’ ”[26] Under classical Athenian law, a wife who needlessly entered the public sphere placed her honor as a faithful wife in grave danger.[27]
This ideal seems to have continued to some degree in conservative parts of the Greek-speaking Mediterranean world, through the period directly before the spread of Christianity. Thus marriage contracts from first or second century BCE Egypt could include the demand that the wife not leave the home without her husband’s permission.[28] Even in a later period, it could be thought scandalous to force a man to bring his wife before the public contrary to his wishes, especially if he wished to keep others from gazing on her beauty.[29]
Thus in ancient romances, a beautiful virgin might never have appeared in public before meeting her lover, so that her lover was the first to behold her.[30] A wisdom work, probably Jewish, advises its readers: “Guard a virgin in firmly locked rooms, and do not let her be seen before the house until her wedding day.”[31]
Roman women were, however, much less secluded, although some moralists ideally wished them to be more secluded than they were. It was reported that in an earlier period a husband might have divorced his wife for going into public unveiled, or disciplined his wife or daughter for conversing publicly with another man.[32] Writing in Greek in the Roman period, Plutarch extols the modesty of the virtuous woman who, when a man praised the beauty of her suddenly exposed arm, retorted that its beauty was not meant for the public. Plutarch goes on to explain that a woman’s talk should also be kept private within the home.[33] For him, “keeping at home and keeping silence” are joint aspects of a wife’s virtue; she “ought to do her talking either to her husband or through her husband.”[34] He further recommends that “a virtuous woman ought to be most visible in her husband’s company, and to stay in the house and hide herself when he is away.”[35]
But while writers upheld this traditional seclusion of wives as an ideal,[36] it had never been more than an ideal.[37] We cannot suppose that all levels of society hearkened to the moralists (the moralists themselves were well aware that this was the case), and other writers like the satirists (who instead exaggerate public immorality) certainly suggest that reality was far from the moralists’ ideal in their own time.
Jewish women in Palestine were expected to go to the marketplace,[38] but in towns of the Greek east they followed the Greek customs of relative seclusion.[39] Philo, a prominent Jewish thinker in first-century Egypt, declares that it is best for women to stay indoors, to avoid matters apart from their household concerns, and to remain secluded.[40] In 4 Maccabees, a document written outside Palestine, the righteous mother of martyrs reminds her children that she had been a pure virgin who had not gone outside her father’s house.[41] Even in Jewish Palestine, however, great modesty was expected in public; according to laws later set down by Jewish legal scholars, “a husband was compelled to divorce his wife if she appeared in public in torn clothing or bathed together with men, as was the Roman custom.”[42]
Throughout most of the first-century empire, women generally were not required to remain at home, but it does appear that they were more restricted in their public activities than their husbands were, and that this was often due to the fear that they would prove too attractive to other men. Some ancient writers, especially Jewish teachers, used the same rationale to get women to cover their heads, as we shall see shortly. First, however, we must investigate several other suggestions about ancient practices that might have led Paul to suggest that women in Corinth cover their heads.
Prostitutes or Pagan Prophetesses?
Why would the Corinthian Christian women’s uncovered heads have caused offense? One recurrent suggestion is that an uncovered head was the traditional garb of prostitutes.[43]
Dress could indeed sometimes indicate that a woman was a prostitute, and some morally disreputable members of high society purportedly liked this kind of apparel: “typically, bright colours, a tunic showing part of their legs, diaphonous fabrics and a toga instead of the customary cloak. Elaborate hairdressing and makeup were part of the self-presentation for the better-class whores.”[44]
But the evidence for head coverings distinguishing wives from prostitutes is slender; very few traditions from the Near East attest it. Ancient Assyrian women were not to go out with their heads uncovered, but if a prostitute were caught with a veil on she would be flogged with staves fifty times and have pitch poured over her head. Female slaves, who, as in other cultures, often served as prostitutes for their masters, were likewise forbidden to veil themselves.[45] If a man veiled a woman, he thereby made her his wife.[46] But these rules are from far to the east of Paul’s cultural world, and from well over a thousand years before him (i.e., the twelfth century BCE).
The idea of prostitutes going unveiled may have continued in the eastern Mediterranean, since the practice is assumed by an anonymous third-century rabbi,[47] who argues that Judah had trouble believing that Tamar was a harlot because her face was covered.[48] But, as we shall note below, head coverings typified married women in general in Jewish Palestine, so that an uncovered head could indicate a virgin seeking a husband as easily as it could connote a prostitute. The rabbi no doubt thought Tamar’s head covering problematic only because it would have normally identified her as a married woman in his culture.[49]
Others, noting that the issue in the context is how women pray and prophesy, have suggested instead that Paul may have been thinking of the “uncovered and dishevelled heads” of pagan prophetesses.[50] As we shall see below, in most Greek religious activities women uncovered their heads, and this may be significant. But it is doubtful that Paul or the Corinthians would have thought specifically about pagan prophetesses’ hairstyles; such prophetesses, like the Pythoness, mantic priestess of Apollo, were generally secluded from public view.[51] Even if one were to compare the Christian prophetesses to their pagan counterparts (Paul was not necessarily above this; cf. 1 Cor. 12:3), it is unlikely that hairstyle would have been one of the first comparisons to have come to mind.
Disheveled hair may have also characterized female demons in popular Jewish conceptions,[52] but again our evidence is too slight and too late to draw any conclusions about what might have been the standard view among Corinthian Christians on this matter.
Mourning or Shame?
Covering one’s head was sometimes associated with mourning;[53] the practice was a standard sign of grief, for both men and women.[54] Plutarch says that it is a Roman custom for mourning women to dress in white robes and white head coverings.[55] Elsewhere, a woman weeping at her plight is said to cover her head.[56] Palestinian Jewish texts also speak of covering one’s head for mourning[57] and compare a woman’s head covering to that of a mourner.[58] The evidence for this mourning custom is not altogether unambiguous, however; during the funeral procession itself, Roman sons would cover their heads, while daughters would “go with uncovered heads and hair unbound.”[59]
The ambiguity of the practice is not the strongest argument against seeing it as background for our passage. Since this custom normally applied to both genders, it must not be in view in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul gives different instructions to the men and the women. He cannot be implying that he wishes men to pray and prophesy without mourning, but wishes women to mourn when they do it!
Then again, the related senses of shame and dishonor could be in view. Walking about bareheaded seems to be a sign of social respectability for a man,[60] and he might “cover himself”—hide his face—if moved to shame.[61] It seems that either covering[62] or uncovering[63] one’s head could be used as a sign of reverence or humbled awe. In 2 Maccabees 4:12 head coverings may symbolize humiliation; when the king subjugated the Jews, he made them cover their heads. But this passage may simply mean that he forced them to adopt certain Greek manners of dress.
Some Jewish teachers explained Palestinian Jewish women’s head coverings in this manner:
Why does woman cover her head and man not cover his head? A parable. To what may this be compared? To a woman who disgraced herself and because she disgraced herself, she is ashamed in the presence of people. In the same way Eve disgraced herself and caused her daughters to cover their heads.[64]
It is unlikely that most Palestinian Jews viewed the head covering as a symbol of women’s humiliation, but at the least a head covering was a necessary sign of public modesty for all Palestinian Jewish women who could afford it. One story tells of a woman so destitute that she could not afford a head covering, so she had to cover her head with her hair before going to speak with Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai.[65] A Jewish teacher in the late first century heavily fined a man for uncovering a woman’s head in the marketplace. When she later uncovered her own head, Rabbi Akiba said that she had compromised her own self-respect, but noted that this was her choice; the man’s penalty nevertheless stood.[66]
We need not suppose that all Palestinian Jewish women cared to be modest by these Pharisaic standards, but it is unlikely that the Pharisees invented the custom themselves. Modesty was no doubt a major purpose of the head covering in Palestinian Judaism and in all the cultures we shall consider below. Those who wished to save their beauty for their husbands probably viewed this modesty as a form of chastity.
Veiling Customs and Geography
Veiling customs varied geographically.[67] Veiling seems to have prevailed in parts of the eastern Mediterranean, in places like Syria, Arabia, and southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey), including Paul’s home city of Tarsus.[68] There is much more evidence for the veiling of women in these regions than many scholars have traditionally recognized.[69]
Evidence for this custom in Greek life, however, is sparse; the standard citation from Aristophanes is half a millennium earlier, with little later evidence to support it.[70] The issue of head coverings, especially veils, could thus have divided Corinthian Christians between native Greeks and eastern immigrants to Corinth; the problem with this solution is that it assumes a much larger eastern immigrant population in the church than we would expect from the demography of Corinth. (The solution becomes less problematic if many of the immigrants to Corinth were Palestinian Jews, or, as is also possible, a substantial number of the Corinthian Christians were drawn from the ranks of the non-Greeks from the east who had settled there.)
The Palestinian Jewish custom is much easier to document than the Greek custom. Male head covering customs like the yarmulke are far too late to be of relevance here,[71] but the covering of women seems to have been standard, long before Jewish teachers had to find biblical proof to make it a requirement.[72]
It is possible that this Jewish custom of veiling married women was also followed in some Jewish communities outside Palestine: one Jewish text from Egypt mourns women who were “carried away unveiled.”[73] But the meaning of this text is not entirely clear, and though it is likely that Egyptian Jews were familiar with the custom of veils or other kinds of head coverings (see p. 29 below on Philo, and Joseph and Asenath), we cannot assume it certain that most Jewish women would have necessarily worn head coverings as far away as Corinth.
We therefore have a variety of evidence for women wearing head coverings in antiquity, but so far little that sheds light on the nature of the conflict about head coverings in the Corinthian church. Since Paul addresses the issue only in the context of church worship (nothing in 1 Cor. 11 suggests a practice that requires women’s heads to be covered all day long), it may be helpful to examine the use of head coverings in ancient religious contexts.[74]
Head Coverings in Religious Contexts
In general, Greek women were expected to participate in worship with their heads uncovered. Their relative seclusion to the domestic sphere did not include their seclusion from public religious life. Of course, Greek men were also to worship bareheaded. An early inscription provides rules for those about to be initiated into a Greek mystery cult: “Women are not to have their hair bound up, and men must enter with bared heads.”[75]
In contrast, Roman women had to cover their heads when offering sacrifices.[76] The custom was old enough by Plutarch’s time to have elicited a variety of contradictory explanations,[77] and the several exceptions[78] merely serve to prove the rule that Roman women worshiped with heads covered. This does not apply to all Roman religious functions,[79] but it does contrast significantly with the usual Greek practice. But again, Roman men would also pull the toga over their head at sacrifices.
Corinth was a Roman “colony” in Greece during this period. Its citizens conducted business in both Greek and Latin. Social differences between traditional Roman and traditional Greek elements may have caused tensions in the worship in the house churches. It is unlikely, however, that this is the main reason for conflict over women wearing head coverings in worship, because the same conflict should have arisen over the men wearing head coverings. This explanation would provide no reason for why Paul would give certain instructions to the men but entirely different instructions to the women.
Hair, Beauty, and Lust
Jesus did not accept the traditional male excuse that a man’s lust was a woman’s fault (Matt. 5:28), but many other people in his day did; that excuse was used even more commonly in antiquity than it is today. Indeed, in our culture, saturated with the commercializing of the human body, we might have little sympathy for our ancient counterparts, who could be moved to lust at the sight of bare arms.[80]
What was true of uncovered parts of the body in general was especially true of the hair. Thus cutting off a woman’s hair would spoil all her beauty, even if she were Venus herself,[81] and a young man given to lust might go down the street staring at women’s head and hair, rehearsing the images in his mind when he got home.[82] It was, one such man thought, the beauty of the head that mattered most, and after noting this he went on to praise a woman’s hair.[83]
Loosening a woman’s hair could reveal her beauty and subject her to male lust in both Greek[84] and Jewish tradition.[85] Early Roman women were divorced for not wearing veils precisely because their action laid them open to the suspicion that they were looking for another man.
A Jewish woman who ventured into public with her hair down and exposed to view, or who otherwise could be accused of flirtatious behavior, could be divorced with no financial support from her marriage contract.[86] A woman uncovering her head could be described as nearing the final stage in seducing a man.[87] Jewish teachers permitted loosing a woman’s hair only in the case of an adulterous woman, who was publicly shamed by exposure to the sight of men;[88] but even in this case they warned that it should not be done with women whose hair was extremely beautiful, lest the young priests be moved to lust.[89]
The most noble and desirable woman to an Egyptian Jewish man seems to have been one whose very appearance was virgin and unstained by the eyes of other men; in an Egyptian Jewish romance novel, the ideal virgin Asenath seems to have worn a veil as a virgin to keep men from gazing on her.[90] She even wore a bride’s veil when she went before Joseph, perhaps as a sign of newfound modesty.[91] Probably a more reliable index of Egyptian Jewish sentiment is the writing of Philo, the well-to-do Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, who “says that if a woman keeps even her hair uncovered, it is a sign that she is not modest.”[92]
It is not hard to understand how the practice of veiling and not veiling related to expectations concerning certain male reactions. In older Greek society, the Spartans were said to have veiled only their married women, for an important reason: “When someone inquired why they took their girls into public places unveiled, but their married women veiled, he said, ‘Because the girls have to find husbands, and the married women have to keep those who have them!’ ”[93] Although this example is from long before our period, it seems to provide the simplest rationale for why married women would have covered their heads, whereas single women did not need to do so. Men were interested in protecting their solitary rights to the beauty of their wives, and married women who went into public with their heads uncovered could be considered immodest or seductive.
It is probable that some well-to-do women thought such restrictions on their public apparel ridiculous, especially if they were from parts of the Mediterranean world where head coverings were not considered necessary. But to other observers, these women’s uncovered heads connoted an invitation to lust. The issue in the Corinthian church may thus have been a clash of cultural values concerning modesty, and Paul wants the more liberated elements within the church to care enough about their more conservative colleagues not to offend them in this dramatic way.
Class Conflict in Corinth?
Today many churches avoid social conflicts by keeping people from different backgrounds in different churches. Whatever we may think of that practice today, churches in Paul’s day did not have that option. Believers had to meet in homes large enough to accommodate them, and that meant meeting in the homes of well-to-do members. Since most members in the Corinthian church were not well-to-do,[94] people from very different social classes would be brought together. Many of the other issues in 1 Corinthians revolve around this clash between the socially powerful (“the strong”) and the socially weak members of the church,[95] and the issue of head coverings may be one further example of this problem.
Most women in Greco-Roman statues and other artwork from this period have uncovered heads, because most of the families who could afford to commission such works were well-to-do[96] and presumably more concerned with current fashion than with lower-class women’s interpretation of modesty. As historian Ramsay MacMullen points out,
women who imitated the changes in style that went on at the imperial court, changes depicted in the provinces by portraits of the ladies of the imperial house, were the richer ones, the more open to the new ways, and the more likely to belong to families on the rise. Women of humbler class went veiled.[97]
When we discuss 1 Timothy 2:9–10 in chapter 3, we shall examine the desire of upper-class women to show off their fashionable hairstyles as well as other impressive array. Moralists saw such ostentation as a problem in high society, and Paul viewed its cheaper imitation as a problem in the church. For Paul, church was not meant to be a fashion show for women or for men, especially when some of those styles could strike “less fashionable” members of the congregation as willfully seductive.[98] But Paul does not regulate anyone’s garb outside the church, leaving that to the discretion of the person and the meaning their clothing styles will bear among the company they keep.[99]
This background for 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 makes good sense, but it still remains for us to examine how Paul develops his argument to persuade women members of the congregation to cover up. In ancient debate, one might give arguments for a position that were different from the reasons one held to the position oneself. Paul has to address the issue of women’s head coverings in Corinth with the arguments that would most readily persuade his ancient readers.
PAUL’S ARGUMENTS: FAMILY, CREATION, NATURE, AND CUSTOM
In 11:3–16 Paul sets forth four main arguments. In this context, he could have simply said, “Do not cause your brother or sister to stumble,” but as in the case of food offered to idols, he instead presents a variety of supporting arguments to make a convincing case for all his readers.
Not all of Paul’s arguments make sense to us today on a first reading, but that is because Paul is trying to persuade the Corinthian women to wear head coverings, not women today. Had he been writing a letter to us he would have dealt with entirely different issues and reasoned a different way. It is easy for modern Western readers to assume that cultures elsewhere think as we do; we are impatient with other cultures’ logic. Paul, a pastor and a missionary, is concerned about getting his point across to his people, not with impressing modern Western readers with arguments that would work transculturally. Paul employs a transcultural argument only when he is making a transcultural point, and the wearing of head coverings, as we have suggested above, is not one of those points.
The Husband as the Head: 1 Corinthians 11:3–6
Paul’s argument here involves two analogies: an analogy between a wife’s literal head (part of her body) and her figurative head (her husband), and an analogy between her artificial head covering (a veil) and her natural head covering (her hair).
Before we can grasp Paul’s first argument about head coverings, we must understand his play on the word “head.”[100] Although an argument based on a play on words may sound irrational to us today, to many ancient readers it would have made sense.[101] Paul knew his audience, and he knew the most effective ways to convince them to change their behavior. So Paul initiates a play on the word “head”: it is both the part of the woman’s body whose covering is in dispute, and the woman’s husband.
But right at the outset, we are faced with a problem. When Paul calls the husband the “head” of the wife (as Christ is the “head” of the man, and God of Christ),[102] what does he mean? To be the “head” of something today normally means to be in charge, but was this the way the phrase would have normally been taken in Paul’s day?
This modern sense of “head” is rare, though not unknown, in ancient Greek. The oldest Greek lexicons do not attest this meaning,[103] but it is attested in the one document Greek Christians knew best: the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Hebrew word for “head” (rôš) usually referred to a part of the body, but when it was used figuratively, it could mean “leader” or “boss.” Yet the Septuagint rarely translates rôš (in the sense of leader) literally as “head”; most often it uses other Greek words that mean “leader.” It retains “head” for leader less than one tenth of the time, despite the Hebrew usage.[104] In other words, “leader” is not a very common meaning for the Greek word for “head.”[105]
This is not to say that “head” never means “leader” in Greek: the few uses of the term that did come through the Greek translation naturally influenced Jewish and Christian writers like Philo[106] or the church fathers.[107] The question is whether this figurative use of the term “head” is common enough that we should automatically read it into the present passage, and the answer is that it is not. Indeed, as Fee points out, the only “authority” mentioned in the entire passage is the woman’s own (11:10), and 11:11–12 “explicitly qualify vv. 8–9 so that they will not be understood” hierarchically.[108] The woman is not the man’s subordinate in this passage; she is his “glory” (or “reputation,” “honor,” “splendor”), the one who brings him shame or honor.[109]
Other possible nuances of the term “head” exist, such as “the honored part.” “Head” is sometimes contrasted with “tail” in the Old Testament because the head, as the most prominent part of the body (and the part that on men was normally uncovered) was the most honored part.[110] Paul seems to imply in the next chapter that those parts of the body which need to be covered are more honored, the covering representing the special attention and honor given to them (12:22–24), but there is no indication that he has the discussion of 11:2–16 in view as he writes this. More likely, in 11:2–16 he is speaking of the natural honor accruing to the head, and suggesting that the wife by virtue of the creation order owes her husband reverence. Husbands receive glory or shame from their wives, just as Christ receives glory or shame from the behavior of men.[111]
But if Paul means this argument in this way (which he may), he seems to be making an argument that he would not wish to enforce universally. Cannot women in the church also bring reproach or honor on the cause of Christ (cf. 1 Tim. 5:13–15)? If Paul is referring to the husband’s honor—which in some sense, we shall argue, he is—the nature of his argument cannot extend very far beyond the particular application he wishes to draw from it.
Other scholars have argued that “head” means “source.”[112] A number of scholars have compiled references to this sense of the term “head” in antiquity,[113] a sense which occurs in Paul’s own usage elsewhere.[114] This meaning of “head” certainly makes sense in this context, where Paul states that woman was derived from man (11:8).[115] The only objection to interpreting head as “source” here seems to be the statement that God is the source of Christ, but this objection fails if the text refers to Jesus’ source as the Father from whom he proceeded at his incarnation as a human being.[116] If the incarnation is in view, then 11:3 is in chronological sequence, as Bilezikian points out: Christ is the source of Adam, Adam of Eve, and God of Christ.[117]
The meaning “source” has been hotly disputed. Evangelical scholar Wayne Grudem argues that this meaning for “head” is not attested, whereas the metaphorical use of “head” usually implies authority.[118] His argument has, however, been seriously challenged by other evangelical scholars.[119] Gordon Fee observes that only forty-nine uses of “head” in ancient Greek literature are metaphorical, and of these:
(1) Twelve appear in the New Testament, which is the subject under consideration and thus must not be included in the count (especially since some of them do mean “source”).
(2) Eighteen are from the Greek translations of the Old Testament, where they represent a very small percentage of exceptions to the rule that the translators usually bent over backward to avoid translating “head” in this way.
(3) In most of the remaining nineteen instances the sense “authority over” that Grudem finds is disputable.
(4) Finally, Philo clearly does use “head” to mean “source” sometimes.
Fee concludes that Grudem has shown that “head” can sometimes mean “leader,” although even in these cases it need not mean “authority over.” But in Fee’s view, Grudem has failed to bring into question the meaning “source” or to show that “head” is normally a term of authority.[120]
That “head” sometimes means “authority,” sometimes means “prominence, honor, or respect” in other ways, and probably sometimes means “source” does not tell us which possible meaning is in view in our text. Context is the key to determining how a particular term is being used in a given passage, and the context here indicates nothing about the husband’s “authority.” But for the sake of argument, let us assume that “head” here means “authority,” which I believe Grudem has shown is a possible nuance of the term. If Paul is using “head” here in the sense of “authority,” he could simply mean that the husband was the one in the position of authority over the wife in that culture, without demonstrating that all husbands are to rule over their wives in all cultures (cf. Rom. 13:1; 1 Pet. 2:13); he might have expressed himself very differently to an audience in whose culture husbands were not in a position of authority over wives. Thus the debate about the meaning of the term cannot ultimately settle the issue unless Paul plainly argues for the husband’s transcultural rule over his wife.
Whatever particular nuances Paul may have wished to call to his readers’ minds, he uses a wordplay to facilitate his point: the woman who brings dishonor on her head is bringing dishonor upon her husband, and thus upon the Christian family. That is Paul’s point in this context, not that her display of independence in removing the culturally significant head covering would bring reproach on any husband in any culture.
In 11:5 Paul indicates how seriously a woman dishonors her “head” by worshiping with it uncovered. He makes an analogy between her praying without a head covering and her praying with her head shaved; whether she is without her specific cultural covering or her natural, God-given covering, humiliation is involved. Paul is using here the ancient debating principle of reductio ad absurdum: reducing the position of his opponents to the absurd. If they want to bare their heads so badly, why don’t they bare them altogether by removing their hair, thus exposing themselves to public shame?
Unlike the act of uncovering his head, a Greek man’s shaving his head could represent mourning,[121] a response to great catastrophe like shipwreck, or it could be associated with illness or recovery from it.[122] Priests of Isis were said to shave off all their hair, so this act could imply the shame that certain pagan cultic associations bore in Greco-Roman antiquity.[123]
Shaving the head could also imply the disgrace of the loss of womanly attractiveness; by ancient standards, it would deprive women of beauty and make them look like boys.[124] A Roman satirist complains that a Roman matron overly concerned with her hair ought to have it shaved off with a razor.[125] The ultimate example of the shame involved in shaving one’s head is that it is the final stage of desperation to which Satan reduces Job’s wife in a Jewish story about Job’s trials.[126]
Some have suggested that Paul’s argument at this point appeals to something more than the general shame of a shaven head. Perhaps, as some scholars have argued, Paul opposes the removal of symbolic gender distinctions;[127] an uncovered head and short hair have precisely this point in common: both reflect a disregard for customary marks of gender identification.[128] As Wayne Meeks puts it, Paul stresses equivalent rights and duties for both parties in marriage (1 Cor. 7:2–4), but “objects to symbolic disregard for sexual differences in the dress of male and female prophets.”[129] This may have been in intentional opposition to certain pagan cults that encouraged sex role reversal,[130] but it would make enough sense simply on its own terms here: gender interchange was regarded by Paul as “against nature” (Rom. 1:26–27; cf. Deut. 22:5).[131]
Whether or not Paul is addressing gender reversal here, another more central issue seems to be at work. The woman’s uncovering or shaving her head brought disgrace not only on her own physical head, but also on her husband. The idea that a wife could shame her husband by her behavior[132] or by revealing his secrets[133] was common in the ancient world. Even though Plutarch advises that the husband has to set the example if he expects his wife to live honorably,[134] he was no doubt conscious of the idea that one person’s dishonorable behavior could bring reproach on the whole family.[135] The common view is reflected by an accuser of Stilpo, who noted that Stilpo’s married daughter was profligate and charged “that she was a disgrace to him.”[136] Thus some marriage contracts include the stipulation that the wife avoid shaming her husband.[137] Moralists could insist that wives please only their own husbands;[138] if wives were not “socially retiring . . . and submissive to their husbands,” they would “bring dishonor to the household.”[139]
The point of Paul’s opening arguments about the head therefore calls us as believers to give up personal rights for the sake of honoring our families. Although his specific addressees in Corinth were women, the principle he articulates could be applied to any of us. If our dressing a certain way in public will cause discomfort to our spouse, we ought not to do it. Paul is clearly less concerned with the particular apparel worn in a given culture than he is with its effects.
Creation Order: 1 Corinthians 11:7–12
Paul’s second argument is based on the creation of Eve from Adam in Genesis 2. This argument is really part of his first one, for it carries on the idea of headship and the wife’s relationship to her husband.
For a man is obligated not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God [his ultimate head and source, 11:3]; but the woman is the glory of man [her direct head and source, 11:3]. For the man did not come from the woman, but the woman from the man; for the man was not created through the woman, but rather the woman through the man. Therefore the woman is obligated to have authority over her head on account of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, neither is the woman apart from the man, or the man apart from the woman; for just as the woman was taken out of the man, man comes into the world through woman; but all things are [really ultimately] from God (11:7–12).
In short, Paul says, because woman was taken from man, she reflects man’s image, and therefore she ought to cover that image in worship lest it distract observers from attention to God’s image.[140] It is not that Paul is unaware that woman and man together make up God’s image. It is impossible that he had not read the explicit statement to that effect in Genesis 1:27,[141] and he speaks elsewhere of all believers being conformed to that image in Christ (1 Cor. 15:49; Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18). It seems rather to be another reminder that the way the wife dresses will in that culture affect whether honor or shame comes to her husband. It is far more gracious to say that than to state, “Women are too beautiful and will distract the eyes of undisciplined men during the worship services,” although that may have been part of the problem in Corinth.
How could women as “men’s glory” (or “honor,” “splendor”) distract men from the worship of God during church services? Although the following analogy is probably a little more extreme than the Corinthian problem, it may convey the general point. We might imagine a laid-back church today where the women entered wearing bathing suits, prepared for the baptismal service in the ocean after morning worship. If the men lusted, the women would be right to say that the men should take responsibility for their own actions; but out of concern for their brothers in Christ, the women could avoid the problem by simply wearing something less revealing than bathing suits to church. The same principle would apply, of course, for men who wished to assert their proper right to wear bathing suits to church; a bathing suit may not be intrinsically sinful, but one should do everything possible to avoid causing one’s fellow Christian to stumble from the way of Christ. Many ancient men had a lower tolerance level for exposed skin than we do today because they saw much less of it. Apparently just seeing a woman’s hair was enough to disturb them.
Despite the potential seriousness of this problem, however, Paul is not ordering these well-to-do women to change their church wardrobe; he is trying to persuade them to choose to do so. Paul emphasizes that it is the woman’s right to choose what she will wear (v. 10); yet he is asking her to use her right to dress how she wills to honor rather than shame her husband, just as he called on others, including himself, to give up their own rights for the sake of others (chs. 8–10).[142]
Not everyone sees Paul as affirming a woman’s authority to choose what to wear on her head in 11:10. Some translations and commentators interpret the text as if it spoke of the woman’s being under someone’s authority,[143] or as if the head covering merely symbolized her dignity;[144] but these are not natural ways to read the Greek text here.[145] Others think that an Aramaic term for head covering is here mistranslated “authority,”[146] but not only would the Corinthians not have known Aramaic,[147] the supposed play on words does not actually work in Aramaic.[148] The only normal way to read the Greek phrase is to read it that the woman has “authority over her own head.”[149] It is not even optional for her to recognize this authority; she “ought” to demonstrate it.[150]
Paul not only affirms that the woman has authority over her own head, but he even qualifies his argument concerning man being woman’s source. Paul explicitly says that woman being derived from man is not the whole story; even though it was the only part of the story he needed to state to make his point, he did not want the Corinthian Christians to misunderstand him.[151] Paul affirms that woman and man are mutually dependent in the Lord,[152] using the same language that other early Jewish writers had used to make the same point.[153] Women and men are each derived from the other in some sense, and the ultimate source or head of both is God.
Paul’s clarification of his point about man being woman’s source (taken from Gen. 2) may reflect the creation story in Genesis 1. Woman and man are together said to represent God’s image (1:27). There is some evidence that the Corinthian Christians may have separated the two accounts of human creation in Genesis 1 and 2,[154] as did some other Jewish thinkers of the period.[155] Paul apparently appeals to their understanding of Genesis 2, but then qualifies their view of that passage by reading it in the light of Genesis 1.
The idea of women as men’s glory would not have been too difficult for Paul’s readers to have grasped; in some Jewish traditions, a wife’s domestic expertise brought public “glory” to her husband.[156] His readers would have especially followed his case if they knew the Scriptures well enough to recognize how he was applying them. He uses “glory” here to mean virtually the same thing as “image” (1 Cor. 15:43, 49), adapting the phrase “image and likeness” of Genesis 1:26 to read “image and glory” (1 Cor. 11:7).[157]
Here again, Paul relates to some of the ideas of his culture. Although some ancient Jewish traditions repeat the biblical view that both men and women are created in God’s image,[158] others could declare that while man was made in God’s likeness, woman was made in man’s image.[159] The Greek writer Plutarch similarly compares a wife to a mirror: a good wife will reflect her husband’s likeness well, but a bad wife will reflect it poorly.[160]
When Paul later notes (11:15) that a woman’s long hair is a “glory” to her, his point would also make sense to his readers; a woman in antiquity could prize her long and beautiful hair.[161] In contrast, an adulteress, who had ignored God’s honor or glory by her unfaithfulness to her husband, herself received dishonor when the priests disheveled her hair.[162] Much of Paul’s argument here revolves around wordplays about “glory” and “image.”
This much is not hard to grasp; what is more problematic is Paul’s statement that the woman has authority on her head “on account of the angels.” What could this obscure phrase mean?
Because of the Angels: 1 Corinthians 11:10
Several explanations have been proposed for the obscure phrase “because of the angels.” We shall examine the most commonly proposed explanations of the phrase.[163] One is that the angels of holiness are present for the worship of the community, as in some other early Jewish texts;[164] on this interpretation, the problem is that the worshiping angels will be offended by the breach of propriety involved in a woman’s uncovering her head.[165] Since it was only a breach of propriety in that culture, Paul need not be implying that these angels are culture-bound or squeamish; this view could mean that they are simply offended by the symbolic disrespect shown to the women’s husbands.
Then again, if the issue in the congregation is that some men would be tempted to lust after these women who were showing off their fancy hairstyles, another traditional interpretation may be more likely. It had become a very common belief that many angels had fallen into sin long ago by lusting after beautiful women. On this view, Paul would be saying: “By leaving your hair open to public view, you are inciting not only men, but also angels, to lust.”[166]
Before some readers dismiss this view as ludicrous from our modern perspective, we ought to examine how such an argument would have appeared to Paul’s original readers in Corinth.[167] Ancient mythology in many cultures is replete with stories of gods and goddesses chasing mortal consorts of the other (or sometimes the same) gender.[168] The “sons of God” having intercourse with the daughters of men in Genesis 6 is likewise interpreted as fallen angels copulating with human women in most[169] early Jewish traditions.[170] This is probably reflected in 2 Peter 2:4,[171] Jude 6,[172] and 1 Peter 3:19–20[173] as well, so it may be a valid Christian interpretation of Genesis 6.
Thus it is said that these angels, the “Watchers” (as they are called in 1 Enoch) who observed the earth, lost their heavenly abode due to illicit sex.[174] One tradition of uncertain date puts it this way: Women seduced the Watchers by the beauty of their adorned heads and faces, and the Watchers,
filled with desire for them, perpetrated the act in their minds. Then they were transformed into human males, and while the women were cohabiting with their husbands they appeared to them. Since the women’s minds were filled with lust for these apparitions, they gave birth to giants. For the Watchers were disclosed to them as being as high as the heavens.[175]
Jewish people believed that evil spirits still occasionally lusted after women,[176] in the most extreme stories even killing women’s suitors to keep the women for themselves.[177] Such ideas may also be reflected in the common view that demons could reproduce.[178]
The main problem with the “lusting angels” view is what it would seem to imply on a wider scale. If angels lusted after women’s hair in Corinth, Paul would have had to have supposed that they could lust after women’s hair anywhere in the world where it was not covered. Perhaps he thought this was just a stumbling block for angels gathered for worship, but the view that Paul thought angels were always in danger of falling because of uncovered body parts on women would make his argument a little broader than he intends. Paul would surely have made much more of these angels in his writings than a mere phrase, because this would have been a transcultural, enduring argument for all women in all cultures to wear head coverings. This does not seem to fit the way the rest of his argument goes.
Another major possibility remains: Paul speaks of the angels who run the structures of the world system. Although some have objected that Paul nowhere speaks of hostile angels,[179] this objection ignores some of the evidence. Some scholars have pointed out that these may be the angels of the created order we see in 1 Corinthians 6:3,[180] and Romans 8:38 connects hostile angels with the “rulers” in the heavens.
Terms like “rulers and authorities” normally meant simply political powers in the world (e.g., Rom. 13:1).[181] But many groups in the ancient world believed that there were also spiritual powers, such as the gods of various nations, influencing the course of those nations.[182] In Jewish thought, those spiritual powers[183] were angelic authorities appointed by God;[184] in some Jewish sources, they had become malevolent powers and would be judged at the end of the age.[185] While this way of looking at the world became common only in postbiblical Jewish sources,[186] it was already established as early as the book of Daniel chapter 10,[187] and we may be certain that both Paul and his readers were familiar with the idea.
How would this meaning fit 1 Corinthians 11:10? It would function in a manner quite similar to the statement in 6:3 that Christians will judge angels; if they will judge angels, they should be able to arbitrate disputes among themselves. The argument of 11:10, in the context of the preceding verses, would be that Christ is head of the husbands; husbands are heads of their wives; Christ and his church together are destined to be above the principalities and powers, or angels of the nations, which are over the rest of the world. Paul’s rhetorical question, “Do you not know?” (6:3), probably implies that they should indeed have known that the “saints,” those set apart for God by faith in Christ, would judge angels; hence they could have grasped his brief clause “because of the angels.” If, as we believe, Paul also wrote Colossians, the dual picture of Christ as head, both of the church (Col. 1:18) and of the created order of spiritual powers (2:10; cf. 1:15–17), would indicate that such images are not foreign to his thought.
On this reading of 1 Corinthians 11:10, Paul mentions the angels to show where these women stand. Although they should choose to wear a head covering, submitting to their husbands’ honor for the sake of the gospel, yet they have authority over their own heads; so much authority, in fact, that they will judge the angels. Thus Paul is saying, “You will judge angels someday. Surely you can make responsible choices about your head apparel now.”
The main weakness of this proposal is that it reads “because of the angels” as “because of what you know about your future relation to those angels.” But such a concise and therefore difficult allusion on Paul’s part would not be uncharacteristic of him or of ancient Jewish teachers in general, and it may make more sense than supplying “because of the angels present at worship,” or “because of lusting angels.” While I would not propose that this view is beyond dispute, it seems to fit Paul’s usage elsewhere better than either of the other views proposed above.
Whatever conclusion one ultimately reaches about the angels, Paul does not spell out in detail the meaning of the phrase, and it is not his main argument. It is therefore proper for us to move to his next arguments. Paul’s arguments to this point have presupposed an interpretation of the Genesis narrative, but his final arguments express ways of thinking that were standard in Greek culture.
An Appeal to the Natural Order: 1 Corinthians 11:14
Judge this matter for yourselves: it is fitting for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Doesn’t even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it brings him dishonor,[188] whereas if a woman has long hair, it brings her glory?[189] For her long hair is given to her[190] as a natural covering.[191]
Paul’s appeal to nature was a standard Greco-Roman argument, used especially by Stoics,[192] but also by Epicureans,[193] other philosophers,[194] and, for that matter, just about everyone else.[195] This sort of reasoning has become more or less discredited today; no one says any longer, “If people were meant to fly, they would have wings.” But it was a very common sort of argument in Paul’s day. Our question is, What did Paul and other ancient writers mean by their appeal to nature?
Sometimes writers meant by “nature” pretty much what we mean by the term today: the created order.[196] They could speak of nature as the force or order controlling and arranging natural existence in the cosmos.[197] Nature is said to teach us the way things really are,[198] often through our natural endowments[199] or through the nature of the world around us.
Usually writers used these examples from nature to advocate a specific kind of moral behavior,[200] or simply exhorted living in general in accordance with nature.[201] For instance, the Stoic thinker Epictetus points out that if one has a cold, nature supplied us with hands to wipe our nose rather than just to sniff in the mucous all day.[202] In the same way, Plutarch reasons that nature teaches mothers to nurse their own babies by providing them the ability to produce milk.[203]
Many gender distinctions were also considered part of nature, rather than a matter of mere social convention.[204] Thus, one of Cicero’s examples of a natural way to categorize types of humans is male and female.[205] More significantly, Epictetus can speak of hair as a mark of gender distinction: “Can anything be more useless than the hairs on a chin? Well, what then? Has not nature used even these in the most suitable way possible? Has she not by these means distinguished between the male and the female?”[206]
Beards were quite out of fashion in the Roman world of Paul’s day, and he was therefore not likely to impose them on his readers as a mark of gender distinction; but perhaps he would have agreed with Epictetus’ basic point: “we ought to preserve the signs which God has given; we ought not to throw them away; we ought not, so far as in us lies, to confuse the sexes which have been distinguished in this fashion.”[207] In the same way, some in antiquity saw gender reversal[208] and homosexual behavior[209] as being “against nature” (Rom. 1:26–27).
It was not sexist or sexually exploitive to wish to preserve gender distinctions; they were already matters of natural endowment, and to keep them explicit was entirely in accordance with nature. Thus F. F. Bruce may well be right when he suggests that Paul’s appeal to nature here is an appeal to the fact that women’s hair naturally grows longer than men’s.[210]
Other scholars suggest that by “nature” Paul refers to cultural custom.[211] Although “nature” might occasionally mean custom,[212] the term is normally used to mean exactly the opposite of custom: that which is innate in the order of things, which cannot be acquired.[213] But it cannot be denied that the Greco-Roman custom at this time was for men to have shorter hair than women.[214] The fact that Paul must have been aware of the exceptions to this custom would indicate that he speaks in a general sense of what was acceptable for usual societal norms in his day.[215] The exceptions were various: Artemidorus lists “a wise man, a priest, a prophet, a king, a ruler and for stage performances.”[216]
In a few cases men may have worn long hair as a sign of gender reversal, or to show their disdain for the traditions of gender distinctions.[217] Ancient Spartan men, like the heroes of an earlier period in Greek history and like statues of some Greek gods,[218] wore their hair long;[219] in earlier Sparta, perhaps as an expression of Sparta’s duty-centered warrior character, Spartan brides often cropped their hair short and dressed like men.[220] In Paul’s day, the ecstatic priests of Cybele were said to have long hair;[221] since they were also emasculated, their long hair may have been a sign of gender reversal.[222] Long hair may also have been associated with luxury or wantonness.[223] Conversely, a woman might cut her hair if she wished to disguise herself as a man.[224] Not everyone took well to unnecessary gender reversals. Thus Epictetus charges,
Are you a man or a woman?—A man.—Very well then, adorn as a man, not a woman. Woman is born smooth and dainty by nature [physei], and if she is very hairy she is a prodigy, and is exhibited at Rome among the prodigies. But for a man not to be hairy is the same thing, and if by nature he has no hair he is a prodigy, but if he cuts it out and plucks it out of himself, what shall we make of him? Where shall we exhibit him and what notice shall we post? “I will show you,” we say to the audience, “a man who wishes to be a woman rather than a man.”[225]
Epictetus’ remarks verge on the crude when he suggests that the one who wishes to look like a woman by plucking his hairs ought to “make a clean sweep of the whole matter,” chopping off the source of his masculine hairiness, so he may be a full woman and not half and half.[226] That the context of his remarks may suggest that the object of Epictetus’ ridicule is from Corinth may be of more than passing interest.[227]
Some philosophers apparently advocated obliterating marks of gender distinctions,[228] but most philosophers who wore their hair long probably did so only as a sign of their simple, extrasocietal lifestyle.[229] Epictetus was not the only philosopher to ridicule an “effeminately attired” man.[230]
The general custom accords also with Diaspora Jewish antipathy toward transvestism in hairstyles: “If a child is a boy do not let locks grow on (his) head. Do not braid (his) crown nor the cross knots at the top of his head. Long hair is not fit for boys, but for voluptuous women.”[231] Although certain exceptions were permitted in the Bible for long hair, such as the Nazirites,[232] a later rabbi could argue that the long hair was to set the Nazirite apart from normal society, making him repulsive and uncomfortable.[233]
Whether Paul’s argument is that women by virtue of creation have longer hair than men, or that the social norms of his day demand women’s hair to be longer under normal circumstances, does not in the end need to be decided. In either case, Paul would seem to be making an argument that addresses symbolic gender distinctions, and requiring men and women to recognize those differences between them.
From natural gender differences, he can easily argue that clothing styles ought to reflect those differences.[234] Women in Corinth should thus cover their heads, and men should not, to identify their differences. This is a case of distinguishing the two, however, not of ranking one over the other.
Paul’s Appeal to Custom: 1 Corinthians 11:16
Although Paul’s appeal to “nature” in 11:14 may not be an appeal to custom, 11:16 certainly is. It is not an appeal to universal practice, but only an appeal to the practice of those who “count” on the matter of church attire, the churches of God.[235] They are the ones who count, of course, because they are the ones whose behavior best supports Paul’s argument to get the well-to-do Corinthian wives to cover their heads in church and avoid division among the Christians in Corinth.
This was a standard way for an ancient lawyer or speech writer to argue a case;[236] for instance, Isocrates appeals to common knowledge when he writes what “the myths relate and all men believe” about Zeus,[237] even though clearly there were exceptions to “all men” of which even Isocrates must have known in his day. Theon, the writer of an important rhetorical handbook, notes that one can refute an argument if it is contrary to the common account or view; the burden of proof was strongly on anyone opposing established custom or view.[238] This practice is no less common in rabbinic texts, although the standard there was determined specifically by rabbinic tradition.[239]
Some philosophers in the ancient world actually accepted no other argument except one drawn from custom.[240] Although it is unlikely that there were disciples of any of these thinkers, called the Skeptics, in the Corinthian church, their position illustrates the importance attributed to custom in ancient thought. Paul, who often must challenge accepted custom in proclaiming the truth of the gospel, here finds it on his side and is able to appeal to it.
CONCLUSION
The arguments one uses to persuade readers in a given setting may not be the same as one’s own reasons for articulating a position. Paul’s arguments in 11:2–16 are different from his reasons for writing this passage. Probably he was dealing with social division in the church, as he was in most of the rest of 1 Corinthians. But as elsewhere, he must come up with supporting arguments that would work for his readers. Although we do not believe that he was making a transcultural argument in favor of women wearing head coverings in church, we can notice some transcultural points in his argument: one should not bring reproach upon one’s family or upon the Christian gospel; one should not seek to destroy symbolic gender distinctions by pioneering unisex clothing styles; one should respect custom and do one’s best to avoid causing someone to stumble.[241]
Why did Paul try to persuade the uncovered women to cover up, rather than trying to persuade the covered women to uncover? One reason may have been that he agreed with some of the moral objections to showing off one’s fashions in church. Another reason may be that, in that society, these women’s adorned hair would distract men from the worship of God, perhaps in the way that bathing suits would distract many of us in church today. Paul never questioned the well-to-do women’s right to dress as they pleased—indeed, he affirmed it—but he asked them to sacrifice that right for the sake of those in the church who would have a very hard time understanding it.
I hope that this chapter will not be used by anyone to enforce rigid dress codes in churches today. If we really understand the chapter and what it communicates about the right of the women to dress as they please, it seems that it would be better to ask only for modesty. None of us should dress extravagantly and embarrass those who have little, or in a manner that might be interpreted as sexually enticing in our culture. Beyond this, we must keep in mind that Paul’s purpose was to make Christianity available to more people, to increase its cultural appeal to the majority of those who would be interested in it. If our churches’ dress codes turn people away from the church rather than bring them in, we have failed to catch Paul’s motives or his message.
Finally, and most significantly for this book, we should note that nothing in this passage suggests wives’ subordination. The only indicator that could be taken to mean that is the statement that man is woman’s “head,” but “head” in those days was capable of a variety of meanings, and nothing in this text indicates that it means subordination. As many scholars have been pointing out in the past few years, if we want this passage to teach subordination, we have to read subordination into the passage. The only clear affirmations here, besides that men and women are different and should not conceal that fact, is the equality and mutual dependence of men and women.