Head Coverings: 11:2-16
The first part of chapter 11 is another part of 1 Corinthians that can be difficult for modern readers. The first thing to remember, as always, is that 1 Corinthians is a letter that responds to specific concerns questions raised by the Corinthians. The question addressed in 11:2-16 is about whether women can participate in the worship services with their heads uncovered. The cultural background here seems to involve the way a respectable woman in Roman society during this period was supposed to wear her hair.
The question likely is not about wearing a hat or a veil. The NRSV uses the words “unveiled” and “veil” in verses 5 and 6, but the operative Greek word is katakaluptó meaning “covered up,” which does not specifically refer to a veil. Roman women did not ordinarily wear a veil, but they did wear their hair up. (See the portrait from a home in Pompeii at the top of this post.) If a woman’s hair was unkempt and left hanging down, she was presumed to be at best uncultured, or at worst, a prostitute.
It seems that some of the women in the church at Corinth were, literally, “letting their hair down” during worship services. Note that 11:5 presumes that women are prophesying and praying during public worship. The problem was not that they were participating in an open and equal manner during the service — a fact that, in both the Roman and Jewish contexts, would have been provocative enough. The problem, it seems, was that some of the women, in the freedom of the ecstatic worship that accompanied this new social leveling, were acting in ways that other members of the congregation felt were getting far out of hand.
For one possible contemporary parallel, imagine this: some of the members of the Presbyterian churches in Northern New Jersey begin shedding their clothes and dancing naked during worship. (During the contemporary service, of course!) These folks argue that God has set us free from arbitrary social conventions and that this kind of worship better reflects the innocence of our original embodied human nature. Others in the churches, however, are quite disturbed by this practice. Some feel it is difficult to concentrate on worship, and to avoid inappropriate thoughts, when a naked fellow congregant dances by. Others feel that the practice is distracting from the church’s hospitality and mission in a culture in which public nakedness is so far from the norm. Yet others worry that the practice will be misconstrued as a form of sexual license even if that is not the intent.
We could imagine some interesting local Session and Presbytery meetings about this problem! Perhaps the folks engaging in this practice have some valid points, and perhaps even there is some time, place, and manner in which they could pursue it. Maybe in some other cultural context, it wouldn’t present such a big issue. But most of us likely would agree that, in our context, it’s good to have a general rule that requires everyone to keep their clothes on during worship.
This is probably how we should imagine the question of “head coverings” in ancient Corinth. Paul’s solution is at one level broadly consistent with his approach to other divisive and culturally sensitive issues, such as meat sacrificed to idols: the dignity of worship should be maintained, and for everyone’s benefit, the questionable practice should be avoided.
If this were all there was to Paul’s advice, this section of 1 Corinthians might not be so disturbing. The broader difficulty is that Paul connects the requirement that women keep their heads covered to a number of different but equally confusing and somewhat inconsistent arguments: one from the order of “headship,” a second from the order of creation, another concerning “the angels,” yet another from “nature,” and a final one from custom.
Misuse of these arguments has led the church historically to claim that women should be subservient to men, both in the home and in the church. Even today, the official teaching in many of the churches reflects aspects of this view, particularly in closing off ordained leadership roles to women. Obviously, we do not hold that view in our church. So how can we relate to what Paul says here?
The order of “headship,” Paul says, is God → Christ → Man → Woman. Although the NRSV translates “husband” and “wife,” there is no separate term for “husband” or “wife.” The words are simply “man” and “woman” and the context must determine whether “husband” or “wife” is meant more specifically. Here, the context suggests Paul is speaking broadly about women in the Corinthian congregation, not just about married women. Some commentators have suggested that the word translated “head,” kephalé, can also mean “source,” but this is a stretch. The word literally means “head” and is used metaphorically to refer to refer to that which has prominence. Paul therefore seems to provide a theological justification for his Roman and Jewish cultures’ hierarchical gender roles.
On closer inspection, however, Paul’s example of “headship” is confusing. In fact, by later standards of Christian thought about Christ and the Trinity, Paul’s comment about God being the “head” of Christ could be considered “subordinationist” — that is, technically heretical, because it would deny the co-equality and divinity of the Son and the Father.
Paul did not have a fully worked out theology of the Trinity, and we could write several books about how exactly Paul understood the figure of Christ in relation to God (for Paul, to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), without reaching a firm conclusion. We can say, though, that Paul did not intend to demean Christ. Paul’s vision is of a community under God’s gracious rule, through Christ. In his own patriarchal context, he still conceives of men having some kind of ontological priority over women, such that for the woman to worship without her head covered would disgrace the men in the congregation. But men and women are together both under Christ and therefore under God, so the ultimate “head” to which both women and men are accountable is God. The overall point in context, despite the patriarchal cultural baggage, is that both men and women have responsibilities to preserve good order in public worship.
Paul’s second argument, from the order of creation, is equally hard to follow. Paul suggests that the story in Genesis 2 of Eve being created from Adam’s rib establishes an ontological priority of the man in creation. In fact, Paul goes beyond the Genesis 2 text and appears to echo a common Rabbinical gloss of the time that the “image of God” was breathed only into Adam and that Eve received the image secondarily from Adam. (11:7.) Genesis 1, however, establishes that God created humanity, male and female, in his image (Gen. 1:26-27.) Paul seems to recognize this, because in verses 11-12 he appears to backtrack: women are not independent of men, men are not independent of women; women come from men, men come from women; and both women and men come from God.
To make the argument from the order of creation even more perplexing, Paul tosses in a sub-argument: women ought to wear a “symbol of authority” on their heads “because of the angels.” (11:10.) Where the “head covering” in relation to men in the congregation seems to place women in some way under men, here the head covering is a symbol of authority for women. This seems to mean not that the women are under under the authority of the angels, but rather that the women have authority over the angels.
The “angels” could refer to the nephilim of Genesis 6. The origins of the Genesis 6 story are obscure, but in subsequent interpretation, the nephilim were thought to be wayward angels who mated with human women. This interpretation was picked up in the Second Temple period to create an elaborate scenario involving fallen angels called “Watchers.” (See Angela Kim Harkins, Kelly Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, S.J., eds, The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2014.)) Women with loosely flowing hair might have been considered a temptation to the angels, whereas women who presented themselves properly might have been thought to be in control over these angels’ desires. Alternatively, Paul might be suggesting that, when the community engages in worship, the angels are also present, and take a role under both the men and the women in the congregation.
Paul’s final argument from “nature” is that women naturally have long hair and men naturally have short hair, so a requirement that women bind up their hair as a “covering” is self-evident. This argument seems even less convincing than the others. Men, of course, can grow out their hair naturally as well as women, and if a woman’s long hair is her “glory” it’s not clear why she should follow a cultural norm of tying it up instead of letting it flow.
It seems Paul recognizes that he’s casting about for a good argument, and in the end, appeals to custom. Requiring women to wear their hair up, he says, is just how things are done in all the churches.
Paul is searching for a way to diffuse something that obviously was causing some distress in the Corinthian congregation, which in our cultural context simply is not an issue. The overall point we might take away, despite patriarchal cultural baggage, some slippery exegesis of Genesis 1-2, the obscure reference to the “angels,” an argument from “nature” that makes little sense, and an unsupported appeal to custom, is that men and women each have responsibilities to preserve good order in worship.
The Lord’s Supper: 11:17-34
In this section Paul returns to one of the big causes of divisions in the Corinthian church. Some people are abusing the Lord’s Supper by drinking too much and excluding other members of the congregation. Remember that during this period the churches often met in homes and that the Lord’s Supper was a more extended meal. It’s likely that the homes that served as meeting places belonged to wealthier members of the congregation, simply because poorer members, including those who were common laborers and slaves, would not have owned homes. The major problem of a man sleeping with his father’s wife, as we saw in chapter 5, was in some way also related to dissension at the Lord’s Supper. This problem, then, struck at the heart of congregation’s fellowship.
Verses 23-26 are words of institution that churches have used through the ages in eucharistic liturgies. Verses 27-31 emphasize the importance and holiness of the communion meal, to the point of suggesting that participating in the meal without first engaging in some kind of practice of self-examination can lead to judgment, including illness and even death.
Notice that the words of institution are words Paul says he received “from the Lord,” which are words of Jesus himself. Paul is not claiming that he has received some kind of direct revelation, but rather that he is passing on the early tradition of Jesus’ words. The words Paul recites are similar to those in Mark 14:12-25 and Luke 22:7-38. The Gospels had not yet been compiled when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, but this shows that there was an early Jesus tradition that Paul received and that was broadly consistent with the passion tradition in the synoptic Gospels (and, indeed, that likely informed what was written in the Gospels). In this part of 1 Corinthians, Paul recites Jesus’ words of remembrance (anamnésis), new covenant (diathéké), and proclamation (kataggelló). Paul also connects Jesus’ statements about the bread — “this is my body” — to the warning that before partaking participants must “discern (diakrinó) the body.”
The nature of the communion meal has been a point of division at various times in church history. The institutional church from the Patristic period through the middle ages developed an elaborate theology of Christ’s “real presence” in the elements of the blood and wine. The question of the “real presence” was disputed during the Reformation. Martin Luther believed adamantly in the real presence, while Ulrich Zwingli believed the meal was entirely symbolic, and the two men argued bitterly about this difference. John Calvin developed a kind of mediating position, in which Christ was spiritually but not literally present during the communion meal. The pietist groups we call the “Radical Reformation,” which were the forebears of modern Baptist, Anabaptist, and other “free church” movements, tended to view the meal as Zwingli did, that is, as entirely symbolic.
What Paul writes about “discerning the body” he is most likely referring to the assembly of the church as the body of Christ, rather than to any theory of Christ’s real presence in the elements of the Eucharist. However we might understand the presence of Christ at the communion table, the Lord’s Supper is the place at which the ekklesia, the body of Christ, remembers Christ’s sacrifice for it, reaffirms the covenant that binds the community to God through that sacrifice, and proclaims the benefits of that sacrifice and covenant to the world. The Lord’s Supper is simultaneously and inward-focused event, at which the church recognizes and receives its meaning, and an outward-focused, missional event, from which the good news of the Gospel proceeds into the world. It is therefore simultaneously joyous and serious, not unlike a wedding, which should not be treated lightly. It should be preceded by sincere self-examination and confession and followed by moving out into the world to live and make known what has been received — a breathing, or flowing, in to the table, out to the world, in to the table, out to the world.
Some Discussion Questions on Chapter 11
- What do you think good order in worship might mean today? How do we navigate different styles and cultural expressions of worship while remaining true to a principle of good order?
- How might we think about a theology of gender today? Paul picks up on a theme that is present in the Biblical creation narratives of a created gender binary of male and female. How can we understand this today when we know that gender identity and sexual orientation are not merely rigid binaries?
- How do you experience the presence of Christ in worship? Have you ever experienced the presence of Christ in a special way at the Lord’s Supper? In what ways do you experience the church worship service as a “proclamation,” a sending out of the church body into the world?
Spiritual Gifts: Chapter 12
In chapter 12, Paul begins to pivot from the specific concerns raised by the Corinthians back to the broader themes of knowledge, wisdom, and the church that he previewed at the start of the letter. This section of 1 Corinthians is one of the richest texts on ecclesiology — the nature of the church — in the New Testament. It does concern individual spiritual gifts, but the focus is on the collective body of the church, not on the individual.
Chapter 12 bears a notably Trinitarian shape (recognizing, again, that Paul does not offer a worked-out Trinitarian theology). It is the Holy Spirit, Paul says, that enables anyone to recognize and proclaim Jesus as Lord (kyrios). The Spirit imparts gifts within the church; the service (diakoniōn) rendered according to those gifts is rendered to the Lord (Jesus); and God “activates” (energōn) the gifts. The gifts each person receives are a “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (sympheron).” (12:3-7.)
It’s not good practice to play with word etymologies, but the resonances of the Greek here are too rich to ignore, and those resonances do have a history in subsequent Christian theology and spirituality. A service — diakonia — is the term that relates to the office of Deacon. Not everyone in the local church holds the office of Deacon, but everyone is called to perform some diakonia. God’s “activation” — energōn — is the “energy” within the church. The Eastern Orthodox tradition speaks of the Divine “essence,” which is ineffable and insrcutable, and the Divine “energies,” which are the tangible, knowable presence of God. God’s energetic presence moves the church forward in service. The manifestation of the Spirit by the gifts is for the common good — sympheron — a “symphony” of different tonalities and different parts coming together to produce a beautiful, textured, unified performance.
Some of the specific spiritual gifts Paul mentions seem familiar to us, while others seem odd. Paul mentions healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, and speaking in and interpreting “tongues” (glōssōn). Some of the odder-sounding gifts, including prophecy and discernment of spirits, may not seem as challenging to us if we contextualize them: “healing” can include a calming, healing presence; “prophecy” is more about forth-telling than fore-telling; and “discernment of spirits” is a sensitivity towards problems and motives that might not appear on the surface. On the other hand, while “tongues” could refer to the ability to speak different human languages, which is what happened according to Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, here and in other of Paul’s letters it seems to refer to ecstatic speech, not ordinary human languages (we will come back to this when we study chapter 14). And “miracles” — dynameōn — are works of power, relating to “the powers.” As we have discussed before, this kind of text challenges the flat, mechanistic worldview of the Global North.
The middle section of Chapter 12 further develops the metaphor of the church as a “body.” Each part of the human body, including those that are “less honorable” (i.e., the parts that eliminate waste), is vitally important. Every spiritual gift within the body of Christ likewise is vitally important, even if it is a gift that does not usually receive public accolades.
The final section of Chapter 12 — verses 27-31 — however, offers a kind of hierarchy of gifts, with Apostles at the top and tongues at the bottom. Since Paul has just eloquently stated that every gift is vital, this paragraph cannot be meant to denigrate any of the gifts themselves. Instead, this paragraph hearkens back to the related theme throughout the letter of proper order. Each of the gifts is vital, but different giftings entail different roles within the leadership of the congregation. It is right to recognize and respect different offices and roles within the congregation, and it is right to seek the “greater gifts” — that is, to explore your own potential for leadership. At the same time, verse 31, as a hinge into the great “love” chapter (Chapter 13), points to “a still more excellent way”: none of the gifts or offices mean anything if they are not united by love.
Some Discussion Questions on this Section
- “Missional” theology emphasizes the Trinitarian shape of God’s mission in the world and of the mission of the church. How do you understand the relation of God, Jesus, and the Spirit within the life of the church? Does the metaphor of a “symphony” resonate with you?
- How do you understand your own spiritual gifts? (You are participating in the life of the church — so you have been given spiritual gifts!) How might you discern your spiritual gifts?
- What place do you think “supernatural” spiritual gifts have in the life of the church today? Can we speak about “supernatural” spiritual gifts without quickly sliding into abusive practices or quackery?