Are women supposed to keep their heads covered in church? An examination of 1 Corinthians 11.

I grew up in a church where head coverings were required for women at all formal gatherings. I never questioned the practice, because we based that obligation on Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11. (We actually based quite a few ideas about women on 1 Corinthians 11.) A woman was not to have her head uncovered in worship, because she would bring dishonor to her husband. Her head covering was a symbol of man’s authority over her, a sign to the angels.

But as I read and reread the passage over the years, it was not so simple. The problem is that Paul seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth. There are several seeming contradictions I just couldn’t get past.

• In v. 3, Paul says, “The head (source) of every woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. This seems to indicate a hierarchy of authority. Man over woman, Christ over man, God over Christ (what?). But then in v. 12, he writes “But everything comes from God.” So how could both be true if Paul is supporting a hierarchy?
• In v. 8-9 he writes, “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for women, but woman for man.” So man rules over women because he was created first? But several verses later, we see, “In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman.” Is woman a dependent on man or not?
• We see in v. 6, “If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. But later Paul writes in v. 15, “For long hair is given to her as a covering.” Do women need a head covering? Or is their hair already their covering?

Every time I read this chapter, I wanted to shout: Pick a lane, Paul. Why would you contradict yourself? And make it so hard for us to get a clear understanding today??

Obviously, a book-wide broader context is important to our interpretation of a single chapter. At the beginning of the book, we see that Paul is writing because a member of the Corinthian church, Chloe, had informed him that trouble was afoot in their gathering (1:11). False teachers had infiltrated their ranks and were insidiously changing what Paul had taught into a different “gospel.” We learn more about them in Paul’s second letter (2 Corinthians).

Apparently, (based on clues in Paul’s two letters to the Corinthians), the troublemakers were the so-called Judaizers, Jews from Jerusalem who had gone behind Paul in his missionary efforts to teach strict adherence to the Law over the freedom of the gospel. They insisted that the churches continue traditional synagogue (pre-Christ) practices (see Acts 21:20-12). They claimed to be super-apostles (2 Corinthians 11:5, 12-13) and ministers of Christ (11: 23). They boasted of their Jewish credentials (11:22). They were manipulative and controlling, even violent in their behavior toward church members (11:20).

Their intent was to undo the beautiful message of the gospel: a different gospel that really was not good news at all (Galatians 1:6-7). Their theology and doctrines were all about hierarchy of authority, continued faithfulness to Mosaic and Oral Law, and a mark of distinction between men and women. They also insisted gentile males be circumcised.

Paul refuted their demands in his letter to the Galatians. Unlike the Judaizers, the gospel he proclaimed was not from man, but from God. “Are you so foolish?” he wrote them. “After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?…Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” The first Covenant had been fulfilled by Christ. The age of slavery to the Law was dead. And with it had died all of the Law’s requirements. Salvation had come by the grace of God, through faith alone.

Another thing to note is that punctuation like quotation marks did not exist in ancient Greek writing. So, when a New Testament writer quoted someone or something, there is nothing to indicate a quote other than the quote’s context.

In first century Jewish society, women were not esteemed. They were on the bottom of the heap, thought by leaders to be seductresses, not worthy of education, or deserving of a chance to verbally participate in worship. Somehow over the centuries, they had twisted the creation account in Genesis to mean something different than the original text. Eve was created for man, they reasoned. She was a help-meet, which inferred an inferior position. Adam was in charge.

Those misconceptions, not found in the Genesis text but formed through the cultural bias of a patriarchal society, placed women firmly in a subservient position to men. (Check out Genesis 1:28 if you don’t believe me.)

Was Paul agreeing with the Judaizers when he stated the man is the head of women? Because of the creation order? Was he telling women that if they did not cover their head, they disgraced the glory of man? That they should always sport that visible sign of his authority?

Knowing how Paul felt about the Judaizers and their determination to compromise the gospel of Christ, this is hard to believe (see Philippians 3:2).

But what if…
Paul was actually quoting them and then rebuking their teaching? Chloe had sent word of the problems these men were causing. Did she quote their teachings to Paul? If so, and he was now quoting them back before responding to what they had said, their words would have been very familiar to the first readers of Paul’s letter. (Kind of like how we cut and paste statements from an email we received into what we send back, so that our reader will know exactly to what we are responding.)

The language of the text seems to indicate that possibility. In verse 11, after stating the position of the Judaizers, Paul signals a refute with the word however. “However, in the LORD…” It makes total sense that Paul would be actually contrasting two opposing views here. Because what comes after the however seems to be a direct contradiction to what has come before this new paragraph.

There is another reason to understand 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 as a contrast of two teachings. Earlier, in chapter 7, Paul discusses shared leadership in a Christian marriage. In verse 4, he states: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” In patriarchal society, this would have been a startling statement, that Paul would give a wife equal authority to her husband’s. Why then, would Paul now bow to a patriarchal view of marriage after just teaching against it a few chapters before?

As I worked through this passage this week, I have come to the personal conclusion that in 1 Corinthians 11, we are seeing two views contrasted. One the legalistic, incorrect interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2, and the other Paul’s assurance that women and men were not bound by any of what the Judaizers taught. Head coverings were what they taught, not what Paul was instructing.

The days of women being differentiated from men by donning a head covering were over.