29 Are Women's Head Coverings Cultural? (1 Corinthians 11:2-16)

Krisan Marotta: You're listening to Wednesday in the Word, and I'm glad you are. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. We're gonna be looking at 1 Corinthians 11, verses 2 through 16 today. This is the 29th talk in our series on 1 Corinthians, and it's the second in a series of four talks on this particular passage. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, or you can find them on my website. They'll be at Wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 2 9. And while you're there, be sure to check out all the Bible study information. There is no charge for it, no spam, and no ads, only Bible study. Let's get started. In the first podcast on this passage, I went straight through the text explaining how I think the passage makes most sense. And in these next few podcasts, I want to go back and look at some of the details and some of the controversial issues that this passage raises. So in today's podcast, I want to concentrate just on the cultural background. Just to summarize what I argued in the last podcast, as best I understand this passage, the situation in Corinth was that married women kept their heads covered as a sign of respect for their husbands. And also in Corinth, when men prayed or preached in a public worship, they removed their head coverings. Before Christianity, Jewish women did not participate in the Jewish worship service. They watched and observed from a separate area. But that changed in the Christian church. In the Christian church, women and men participated in the same service. So now we have a conflict of symbols. What's a married woman to do when she stands up to pray or to speak? If she removes her head coverings, that is respectful to God, but disrespectful to her husband in that culture. If she keeps her head covering on, that is respectful to her husband in that culture, but disrespectful to God. So we have this clash of cultural symbols, a clash of practices. And I understand Paul to be saying wives should keep their head coverings on because that is the symbol that speaks loudest to their culture. In Corinth, when a woman stood up to pray and she took her scarf or head covering off, the people would not go, oh look, there's a woman who's honoring God. Rather, they would say, Uh-oh, there's a woman who's being disrespectful to her husband, and Paul says, Therefore, keep your head coverings on. So briefly that's what I argued last week, and now I want to go back and look at how we get to that point, at least in terms of the cultural background. First Corinthians 11 is one of the more difficult passages to understand, and while I have reached a level of certainty in my thinking, I acknowledge that there is a greater than average chance that I am wrong because this is a really difficult passage. People I greatly respect disagree with me on this passage, and they disagree with each other. And this is one of those passages that we have to approach with a great deal of humility and openness that whatever position we hold, it might be the wrong one. I've been studying the passages that relate to women teachers and women in authority in the church for over 30 years, and over that time I have refined my understanding and I think I have reached a fair degree of confidence in my conclusions. So I can say before God this is my best shot given the resources I have, the abilities, the faults, and the blindnesses that I have. And I can equally say I may be wrong. So as I explain my conclusions, keep in mind that almost everything I say is debated. There is someone out there who will disagree with almost every statement I'm going to make today. I'm going to try to avoid starting every sentence with I think because that would just make listening redundant and hard. But no, I think is implied. I do not mean to suggest in the way I'm presenting this material that I have the market cornered on truth or understanding because I don't. These are my conclusions after copious research and many hours of study. This is my best shot, and as I said, I realize I could be wrong. Also keep in mind that whatever this passage means, it is not an issue of salvation. It would be nice if we could all get this passage right, but remember, salvation is not on the line. There are some questions that we must get right. For example, who is Jesus and what did he do for you? Those are fundamental issues of the gospel. And if we get those fundamental issues wrong, we could potentially miss eternal life. But if we get this passage wrong, it's not going to have that kind of eternal consequence. Now, yes, we want to get this passage right, and we want to get it right for the right reasons, and then act on those reasons. But we also want to remember everything Paul just taught us in the weaker brother argument that we looked at in chapters eight through ten. I may think you're the weaker brother, and that your understanding is weak and incomplete, and you may think I'm the weaker one with an incomplete understanding. And we need to remember we're in this together, and we should treat each other in a way that is respectful, so I might limit my freedoms at your church or vice versa. When we come to a difficult passage like this, the appropriate response is I want to be someone who cares about the truth. I acknowledge that Paul is the apostle he claims to be, and I want to do my best to understand what he's saying. And in the end, we may have to acknowledge that this is difficult, there's some degree of uncertainty, and we may just disagree. Okay, so here we go. As I said in the first podcast on this passage, I went straight through it explaining how I think it makes the most sense. And if you just want the bottom line, you can go back and listen to that podcast. Today we're going to look at the cultural background and ask the question is this passage merely discussing cultural practices that we can ignore, or are there some timeless universal truths in this passage that we would do well to pay attention to? So I argued in the last podcast that the practice in Corinth was for married women to pray with their heads covered and men to pray with their heads uncovered. And I argued that that is a cultural practice and not a timeless or universal command. So how do we know? If you go to most churches in America today, you'll see women without head coverings, and you'll probably hear women praying without head coverings. In America, most Christians have concluded that this is a cultural issue and not binding on us today, or else we're just ignoring it. But this is not a universal conclusion. Christians are very split on this question. Some argue that the issue must be binding because Paul appeals to Genesis, he appeals to creation, and he appeals to nature. And neither Genesis nor nature nor creation have changed, so how could this be culturally bound? They would argue this is not a cultural issue because Paul appeals to timeless truths to support it, therefore these must be timeless universal transcultural principles. I would answer that line of thinking this way. Just because Paul appeals to Genesis and nature does not mean that this issue lacks a cultural component. Let me try to explain that with a thought experiment. Suppose a group of married men in our church develop the practice of removing their wedding rings whenever they're in the company of single women. And they're removing their rings because they don't want these young women to know that they're married. Now imagine Paul learns of their practice and he writes them a letter instructing them to keep their wedding rings on. In the course of his argument, Paul appeals to Genesis and the permanent commitment of marriage, and say he also appeals to the Ten Commandments, which call us to avoid adultery and lying and coveting, and he might appeal to other scriptures which call us to faithfulness, chastity, and honesty. All of those scriptures might be part of his explanation for why it's not appropriate for married men to pretend that they are not married when they're around single women. The principles he appeals to are eternal, but if he wrote in that letter you men keep your wedding rings on, he's not giving a universal command. He's speaking to a culture which wears wedding rings as a symbol of marriage vows. So now, suppose in a thousand years there's a colony on Mars and they have given up the practice of wearing jewelry of any kind. They don't exchange wedding rings because metal is too valuable and too scarce to use on trivial things like jewelry. Is that Martian colony being disobedient to Paul's command? Should they read his letter where he clearly says men keep your wedding rings on and say, hmm, well, we've never adopted the practice of wearing wedding rings, so maybe we better start. I would say no, the Martian colony is not being disobedient because Paul is not primarily concerned with the practice of wearing wedding rings, he's concerned with the messages we're sending our culture and that those messages are consistent with what we believe to be true. So he wrote the letter to us because he understood that in our culture, wedding rings mean something. And in our culture, removing your wedding ring means I'm single and available, and that's not a message that married men should be communicating. But in our Martian colony, since wedding rings no longer have that meaning and the norm in that culture is for married men not to wear rings at all, there's no reason to start the practice. Now in my example, Paul is settling a cultural question by appealing to universal truths of Scripture. The universal truths do not change, but the cultural message or the symbol of the practice could cease to be an issue. And I think that's what's going on with our passage here in 1 Corinthians. I would argue our culture has changed since Paul wrote this letter to Corinth. Head coverings, at least in America, do not carry the same message or meaning anymore, even though the universal principles Paul appealed to those remain. The unchanging principles, once we understand them, we could apply those to different situations and they might dictate different behavior today because the meaning of the practice has changed. Well that raises another question. Is Paul's letter even relevant to my future Martian colony that no longer wears jewelry, including wedding rings? Can they learn something from Paul's letter or should they just skip this part? And I would say they absolutely can learn something because the principles Paul appeals to remain, and they want to understand those principles and apply them to issues in their own culture, which might be anything in their future Martian culture. Maybe they have the practice of married people getting matching tattoos on the back of their wrists, and they would apply this by making it a practice not to cover those tattoos. They might apply those principles to very different situations, but they could learn and apply the same principles. That's why the argument that this passage is strictly a cultural issue and therefore can it be ignored does not persuade me, because Paul is appealing to unchanging truths of scripture and we can learn something from his reasoning. On the other hand, the argument that this is a strictly universal issue and that everything he says is binding on everyone at all times, I don't think that's right either, because there is a cultural component involved. The problem we run into almost immediately is that we don't really have a clear understanding of the cultural situation in Corinth at the time Paul was writing. We are missing some information and some of the information we have is contradictory. Let me try to explain. Paul is writing to the Corinthians. Corinth was a city in Greece, so we might assume all we need to understand is ancient Greek culture and practice. However, Corinth was heavily populated by Romans. The city had been destroyed and then rebuilt and resettled by Roman citizens, many of whom were freed slaves, and the Romans had very different practices than the Greeks, and their practices influenced much of Corinthian culture because there was such a large Roman population in the city. So maybe we need to understand ancient Roman culture. But wait, Paul is writing to a church which started largely with Jews and Gentile godfearers. Now the Godfearers were Gentiles who had largely adopted Jewish culture and practice, but had not actually converted to Judaism. Most of the people he's writing to in the church come out of that either Jewish background or a godfearing background, and the Jews had different practices from the Greeks and the Romans. So we have a church which had at least three cultures mixing together, Greek, Roman, and Jewish. Which of those cultures determined the practice of the church in Corinth? Well, different scholars and different commentaries argue one or the other. Some say that Paul had the Greek practices in mind, others say no it was the Roman practices, and others say no it was the Jewish practices. To complicate the matter further, in his argument, Paul says all the churches of God have the same practice. Okay, what does he mean there? That implies that it's irrelevant what the church in Corinth was doing because Paul says all the Christian churches from east to west have the same practice. But when we look at the evidence we have, we can see that the culture of Rome was quite different than, say, Antioch. And we have evidence that the women of Tarsus not only kept their heads covered, they wore veils over their faces. And yet we have evidence that the Greek women didn't cover much of anything. Now Paul is suggesting not all the Christian churches are practicing the same thing, but if we look across the ancient Mediterranean world, we see all these different kinds of practices in the culture. So from the evidence we have, which admittedly is outside of Scripture, we don't actually know what the churches were practicing. We do know for a fact that Roman men had the practice of covering their heads when they were praying or prophesying or offering a sacrifice in their temples. They had this kind of cloak, shawl thing that they could pull up over their heads. And we have statues and pictures and descriptions of Roman men in pagan temples covering their heads when they prayed or offered sacrifices. What about the Greek men? Did Greek men cover their heads in the temples? Well, the evidence suggests that they probably didn't. When we look at their statues and pictures and descriptions and so forth, Greek men kept their heads uncovered. And what about Jewish men? Well, this is where it gets really complicated. We know from the Talmud that ultimately Jewish men ended up covering their heads in the temple. But exactly when did that practice start? Did they cover their heads at the time of Paul or did they start that practice later? The Talmud was written after Paul's time, and it describes some traditions that reach way back into Paul's time and some that start after him. But we don't know for sure which or which. So the Talmud suggests that Jewish men covered their heads in worship, but we don't know if that practice started before Paul wrote this letter or after. And that's debated. There are some books that say yes, it started that early, and others say no, it didn't. And some argue that Jewish men started covering their heads in worship to distinguish themselves and set themselves apart from the Christian men who prayed bareheaded. When did that practice start? Is that why? We're not sure. Additionally, when Roman men met someone on the street, if they wanted to show respect to that person, they would uncover their heads. There's a passage where Plutarch asks the question, why do Roman men cover their heads when they offer a sacrifice and uncover their heads when they meet a superior on the street? That's contradictory. If it's a sign of respect for a man to take his hat off, then shouldn't you take it off for the god? Or if it's a sign of respect to put it on for your god, shouldn't you put it on for your superior? So he complains that they weren't consistent in their practice. So here then is our known historical information. Greek men kept their heads uncovered. Roman men covered their heads in their temples but uncovered them as a sign of respect for a superior. Jewish men began covering their heads in the temple at some point, but we don't know if that practice started before or after Paul's time, and we don't know for sure whether it started because it was the opposite of what the Christian churches were doing. So Paul says in 11 four, every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. Given all that conflicting cultural data, why would Paul say that a man who prays with his head uncovered disgraces the one who is his head? Well scholars have proposed several options. Option number one, this isn't an issue of head coverings at all. This is an issue of how you wear your hair and its long hair and whether the man has the appropriate hairstyle. That one doesn't persuade me, I think that is stretching the linguistic evidence. Option two, Paul's concern is that the Christian practices be very different and not reflect the pagan practices. And we know that the Romans covered their heads, so Paul wants the Christians to do the opposite so they don't look like idol worshippers. That option also fails to persuade me because the Greeks were idol worshippers and they kept their heads uncovered. And the Jewish men may have kept their heads uncovered as well, but the priests in the Jewish temple had prescribed headgear. Head coverings don't seem to equal the message of idol worshiper. Okay, option three, Paul just created this practice to set the Christians apart from everyone else, and he gave them this distinctive practice so that they would look different than the pagans around them and said, From now on, this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna pray with our heads uncovered. The problem for me with that issue is that if he created the practice as a fiat or just decided this is how we're gonna do it, it's hard to imagine that he would assign shame or disgrace to it. If it's just an arbitrary decision that he made, you know, you could do it either way, and we've decided we're gonna do it this way, then it's hard to understand why he would say it's shameful if you don't. Option number four, the issue is not cultural. Paul really believes that it is intrinsically wrong for men to pray with their heads covered at all times and in all places. There's something in nature or creation that makes it wrong for men to pray with their heads covered. That one also fails to persuade me, especially when the priest in the Jewish Temple were supposed to have headgear on. Now I'm sorry if I oversimplified, I realized those are very brief summaries of what can be very complicated and detailed arguments. But that leaves us with option five, and this is the one I choose, and that is that even though the cultural evidence we have is somewhat vague and contradictory, Paul knew that in that culture it was considered disgraceful for men to wear something on their heads while praying. So in Corinthian culture, it would have been seen as wrong wearing something on their heads while praying would have been a sign of disrespect. So they had a practice in their culture that is similar to our practice today where we remove our hats for the national anthem. This was just a cultural reality that Paul is appealing to. He had evidence we don't have, he lived there for 18 months, he knew things we don't know, and he knew that this was how the culture understood this action. That brings us to the question of what was the cultural situation for women? And here we have the same sort of difficulties. What facts do we have to go on here? Paul says in eleven, five, and six, but every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head. Alright, what do we know about the cultural practices for particularly married women at that time? Well we know that in Tarsus, which is Paul's hometown, married Jewish women not only covered their heads, they wore veils. But they seem to be an outlier. It seems from the evidence that we have that they are the unusual case and that more generally married Jewish women covered their hair in public. When it comes to Roman women and Greek women, we have mixed evidence. If we look at the archaeology, the literature, the pictures, the descriptions we have, we find some of them did cover their heads and some of them didn't. We have examples both ways. Now in the pagan religions, women participated just like the men. What did they do? Again, we have mixed evidence. Some of them covered their heads, some of them uncovered their heads, and some of them not only uncovered their heads, they let down their hair. So why would Paul say a woman praying with her head uncovered disgraces her head? Again, scholars have proposed several options. Option number one, this is not an issue of wearing a head covering, so it's not an issue of having a scarf or a veil or a hat. It's whether or not you have long hair and whether you let your hair down or not. Women in that day typically wore their hair long and they pinned it up in some fashion, and it was disreputable to wear your hair down in public. So Christian women here are imitating, they would argue, the pagan practice of letting their hair down when they prayed or prophesied, and Paul is objecting to that. I don't think this option fits either the context or the evidence that we have very well, but it is an option. Option number two, this is not a cultural issue. Paul believes it is inappropriate from the nature of things for a married woman to be in public worship without a head covering, or at least when she's praying or prophesying. That argument also fails to persuade me. It's just hard to see how this could be a universal truth when there's nothing like it in the Old Testament in other scriptures, and Paul has that verse about judge for yourself, what do you think is proper? If it's a universal truth, it doesn't matter what they judge because it's just right or wrong one way or the other. Option three, and this is the one that persuades me. In spite of the conflicting evidence, Paul knew that in that culture, married women who uncovered their heads sent the message that they were disrespecting their husbands. He had evidence we lack. He lived and worked in Corinth a long time, he traveled extensively around the ancient Mediterranean world, and he knew that this custom was understood to be disrespectful at that time. If I had to guess, I would guess that Paul was influenced by the Jewish practices at the time, and my guess is that Jewish men uncovered their heads in prayer, that married women wore head coverings as a sign of respect for their husbands, and that Jewish men had not yet begun the practice of covering their heads. I think at this point it was still the other way around, and I suspect this would have been more or less standard Jewish practice throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. But again, lots of people disagree with me on that. That's what makes the most sense to me in the context and with the language of this passage as I understand it. Okay, so let's put all this together. What was happening in Corinth and what did Paul want them to do? This is the conclusion that I gave you in the talk last week. I think that in their culture, in that day, men removed their head coverings as a sign of respect when they stood up to pray or prophesy. I think married women covered their hair as a sign of respect to their husbands when they were in public, including in the worship service. Now in the Christian churches they have a conflict. And this is a new issue because Jewish women didn't participate in the synagogue service, but now Christian women participate in the Christian service. And when they participate, these two cultural symbols come into conflict. For a woman to remove her head covering, it means something different than a man to remove his covering. Because these two cultural practices conflict, Christian women had a problem and they didn't know which symbol they should follow, that's creating conflict and debate in the church. So if the woman removed her head covering, she is disrespecting her husband, but if she kept it on, she's disrespecting God, and there were parties in the church who were arguing for each practice, and Paul is weighing in and saying, which symbol speaks loudest to your culture? What message are they likely to understand when she stands up to pray? If she stands up and takes her head covering off, are people in your culture going to say, Oh, look, there's a woman who's honoring God, or are they going to conclude, oh, there's a woman who's disrespecting their husband? And Paul has argued they will see that as a sign of disrespect, so keep your head covering on. Now in many cultures, long hair on a woman is part of her beauty. It is styled, it's adorned, it's considered part of her attractiveness. For a married woman to put her hair up or to cover it, send the message in those cultures, my beauty is for my husband. I have pledged myself to him, I am reserving myself for him, and in that way it was a sign of respect or loyalty or a way to say, I am no longer available. I don't think it's immoral to have your hair showing, but in that culture, married women covered their heads to show loyalty to their husbands. For a married woman to stand up and remove her head covering in that culture sent the wrong message. She is removing the thing that says, I have pledged myself to my husband alone, similar to my earlier analogy of removing your wedding ring. When Paul says if you're going to do that, you might as well go all the way and shave your head. I think he's appealing to those who are arguing that she take her head off. And he's saying, look at how this message plays. Removing her head covering is sending the same message as shaving your head and cutting your hair. Now we know that in some situations an adulterous woman had her head shaved as part of her punishment. The idea was her hair is her beauty, her beauty should be reserved for her husband. She has misused her beauty and adultery, and the punishment was to take her beauty from her. And Paul is saying, if you're going to remove your head covering and treat your hair as if it's not reserved for your husband, you might as well go all the way and shave it off because you're sending the same cultural message. In either case, I think Paul is addressing the idea in Corinth at the time, the cultural message it would have sent for a married woman to cover or uncover her hair. That's a cultural issue, it's not a binding practice. But he appeals to universal truths that we can learn something from. So to summarize, as best I understand the situation, in their culture, married women kept their heads covered as a sign of respect for their husbands. Also in their culture, when men prayed or preached in public, they removed their head coverings. Before Christianity, women did not participate in the Jewish worship service, they watched from a separate area, but that changed in the Christian church, and since women are participating right alongside men, we have this conflict of symbols. What's a married woman to do when she stands up to pray or teach? If she removes her head covering, that is respectful to God, but disrespectful to her husband. If she keeps her head covering on, that is respectful to her husband, but disrespectful to God. We have a clash of cultural symbol and practice. And I understand Paul to be saying wives should keep their head coverings on because that symbol speaks loudest in their culture. That's not a practice we have today. That's not a message we're sending one way or the other with head coverings, and I don't think that's a binding issue for women today. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please leave a positive comment or review on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And please tell your friends about this podcast. It's very easy to subscribe. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com and click on subscribe to this podcast. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of heart of music.org. I invite you to check out his other music. You'll be really glad you did. Thank you for listening today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll meet you here next time at Wednesday in the Word.