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Does (Not) Nature Itself Teach You? Pentecostal Reflections on a Troubled and Troubling Text
Chris E.W. Green
Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tennessee
Abstract
This article explores the theological and pastoral significance of a notoriously troubled and troubling text, 1Corinthians 11:2–16, asking what this text’s difficulties have to teach us about the purpose of Scripture in the church’s life of worship and witness. It does so, first, by an explication of the text’s “literal sense,” and then by examination of its effective history, especially as exemplified in the works of John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. This, in turn, leads to a brief survey of various modern interpretations, such as those offered by Gordon Fee, William Webb, and Lucy Peppiatt. Finally, the article turns to the construction of a possible alternative reading, one that is hopefully better fitted to pentecostal spirituality and theology and, just for that reason, also holds ecumenical promise.
Keywords
1Corinthians – Pauline theology – theological hermeneutics – history of effects – gender and sexuality – ordination and ministry
1Corinthians 11:2–16
2I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you. 3But I want you to under- stand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ. 4Any man who prays or prophe- sies with something on his head disgraces his head,5but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. 6For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03804002
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woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil. 7For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection[c] of God; but woman is the reflection[d] of man.8Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man. 10For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.11Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not indepen- dent of man or man independent of woman. 12For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God. 13Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?14Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him,15but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.16But if anyone is disposed to be contentious—we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.
Introduction
Karen Kilby has said that theology begins in the “holy troubledness” that arises from the experience of stumbling in prayer and of thinking about that stum- bling. Something like that has to be true about reading Scripture, too. First Corinthians 11:2–16 is certainly one of the more troubling texts the Spirit has given us. In fact, the closer we read it, and the more we read others’ readings of it, the more the trouble intensifies. This article attempts to let that trouble happen so that holy troubledness, the kind of disturbance and disorientation that moves us sanctifyingly toward the image of God in which and for which we are made, becomes possible.1
The Troubled Text
Paul—and by “Paul” I mean the passage as it seems to present itself to me, as its reader—opens the passage with a commendation: the Corinthians have remembered (μέμνησθε) him by keeping the traditions (τὰς παραδόσεις) he has handed on to them. He then offers a clarification: “But I want you to understand
1 This paper continues my attempt to work out the hermeneutics I proposed in Sanctifying
Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, Scripture (Cleveland, tn: cpt Press, 2015), and as such is
intended as a companion piece to my “Provoked to Saving Jealousy: Reading Romans 9–11 as
Theological Performance,”Pneuma38, nos. 1–2 (2016): 180–192.
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that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ” (11:3). He wants them to understand because this truth must be embodied in the Corinthians’ worship. Men must beunveiledand women must beveiledas they speak to God (in prayer) or for God (in prophecy); otherwise, they “disgrace” (καταισχύνει) their “head” (κεφαλὴν). But why? Paul, anticipating the question, answers that the man must be unveiled because he is “the image and reflection of God” (εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα θεοῦ), and the woman must be veiled because she is “the reflection of man” (δὲ δόξα ἀνδρός).
Having stated his case in one way, apparently tracing the logic of the incarna- tion, Paul takes another tack in which he seemingly draws on Israel’s creation story: “Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man” (2:8– 9). At this point, Paul again stresses the need for the women to comply with these orders. If they unveil themselves in worship, they bring an overwhelming disgrace on themselves and others. It is as if their heads were shaved (v. 5–6). Not only that, women are to be veiled “because of the angels” (διὰ τοὺς ἀγέλους) or for the angels’ sake (v. 10).
Abruptly, the text alters course: “nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman” (v. 11). And here the apostle seemingly draws on the basic phenomenon of human being-in-the- world. Man comes from woman just as surely as woman came from man, and, in the final analysis, all come from God (v. 12). Having invoked the common human experience, Paul goes on to insist that the Corinthians need to judge for themselves. Is it fitting for a woman to pray with her head uncovered? Or for a man to pray with his head covered? “Does not nature itself teach” (οὐδὲ ἡ φύσις αὐτὴ διδάσκει) that these things are improper (v. 14)? Does not nature itself teach that long hair on a man is a shame, but that a woman’s hair is her “glory” (δόξα), given to her as a natural veil or “covering” (περιβολαίου)?2 Apparently, Paul assumes that the Corinthians know the answer to these questions and that those answers convincingly support what he has been arguing. So he heads off any remaining disagreement with a final word: contentiousness is not a custom among the people of God (v. 16).
This text generates a storm of difficulties.3 What Paul wants to say is far from clear, and we can only guess why he feels the need to say it. In Francis
2 Or “instead of a testicle”? See Troy Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in
1Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head Covering,” jbl 123 (2004): 75–84. See also
the response by Mark Goodacre, “DoesπεριβόλαιονMean ‘Testicle’ in 1Corinthians 11:15?” jbl
130, no. 2 (2011): 391–396.
3 At least it does for me and for readers who share my “world.” And no doubt those who do not
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Watson’s judgment, the text is marked by “flaws, obscurities, and illogicalities.”4 For example, why does he begin by speaking of the husband as head of the wife, only to talk about man and woman from that point on? Does he mean for the woman to be veiled, or (only) to keep her hair, her natural veil, uncut? Does he want the man to be unveiled, or (only) to keep his hair cut short? Is Paul correcting unfaithful worship practices, or securing the theological grounding for a practice he had handed on to them and that they were already faithfully observing? What does he mean by “nature” (φύσις)?5 Is it a reference to prevalent cultural custom in Corinthian and Roman culture, to the natural law inscribed in human conscience, to the condition of the world “in Adam,” or something else? And what does any of this have to do with the angels (τοὺς ἀγέλους)?
Of course, not everything in the passage is absolutely unclear. And, truth be told, the apparently clearer statements create the most trouble for many interpreters. First, Paul seems to write subordination into the triune life. Then he ascribes that same subordination not only to marriage and civic life, but also to human being itself. And the appeal to “nature,” regardless of what it means, opens a Pandora’s box of theological concerns.6To put it bluntly, if “nature” is a reliable teacher, then what difference does being “in the Lord” make? What sense does it make to say that in Christ “all things have become new,” or that “there is now no longer Jew or Gentile,” if “nature” speaks as the voice of God? And if the Father is “head” of Christ in the same way that the man is “head” of woman, does that not mean that the Son is less divine than the Father, and that the woman is less human than the man?7If Christ is less than the Father, then
find this passage troubling do find other passages—and my reading of this one—difficult to
take.
4 Francis Watson, “The Authority of the Voice: A Theological Reading of 1Cor 11:2–16,”nts 46
(2000): 520–536 [522].
5 Anthony Thiselton (The First Epistle to Corinthians[tnigtc; Grand Rapids,mi: Wm. B. Eerd-
mans, 2000], 845) argues that “[d]epending upon the context of thought Paul may usephusis
sometimes to denote the very ‘grain’ of the created order as a whole, or at other times (as
here) to denote ‘how things are’ in more situational or societal terms on ‘nature.’” 6 This appeal to nature, as well as the theological and anthropological subordinationisms
it sanctions, seems at odds with at least some of what is said elsewhere in the Pauline
corpus. See Christopher Rowland, “Natural Theology and the Christian Bible,” in The Oxford
Handbookof NaturalTheology, ed. Russell Re Manning, Oxford Handbooks (NewYork: Oxford
University Press, 2015), 23–37.
7 Of course many exegetes and theologians argue thatκεφαλήis better translated “source” than
“authority,” which may alter this concern, but only by raising other equally pressing concerns
about intra-trinitarian relations and their significance for the triune missions. See especially
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how can we trust that he fully and truly reveals God? How can we be sure that our salvation is fully and truly accomplished? In the same way, if the woman is less than the man, then does that not mean that she is saved differently from the man? Indeed, does it not suggest that she must be savedthroughthe man?
The Troubling Text
Needless to say, I, like many others, find this text, at least in the guise in which I can now see it, deeply problematic.8On my reading, this text forces three dis- tinct kinds of difficulties on its interpreters. First, there aretextual/interpretive difficulties. What are we, as readers of Christian Scripture, supposed to do with the parts of this text that seem hopelessly indecipherable? And how are we to handle the dissonances, the contradictions it creates with other Pauline texts?9 Second, and more pressingly, there are theological difficulties. What does it mean for our theologies of Scripture that in places these texts are seemingly unreadable? And even if it is possible to explain (not to say explain away!) what the text says about the subordination of Christ to God, it is much harder to know how to deal with the way it speaks about the subordination of women to men and its appeal to “nature” as support for this subordination. Finally, there arepastoral/ethicaldifficulties. Lucy Peppiatt, in a recent stimulating and inno- vative work, has argued that this passage is nothing less than an interpretive skandalon:
First, it is abundantly clear that the passage itself is one that commen- tators, without exception, claim is obscure. The total lack of consensus
Jenny Everts Powers, “Recovering a Woman’s Head with Prophetic Authority: A Pentecostal
Interpretation of 1Cor 11:3–16,” jpt 10, no. 1 (2001): 11–37.
8 So, Michael J. Lakey (Image and Glory of God: 1Corinthians 11:2–16 as a Case Study in Bible,
Gender and Hermeneutics [London: t&t Clark, 2010], 157) concludes, “is it necessary to ask
whether this passage is one with which moderns (or postmoderns) can continue to have a
meaningful dialogue?”
9 In a startling passage, Jacques Derrida (Acts of Religion[NewYork: Routledge, 2002], 346–347)
observes, “The one who wanted to veil the heads of the women and unveil those of the men,
that very one denounced Moses and the children of Israël. He accused them of having given in
to the veil, of not having known how to lift the veil, the veil over the face of God, the veil over
the covenant, the veil on the heart.” Derrida’s critique is illuminating: how could Paul have
missed the contradiction of requiring women in his communities to veil themselves when
Christ’s work was to unveil all?
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on the passage, and the wide range of readings clearly demonstrate that the church has been unable to “make sense” of this passage of Scripture … [What is more,] a traditional reading creates for us an embarrassment in terms of Paul’s own thought, both with respect to his own argumen- tation in the passage, which remains convoluted, and with respect to his wider theology, which he appears to contradict in this passage. Was Paul really so muddled or so hypocritical or so tyrannical? [Finally], there is a clear agreement among commentators that this passage contains within it an “apostolic ruling.” If this is the case, then surely the church needs to make a decision as to what should be enforced for all churches every- where.10
In the churches I grew up in, this text wasunderstood as establishing an apos- tolic rule—for hairstyles. Men were to keep their hair cut short, and women were not to cut their hair at all. And the vigorous enforcement of this rule testi- fied to the “soft” patriarchalism that framed our lives. Unhappily, the history of interpretation shows that my experience on this score was anything but excep- tional. There is a stream of interpretation running from the ancient church to the present that reads Paul as affirming in no uncertain terms a form of patri- archy, androcentrism, and male superiority, contending that the faithfulness of the church’s witness depends upon the maintenance of this paradigm. I will briefly consider four exemplary interpreters,11all of whom make the case for the subjection of the woman to the man in theological as well as biblical/exegetical terms.
John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom, in his sermon on this passage, notes that “the heretics,” in their rush to prove the inferiority of the Son, simply stumble over themselves. The head is of the same substance as the body; therefore, the Son is consub- stantial with the Father. And it is axiomatic that the Father-Son relationship is radically different from the man-woman relationship, because these relations take place on opposing sides of the creator-creature distinction.
10
11
Lucy Peppiatt,Women andWorship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1Corinthians (Eugene,or: Cascade Books, 2015), 108.
No doubt others could have been chosen and exceptions to this line of interpretation can be found. But for the sake of the argument I am making here, these examples should suffice.
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If we choose to take the term, “head,” in the like sense in all the clauses, the Son will be as far removed from the Father as we are from Him. Nay, and the woman will be as far removed from us as we are from the Word of God. And what the Son is to the Father, this both we are to the Son and the woman again to the man. And who will endure this?12
“For although the same words are spoken of God and of men, they do not have the same force in respect to God and to men.”13
Chrysostom holds that Paul is actually not concerned with rule of the Father and the subjection of the Son. If he had been, he would have appealed to the slave-master and not the husband-wife relationship. “A wife is free, and equal in honor” with her husband, even if she is required to obey him.14And the same holds for Christ. But, Chrysostom believes, Paul is concerned with the rule of the man/husband and the subjection of the woman/wife. And this is so for a couple of reasons. First, under the powers of sin, equality of honor generates conflict. Second, Eve was deceived in the beginning, failing in her vocation as Adam’s helper. For this reason, God subjected the woman to the rule of the man, the wife to the authority of the husband. “The rule of the man is natural,”15 Chrysostom says, meaning that it is now the will of God, an accommodation for the brokenness of the world and the dis-ease of the man-woman, husband-wife relationship.16
Hair and veils,17 Chrysostom avers, are among the many divinely given cul- tural symbols of differing vocations and roles: “to him of rule, to her of subjec- tion.” To refuse or abuse these symbols is to “disturb the proper order,” usurping God’s purpose and violating the proper limits of human being, so that the man “falls into the woman’s inferiority” and the woman “rises up against the man.” The man who veils himself or wears long hair “casts to the ground the honor bestowed on him from above,” the honor of being governor. The woman who unveils herself or cuts her hair does the same, rebelling against her rank as the governed. The bishop admits that the sociocultural dress codes and customs
12
13 14 15 16
17
John Chrysostom, “Homily 26 on First Corinthians” 3, n.p; available online: http://www .newadvent.org/fathers/220126.htm; accessed August 20, 2015.
Chrysostom, “Homily 26 on First Corinthians” 3, n.p.
Ibid.
Ibid. 4, n.p.
Maria-Fotini Polidoulis Kapsalis, “St. John Chrysostom’s Interpretation of Κεφαλή in 1Co- rinthians 11:3–16,”Greek Orthodox Theological Review49, nos. 3–4 (2004): 321–356. Not only hair and veils, but also inner and outer garments; here Chrysostom appeals to Deut 22:5 and other similar texts from the Pauline household codes.
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emerge as human inventions, but counters that they are nonetheless the work of God who is the author of Nature, which is itself the mother of custom. He minces no words: “when I say ‘Nature,’ I mean God.”18
Chrysostom notes that in order to avoid exalting the man or depressing the woman, Paul “brings in the correction” through the “nevertheless” of v. 11. But it is difficult to see what kind of correction he thinks it makes or how the “nevertheless” matters for him.Toward the end of the sermon, offering words of moral exhortation, the bishop directs wives to bear with whatever abuse they may receive in their homes. (We should not miss the significance of the fact that he speaks directly to the wives, just as Paul had done.) If the Lord directed his disciples to turn the other cheek to gentiles, then how much more should wives turn their cheek to their husbands? He is quick to insist to the husbands that he isnotcallingforthebeatingof theirwives;suchabuseisanaffronttothedignity of the husband as well as to the wife.The man is expected to rule “gloriously,” so that his subject suffers no indignity. Chrysostom then addresses the husbands directly. If Scripture commands believers to bear one another’s burdens, then the husband should above all bear the burdens of his wife. “Though she be poor do not upbraid her: though she be foolish, do not trample on her, but train her rather: because she is a member of you, and you have become one flesh.”19
Thomas Aquinas
In his commentary on 1Corinthians, apparently written early in his career (somewhere between 1259 and 1268), Thomas Aquinas acknowledges two dif- ferent but equally plausible ways of understanding how God is the head of Christ. On the one hand, readers might take “Christ” as reference to the human- ity of theWord and “God” as reference to theTrinity. Aquinas himself seemingly favors this choice. But on the other hand, readers might take it to refer to the Father as the eternal “origin” of the Son.20 Regardless, Aquinas is sure that the subjection of Christ to the Father described in this text does not violate their coeternality and consubstantiality.
The same does not hold for the man-woman, husband-wife relationship, however. Aquinas acknowledges that man and woman are alike in nature, as Genesis 2:18 asserts, but states that the man is nonetheless “naturally superior to the female,” and so responsible for “governing” her, as Ephesians 5:22 and
18
19 20
Chrysostom, “Homily 26 on First Corinthians” 4, n.p.This is strikingly similar toTertullian’s arguments in De Corona.
Chrysostom, “Homily 26 on First Corinthians” 8, n.p.
Thomas Aquinas,Commentary on First Corinthians592, n.p.; available online: http:// dhspriory.org/thomas/SS1Cor.htm#111; accessed July 31, 2015.
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Genesis 3:16 indicate. Aquinas, following Aristotle, sees this superiority written in the bodies of men and women—in the philosopher’s words “the female is an occasioned [read: failed] male” (foemina est masculus occasionatus)—as well as in the “vigor” of their souls (animae vigorem). He cites Ecclesiastes 7:28 as support: “One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found.”21
Unlike Chrysostom, Aquinas attends to the way this passage applies differ- ently in different contexts and according to distinct ecclesial vocations. First, he distinguishes private prayer—the prayer of personal devotion, which in his world is often carried out by men who cover their heads for the sake of privacy—from the public, liturgical prayers offered by the priests with and for the people. The same distinction applies to the difference between preach- ing and lecturing, often done by bishops wearing a miter, and the liturgical reading of Scripture. Preachers and teachers, like devotional pray-ers, speak “in their own person.”22Liturgical readers and pray-ers speak “in the person of the Church.” Aquinas assumes that women will speak only to women, and in such contexts they too can speak either in their own person or in the person of the whole church. He allows that nuns do not violate the apostle’s rule when they shave their heads because when they “take a vow of virginity or widowhood with Christ as their spouse, they are promoted to the dignity of men, being freed from subjection to men and joined to Christ Himself.”23
Aquinas knows that these apostolic directions fit oddly with Paul’s claim (in Gal 3:28) that there is no difference between male and female. But he answers the apparent conflict by saying that the male is the image of God in a special way, first “because man is the principle of his entire race,” and second because “reason is more vigorous in him.”24 He notes that Paul says the man is both image and glory of Christ, and that the woman is identified only as the glory of man, and not his image, which Aquinas takes to suggest that both man and woman are the image of God, and not without each other. But this is true of the male in a superior, more immediate way. Following St. Augustine
21
22 23 24
Aquinas holds that the superiority of the male to the female is inscribed also in the nature of nonhuman creation, so that Paul’s words have a “mystic” or “spiritual” significance as well. Reason, which is identified with masculinity, is to rule over the sensual (sensualitas), which is identified with the feminine. And higher reason, which occupies itself with “con- templating eternal things,” must take authority over the lower reason, which is concerned with “disposing of and arranging temporal things.”
Aquinas,Commentary on First Corinthians594, n.p.
Ibid. 600, n.p.
Ibid. 607, n.p.
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and his reading of this passage in light of Genesis 1:27, Aquinas acknowledges that “considered according to the spirit … there is no difference between male and female.”25 And far more forcefully than Chrysostom, Aquinas emphasizes that because all things are from God, “both man and woman pertain to God.” But the differences between the sexes—revealed in the “natural inclination” (inclinationem naturalem) that appears in the majority of men and women— must be accepted as divinely ordained, and symbolically and fittingly revealed in the dress of worshippers.26
John Calvin
Much like Aquinas, John Calvin reads Paul as “issuing basic regulations for proper behavior in worship.” Unlike Chrysostom, he sees not only the man- woman but also the God-Christ relationship as one of authority in subordina- tion. But he is not concerned that this leads to a division of the Son from the Father, or a subjugation of the Son to the Father, because it refers only to the Son’s human mission. “Christ has the second place, even though he is of one essence with the Father, because as Christ the Mediator he became inferior to the Father by clothing himself with our nature, for our salvation.”27 The more pressing difficulty, for Calvin, has to do with man’s superiority over woman and the seeming contradiction with Galatians 3:28:
When he says that there is no difference between the man and the woman, he is treating of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, in which individual distinctions are not regarded, or made any account of; for it has nothing to do with the body, and has nothing to do with the outward relation- ships of mankind, but has to do solely with the mind—on which account he declares that there is no difference, even between bond and free.28
This spiritual equality, for Calvin, has no bearing on “civil order or honorary distinctions, which cannot be dispensed with in ordinary life.” And the natural differences between the sexes must be acknowledge in ecclesiastical polity,
25 26 27
28
Ibid., n.p.
Ibid. 619, n.p.
Linda Mercadante, From Hierarchy to Equality: A Comparison of Past and Present Interpre- tations of 1Cor 1:2–16 in Relation to the Changing Status of Women in Society(Vancouver,bc: gmhBooks, 1978), 27.
John Calvin, “1Corinthians 11:1–16,” 3 (n.p.) inCommentaryonFirstCorinthiansVolumeOne; available online: http://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom39.xviii.i.html; accessed Septem- ber 24, 2015.
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liturgical dress, and the treatment of hair.29So, “as regards spiritual connection in the sight of God, and inwardly in the conscience, Christ is the head of the man and of the woman without any distinction”; in terms of God’s salvific purpose “there is no regard paid to male or female.” But “as regards external arrangement and political decorum, the man follows Christ and the woman the man, so that they are not upon the same footing.”30
Karl Barth
Karl Barth holds that Paul is attending to what must have seemed to the Corinthiansthen,andtousnow,a“small,externalandperipheralquestion,”but which Barth, like Paul, regards as “so great, integral and central.”31 Barth infers from reading between the lines of the letter that in the Corinthian church “an enthusiastic attempt was being made to introduce equality,” and he suspects that Galatians 3:28 or some similar text was used as proof that all outward signs of gender distinctions, including dress codes, should be abolished. Paul, Barth believes, is writing to make it clear that he does in fact mean for them to keep those traditions and the gender/sex distinctions they serve to maintain. Mercadante explains: “Barth holds that there is a need for superordination and subordination because there is a difference between the sexes before God in the world; therefore, in worship that difference must be honored, revealed.”
29
30 31
Calvin knows from his studies of the history of different ancient cultures that “it was not always reckoned a disgrace for men to have long hair.” So Paul cannot mean that “nature” cannot be simply identical with custom. Instead, he reckons nature to be “a custom that had come to be confirmed.” Jonathan Edwards, one of Calvin’s interpreters, commenting on Eph 2:3, insists that “nature” does not refer to custom. “It is plain, the word in its common use, in the New Testament, signifies what we properly express in English by the word nature. There is but one place where there can be the least pretext for supposing it to be used otherwise; and that is 1Cor 11:14. And even here there is, I think, no manner of reason for understanding nature otherwise than in the proper sense. The emphasis used, natureitself, shows that the apostle does not meancustom,but nature in the proper sense. It is true, it was long custom which made having the head covered a token of subjection, and a feminine appearance; as it is custom that makes any outward action or word a sign or signification of anything. But nature itself, nature in its proper sense, teaches, that it is a shame for a man to appear with the established signs of the female sex, and with significations of inferiority, etc. As nature itself shows it to be a shame for a father to bow down or kneel to his own child or servant, or for men to bow to an idol, because bowing down is by custom an established token or sign of subjection and submission. Such a sight therefore would beunnatural, shocking to a man’s very nature.”
Calvin, “1Corinthians 11:1–16,” 3.
Barth,cdiii/2, 309.
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The man is meant to be “head” (kephale), which is to say he is “the one who has precedence, initiative and authority, the representative of the order which embraces them both”; the woman, in turn, is “to be led by him, to accept his authority, to recognize the order which claims them both as it is represented by him.”
Barth roots all of this in his reading of Genesis 2 and in his account of the natural, created order, which he insists is not against Christ but established in him and built according to his pattern.32In his own words, “the determination and limitation of the relationship of man and woman as established in Christ emerge already in the work of creation.” He continues:
The basic order of the human established by God’s creation is not acci- dental or contingent. It cannot be overlooked or ironed out. We cannot arbitrarily go behind it. It is solidly and necessarily grounded in Christ, with a view to whom heaven and earth and finally man were created. It is so solidly grounded in the lordship and service, the divinity and humanity of Christ that there can be no occasion either for the exaltation of man or the oppression of woman.33
Then comes what is for Barth a characteristic christological move: Christ is the sum of all headship, all authority; and Christ is the sum of all humility, all subordination: “His is the superordination and His the subordination. His is the place of man, and His the place of woman” (p. 311). Indeed, Christ’s authority is far greater than the authority of man and his humility is more profound than the humility of the woman. “He is the Exalted but also the Lowly, the Lowly but also the Exalted, who causes each to share in His glory but also His burden, His sovereignty but also His service” (p. 313).
Barth finds in Ephesians 5:22–32 further articulation of this principle. “Mu- tual submission” is required so that no one has “control over the other” and no one is placed “under the dominion of the other.”The man shows his submission to the woman by joyfully accepting his vocation to witness to the nature of Christ’s lordship. But the woman shows her submission by joyfully accepting
32
33
Barth (cd iii/2, 309) argues that only “shortsighted” exegetes see a contradiction between this text and the claims of Gal 3:26, resulting from a failure to understand, to grasp, the relationship of humility and authority in Christ; “the relationship of man and woman established in creation, and the distinction which it entails, cannot be regarded as transi- tory and accidental and abolished in Christ, as though Christ were not their meaning and origin.”
Barth,cd iii/2, 311–312.
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her vocation to witness to the nature of the church’s relation to Christ and in Christ to God. And this is in fact her privilege, her “advantage.” “Her birthright is thatitissheandnotthemanwho,inrelationtoherhusbandandsubordination to him, may reflect, represent and attest this reality of the community.”34
Where it is not a matter of this intoxication but of the fullness of the Spirit, not of the boasting and defiance of man but of the praise of God, not of the establishment of one’s own right by one’s own might but of constant thanksgiving, there flows from the Gospel the necessity of the reciprocal subordination in which each gives to the other that which is proper to him.
This Spirit-filled distinction of man from woman is “inwardly necessary,” true to the nature of humanity created in the image of Christ. It is no mere “conven- tion.” Dishonor and harm come to man and woman wherever these distinctions that guard their differences are abolished. Any modern notion of progress that promises to take the churches beyond this basic order is in fact only a fall back into the “first Adam,” “the old aeon.”35 Barth does not believe Christian women everywhere have to be veiled in worship, and that Christian men must not. Paul’s directions about veiling/unveiling were directed “incidentally” to the Corinthians in their time and place, contingent on the specifics of their particular sociocultural context. But Barth does believe that the male/female difference must be witnessed to, bodied forth, in Christian worship everywhere and always.36
Troubling and/or being Troubled by the Troubling Text
What is to be done with these troubled and troubling readings and with this troubled and troubling text that gave rise to them? Readers might simply reject modern assumptions/sensibilities altogether, choosing “fidelity to the apparent meaning of the text” even if that means they have to surrender
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Barth,cd iii/2, 314.
And so Barth says (cd iii/2, 312), “It is only in the world of the old aeon that the feminist question can arise.”
For an excellent critique of and redemptive reworking of Barth’s doctrine of male and female relation, see Lisa Stephenson, “Directed, Ordered and Related: The Male and Female Interpersonal Relation in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics,” Scottish Journal of The- ology61, no. 4 (2008): 435–449.
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engagement with the contemporary world, and in effect denying that the texts are troubling at all.37This was the approach that I encountered in the churches I knew as a child. Or readers might take the other extreme and reject the texts themselves—or at least some parts of some of the texts—as patriarchal, androcentric, and oppressive, refusing to be troubled by them at all.38 Judging from my experience, many of us do in fact reject them, not explicitly, of course, butde facto. In practice, I doubt that this passage has any more force in our lives than do Aquinas’s or Barth’s interpretations of it.
If these extreme possibilities are rejected—as I think they should be— readers might follow the example of interpreters like William Webb, Gordon Fee, Philip Payne, Jenny Everts Powers, and Bruce Winter, among many others, who use historical-critical research to establish a plausible “original meaning” of a biblical passage, to determine the defining ethical and theological concern of itswriter,andthenextrapolatefromthetexthowthatconcern,andthemoral trajectory of its “redemptive spirit,” might speak to a contemporary concern in a particular context.39 But if this is not satisfying, still other strategies remain possible. Lucy Peppiatt, in the book I have already mentioned, argues that the patriarchalism in 1Corinthians 11:2–16 does not belong to Paul at all, but to the Corinthians. Paul is quoting from their letter to him and trying to correct their misunderstanding of the traditions he has already handed on to them, weaving his own expressions into theirs as he crafts his argument. For example, she takes the question in verse 13—“Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?”—to be rhetorical, indicating Paul’s exasperation with the domineering men who are arguing for the subjection of women by twisting the apostle’s own words against him.
Peppiatt’s work is provocative, instructive, and insightful, but so far at least has not been fully convincing for me. For one thing, this passage opens with a word of praise—“I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you” (1Cor 11:2)—and the immediately following passage opens with a declaration of critique—“Now in the following instructions I do not commend you” (1Cor 11:17), indicating that what is said in 11:2–16 is not a critique but an elaboration, a clarifying of traditions the Corinthians already have been keeping even if they do not
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Michael J. Lakey, Image and Glory of God: 1Corinthians 11:2–16 as a Case Study in Bible, Gender and Hermeneutics(London:t&tClark, 2010), 161.
As Lakey (ibid., 157–158) says, “it is rare for evangelicals to reject a text explicitly. Never- theless, de facto excisions of passages from Scripture occur in this tradition.” He cites Paul Jewett’s take on Paul’s treatment of gender as a primary example.
Lakey, Image and Glory, 163.
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yet understand them fully. For another thing, the fact that before reading Peppiatt’s work I had been more or less completely convinced by other readings (particularly Bruce Winter’s and, before that, Gordon Fee’s) suggests that this passage is so ambiguous that it admits of any number of equally plausible interpretations—and in the end, that only deepens the trouble.40
Of course, many readers are not troubled by this text like I am. No doubt my personal history with this text comes into play, influencing how I receive it, as does my commitment to take seriously the history of Christian interpretation of this passage. And my vocation as a theologian means that I am bound to wrestle not only with the problems of the text and its reception history, but also with the dogmatic, liturgical, missional, and ethical difficulties created by them. I believe that I am required to try to come to terms not only with what Paul might have had in mind when addressing that particular congregation, but also with what Christians have done in the past, are now doing, and shall in the future do with this text.
What, then, are those of us who remain troubled to do? I believe we have to let the text move us toward holy troubledness. God means not to save us from, but by interpretation. Therefore, whenever we find a text resisting us, as this one does, refusing to let us master it, we need to consider how the Spirit might be using it to master us. Perhaps this text is patriarchalist, at least in some sense, but reveals for us not God’s purposes but our all too familiar readiness to submit to the principles and principalities, the customs and conventions of our worlds. If even Paul succumbs to these temptations, or accepts them as unavoidable—as Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian accept slavery as unavoidable41—then how much more are we likely to give in to them?42Perhaps we should simply accept that this text for us is unreadable and let it serve as a reminder both of the limits of our understanding and the
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I have in mind here not only interpretations that have been put forward, modern or postmodern, ancient or medieval, but also interpretations that are yet to be developed. This text, I believe, is so fraught with ambiguities that it will always generate difficulties for new readers in new contexts and so will invoke novel interpretations designed to address specific problems and concerns generated for those readers in those contexts. See J. Kameron Carter,Race:ATheologicalAccount(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 229–251.
Paul K. Jewett (Man as Male and Female: A Study in Sexual Relationships from aTheological Point of View [Grand Rapids, mi: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1974], 15) provides an example of this approach. Contrasting “Paul the rabbi” with “Paul the apostle,” he argues that “the church today should canonize, not the implementation, but the insight of the apostle into the manner in which the man/woman relationship is redeemed in Christ.” Krister Stendahl takes a similar approach, as Linda Mercadante (From Hierarchy to Equality, 111) explains:
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limitlessness of God’s power to speak to others, utterly unlike us, in ways they need to hear. Perhaps this text is not a window but a mirror, meant to reflect back to us our “vested interests, deep fears, and unresolved hurts” so we can recognize them and offer them up to God, trusting that that offering up is the very transforming work of God in us.43Perhaps the text is meant to test whether we really understand the significance of the “nevertheless, in the Lord” of v. 11, and whether we can think in gospel-straight lines from the alpha point of the new humanity of Christ and in so doing break open a broad space in the midst of the world as a witness of the coming kingdom.
Imagining an Alternative (Pentecostal) Reading
If I had to offer a reading, I would follow that last line of revisionist possibility. I would begin with 1Corinthians 15:24–28, where we are promised that in the End, after perfecting the gift he received from the Father in the Beginning, having sanctified and glorified creation with his own holiness and glory, Christ will hand over the kingdom to God. Then he too “will be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all” (1Cor 15:28). Here we find the pattern of rule and subjection, the same pattern already encountered in 1Corinthians 11:2–16.44 But in this case the subjection is performed as gift-exchange and accomplishes mutual fulfillment through a co-participation that works toward a definite, transcendent end, a telos. So long as the text is read through the lens of the regula fidei, then we know that the eschatological subjection of the Son is not a being-made-less than the Father but a being-made-one with the creation for the sake of the Father’s joy in the Son. In other words, Christ’s identification with creatures— an identification that carries into the Eschaton—does not in any way alter his oneness with the Father and the Spirit as the second of the three identities of God. Indeed, Christ’s identification with creatures is such that they through
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“Stendahl would rather solve the dilemma by insisting that there are two orders, with a tension between them, but with a trust in the direction of a realized equality. In the old order, by which he means the period under the law, female subordination was justified by the creation story, the Fall in general, the fall of Eve and the pain in childbearing (Gen. 3:16). But in the new creation the three main boundary lines, Jew/Greek, slave/free, and male/female, have been broken down. Stendahl calls this the ‘breakthrough’ of Gal. 3:28.” See Rickie D. Moore, “Altar Hermeneutics: Reflections on Pentecostal Biblical Interpreta- tion,”Pneuma38, nos. 1–2 (2016): 148–159.
This holds true whether we take “head” (κεφαλή) as “source” or “authority.”
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the Spirit become one with him in his oneness with the Father so that this oneness—which is a full participation in the fullness of the perichoretic God— becomes their end as well as his. Far from being reduced to a subordinate of the Father, Christ’s “handing over” of the creation raises creatures into his own human share with the life of God.45And to be “in the Lord” is already to share in this promised end by the anticipation of Spirit-gifted, Spirit-energized hope.46
We can conclude, then, that the pattern of rule/subjection described in 1Corinthians 11:2–16, like Torah and Nature, is purposed for a telos that both fulfills it and abrogates it. If maleness and femaleness come from God in cre- ation (v. 12), and so exist “in Adam,” then they are meant to be returnedtoGod in and as new creation. And “in the Lord,” authority and submission, superor- dination and subordination are fulfilled and overcome. As David Bentley Hart says, “In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them forth from nothingness.”47 Given that this is so, we can see that Chrysostom, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth—like others from the tradition whom they represent—fail to take the text’s “nevertheless, in the Lord” with necessary seriousness, letting their assumptions about “nature” con- trol their thinking. But as Chrysostom himself reminds us, Eve is subjected to Adam only because she “fails” in her vocation to be his “co-heir” (1Pet 3).48And
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I agree with KathrynTanner’s basic critique of “socialTrinitarianism,” but it does not apply in this case. As Aquinas says, “the enemies will not only be under the godhead, but also under the humanity of Christ,” a humanity that is eternal subordinated to God in perfect creaturely freedom.
As Paul says, “we are saved in hope” (Rom 8:24), and our hope as “joint-heirs with Jesus Christ” (Rom 8:17) is “to share in the glory of God” (Rom 5:2) so that all things—“the creation itself”—is “set free from its bondage to decay” as it is drawn into its share in our freedom (Rom 8:21).
David Bentley Hart, “God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of Creatio ex Nihilo,” Radical Orthodoxy3, no. 1 (September 2015): 1–17 [2].
As Valerie Karras (“Male Domination of Woman in the Writings of John Chrysostom,”The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 36, no. 2 [1991]: 131–139 [136, 139]) explains, Chrysos- tom’s theology of male domination was rooted in his reading of the Genesis “fall” nar- ratives and his practical concerns for life in this present world. “Chrysostom, faithful to the Genesis account, views male domination as a component of the postlapsarian human condition. It is woman’s punishment for leading man from God. Thus, because woman abusedherequality,sheisnowrelegatedtoanewsubordination,‘natural’withinthefallen state of Man … Her subjection to man is presumed to have a salvific purpose achieved by man’s proper guidance of woman toward God. But if the woman is the better spiritual guide, Chrysostom allows it, even though it subverts the ‘natural’ order of fallen humanity.”
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in Christ and in his mother, Eve’s vocation has been restored and renewed. We should ask ourselves, if the salvation Christ has attained for us does not alter the man/woman relationship that stands at the heart of creation, or alters it only “spiritually,” then what good has Christ really accomplished?
Pentecostals are convinced that the truth of our being-in-the-Lord comes to bear first and paradigmatically in our shared encounter with the living God. Therefore, while in the process of missionwe may inhabit the worlds we know, following in some ways at least some of the customs of our native societies and cultures; but in our worshipwe must witness to another reality, a reality in which God is all in all only as men and women—whether Jew or Greek, young or old, married or single, rich or poor, well-bodied or disabled/diseased—live interdependently, as members of one body, as sharers of one Spirit, in the hope of their one calling.49 In Christ the male/female order “in Adam” is fulfilled and relativized, and as testament to that reality we need both male and female to stand in Christ’s stead at the Table. As George Hunsinger insists, following T.F. Torrance, the claim that only males can represent Christ at the Eucharist
… contradicts basic elements in the doctrines of the incarnation and the new order of creation, the virgin birth, which sets aside male sovereignty and judges it as sinful, the hypostatic union of divine and human natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ who is of the same uncreated genderless Being as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, the redemptive and healing assumption of complete human nature in Christ, the atoning sacrifice of Christ which he has offered once for all on our behalf, in our place, in our stead, and therefore it conflicts also with the essential nature of the Holy Eucharist and the communion in the body and blood of Christ given to us by him.50
It follows, then, that Pentecostals in particular and all Christian churches gen- erally should have a ministry—ordained and lay—of both men and women serving together in the work of preaching and teaching, celebrating the sacra- ments, providing spiritual direction and pastoral care, working for social and political justice and peace, nurturing community and culture.51 If the role of
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This conviction calls out the need for Pentecostals, in ecumenical conversation, to develop a robust theological anthropology. See Lisa Stephenson, “A Feminist Theological Anthro- pology: North America and Beyond,”Pneuma35, no. 1 (2013): 35–47.
George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 239.
Here I am in full agreement with Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (“Woman Too Is in the Likeness of
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the priest is “to confront me with God’s incarnate word in such a manner that I can be sure that it is not I who am making use of it,”52then surely the ordina- tion of women is not only prudent but actually necessary. Not to ordain them is to assure that “nature” and not grace, this present age and not the Eschaton, has the first and last word on what it means for us to be priests of God for the sake of the world.53
Conclusion
On this, the tradition is certainly right: our bodies and what we do with them matter. We are called to body forth the gospel in our worshipful witness to all creatures—visible and invisible, earthly and heavenly. And with that tradition we should affirm that maleness and femaleness matter for us, too, both per- sonally and communally. But we must not unreflectively accept whatever has been said about sex and gender in the church’s history, or simply acquiesce to the majority opinion held by Christians down through the years. We should instead separate as well as we can the wheat of the orthodox theological vision of human being from the chaff of misogynist and patriarchal teachings and practices that have diseased the church’s life and witness,54 affirming Gregory Nazianzen’s definitive formula: “One same Creator for man and for woman, for
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God” [Midstream21, no. 3 (1982): 369–375], 374–375), “Behind the reluctance of ordaining women, at least to the presbyteral ministry, one can certainly perceive, beyond the alleged reasons, something ‘unsaid,’ unexpressed perhaps because it seemed matter-of-fact in the lived experience: ‘the intuition of a symbolism of masculinity and femininity in their reciprocity,asymbolism decipheredin thebody aswellasin thebook,’which runsthrough the Scriptures, but which is also contaminated in practice by archaic taboos, traces of Greek dualism and fear of the sex. The time seems to have come to undertake a serious theological examination and clarification of all these complex factors, and to do it in the spirit of the Fathers: e.g. not the spirit of a sclerosed conservatism, but the spirit of creative faithfulness, e.g. the dynamic authenticity of Tradition.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Elucidations(London:spck, 1975), 107.
See Rowan Williams, “Women and the Ministry: A Case for Theological Seriousness,” in Monica Furlong, ed., Feminine in the Church(London:spck, 1984), 11–27.
Elizabeth Behr-Sigel (“Woman Too Is in the Likeness of God”) provides a good exam- ple. Admitting that the Fathers often do speak unfaithfully about women, she nonethe- less insists that their “theocentric vision of humankind” reveals that against the tide of received wisdom women do share fully in the image of God. Following the spirit, if not always the letter, of patristic anthropologies leads to the recognition of full equality of men and women before God in the world.
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both the same clay, the same image, the same law, the same death, the same resurrection.”55We should also affirm Aquinas’s statement about women’s full equality “in the spirit”—and then remove his and all other qualifications. And his statement about women in religious orders should apply to all women: they are free from the dominion of men because they, like their brothers, are subject to Christ.
We know maleness and femaleness through the “nevertheless” that is given “in the Lord.” Through baptism, men and women alike share in the one new humanity of Christ (Gal 3:26; Eph 2:15). They cannot, therefore, be known “after the flesh” any more than Christ himself can be (2Cor 5:16). They are “hidden” in him (Col 3:3) and just so revealed as new creatures (2Cor 5:17). These convictions must continuously both shape and be shaped by the way we read 1Corinthians 11:2–16. Here, the Spirit in her wisdom has given us a perplexing, troubling text, one that surfaces deep-seated presuppositions about maleness and femaleness. We should receive this trouble as a sanctifying gift. By the Spirit’s grace, the indecipherability of this text reads our hearts, laying bare before the Lord “the hurt, the wounds, and the deepest griefs beneath our fears.”56 So opened, we are freed to be present to the healing presence of our neighbor in God and God in our neighbor. The same Spirit who gives us this troubling text guides our readings, so that over time we together are moved into the very holy troubledness that transfigures us into Christ in the embrace of his Father. And that, after all, is just what Scripture is for.
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Quoted in Behr-Sigel, “Woman Too Is in the Likeness of God,” 374. Moore, “Altar Hermeneutics,” 155.
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