How to understand 1 Cor. 11. 4-7?

Full Question

Will you please supply an explanation of 1 Cor. 11. 4-7?


Answer

The whole of the chapter containing this passage is devoted to the Apostle’s ruling concerning the manner of public worship in the Christian Church, into which erroneous practice had crept.

It was natural that some doubts should have arisen. The new Church had to a great extent followed the practice of the Jewish Synagogue, of which it was an unbroken continuation; but to what extent more than a change of the day of observance, did the doctrine of Christ demand alteration? In the mat­ter here at issue, the Jewish practice had always been for all worshippers to keep the head covered; and the women were so far subordinated as to worship apart from the men, as indeed the prac­tice continues in both respects, to this day.

The new teaching was that in Jesus Christ there is no difference between male and female they are equal in God’s sight (Gal 3:28). Therefore seeing than in the Christian Church men removed their head covering during the public wor­ship, should not women do the same? For that matter, why should they not take equal place in preaching or other positions of authority ?If the latter question does not appear to have arisen in Corinth, it certainly needed Paul’s ruling later:

“I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man :—for Adam was first formed, then Eve.” (1 Tim 2:12-13)

In answering these questions, the apostle acknowledges that men and women, if “in the Lord,” are of equal honour before God (1 Cor 11:11). In the public wor­ship, however, there is a difference which demands acknowledgement. There is, he states, a God-given law of subjec­tion which must be observed in the Church, a law under which even Christ himself is subject. Thus, God is the Head of Christ : Christ is the Head of man : and man since Creation has al­ways been the head of the woman. Woman, therefore, ought to retain the sign of subjection (the veil or head covering) during the public worship. If, Paul argues, a woman denies her natural subjection and removes her veil, she might as well complete her shame by denying her natural glory and shaving her head, which no one would think of doing. This rule of worship is thus es­tablished by

  1. the divine law of sub­ordination;
  2. the order of creation;
  3. the natural instinct.

Further light is thrown on the subjection of woman to man when Paul explains elsewhere that this is a figure of the marriage of Christ, as the husband, to the redeemed, His bride (Eph 5:32).

Why then must men be uncovered in the Church ? This is quite a different principle. At creation man was in the image and glory of God and needed no veil in His presence. Sin, however, placed a barrier between God and man, which the Jews rightly acknowledged, worshipping with the head covered, as a symbol of this barrier. But now, Paul says, Jesus Christ by his victory over sin has opened the way to God, and all who are ” in him” have open access, in prayer, to the throne of Grace. To wear a head covering, then, is to retain the symbol of the barrier of sin, and in effect to deny association with the sacri­ficial work of Christ, “dishonouring the Head ” indeed : rather, he says, the privilege has been given to “behold with unveiled face the glory of the Lord.” (2 Cor 3:18) In this connection, the whole of 2 Cor. 3 should be read.

There remains one difficult phrase which is constantly questioned, and of which no entirely satisfactory explana­tion has been forthcoming nor is here offered. ” For this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head because of the angels.” (1 Cor 11:10RSV) The diffi­culty is two-fold.

  1. Nowhere, or at least nowhere else, are Christians com­manded to refer religious practice to angelic standards. This is not to state that angels are imperfect, but it is be­cause Jesus Christ is the sole example and mediator.
  2. If consideration of angelic witnesses ought to govern the deportment of worship, it would neces­sarily apply as much to private prayer as to public worship an interpretation which has never been suggested nor practised.

It may be stated that there is no ex­planation of the phrase “because of the angels ” which is not open to these two objections. It was probably this con­sideration which led Griesbach, the famous authority on the Greek text, to suggest that a word had been wrongly copied from the original manuscript. His conjecture was that “AGGELOUS” should be “AGELAIOUS,” a trifling alteration of spelling which would change the meaning from “because of the angels” to ” because of the congre­gation,” thus bringing the phrase into line with the whole reference to the formal occasion of collective worship. The ingenuity and completeness of this conjecture are attractive, but it was never more than a scholar’s guess and must not be over-rated. Nevertheless, ” because of the angels” contains real difficulties which, it may be, we shall not be able to resolve.