Two thoughts on headcovering

So I keep beating this drum, and I imagine that those few hardy souls who read this blog are getting sick to death of hearing about it and frankly I am getting a little weary of writing about it. Having said that, I find myself writing about head covering again because I really think that this issue is one that exposes the disconnect between what is said and what is practiced in so many churches. It is said that this church or that is all about the inerrancy and infallibility of the Scripture, but there are still places where church traditions run contrary to the Word, and too often the tradition wins. The wearing of headcovers is kind of my poster child for the need for reformation in the church, not because I think that if all Christian women start to cover their heads it will fix all of the problems in the church but because it is an issue that really gets under the skin of the traditionalists in the institutional church. It is interesting the reaction some people have to this issue. Many people give it careful and prayerful study and consideration. Not all of them come to the same conclusion but at least they are working through the issue. However some people see this issue as a threat to their traditions and as such seek to quash it. Often times the source of this hostility is the pulpit or the pen of “learned” men. Some men preach on this text when they come across it through expository preaching and some men preach on it to make some sort of point. When you preach with a personal agenda instead of preaching the Word, you are on shaky ground.

What kind of set me off again was that I read John MacArthur in a sermon dealing with the first half of 1 Corinthians 11 called The Subordination and Equality of Women . One of his opening paragraphs says:

To try to understand exactly what the situation was in the city of Corinth secularly, what it was in the church of Corinth in terms of the spiritual life, what was going on in the mind of Paul and push all of that up into the modern day is not easy. We don't have a lot of background.

It is intersting that Dr. MacArthur admits that we don't have a lot of the background on Corinth, but that doesn't stop him from using that limited knowledge to deny what Paul wrote. Dr. MacArthur’s mantra regarding headcovering is: It's cultural, it's cultural, and it’s cultural! But in other places, he argues just the opposite about other Scriptural issues regarding men and women. Biblical complementarians have a rocky path when affirming Biblical roles for men and women against the prevailing culture on one hand but then appealing to cultural norms and practices to reject women covering their heads on the other.

So I have two points that have come to mind regarding the practice of head covering.

The first goes back to the primary argument against headcovering, the culture of Corinth argument. The argument that headcovering is cultural and reserved for Corinth at that time and in that place only can sound great on the surface, and indeed much of the reasoning is sound. There is only one problem. The culture argument doesn't exist. Paul nowhere in 1 Corinthians 11 refers to head covering as a cultural issue or one reserved for Corinth. He barely speaks of Corinth at all. The language he uses is anything but specific to Corinth but is instead appealing to universal doctrines of creation order, of Biblical headship, of submission.

What the “it is only cultural” arguments try to do is impose a cultural framework, a cultural explanation for headcovering where one doesn't exist in the Scriptures. It may be true that headcovering was a tradition of Corinth, but that is irrelevant to the text because Paul does not appeal to or refer to that cultural tradition of Corinth at all. In fact the traditions he does refer to are traditions that he taught them, not local traditions: …maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.(1 Cor 11:2, emphasis added). Paul certainly did not deliver the traditions of Corinth to the Corinthian people. That would be like someone from India flying to Boston on St. Patrick’s Day to deliver the traditional Irish celebration of that holiday. So how does it make any sense to assume that Paul is speaking of Corinthian traditions when he explicitly says to maintain the traditions he brought and makes no mention of the alleged Corinthian traditions at all? All throughout the New Testament we make universal applications of teachings addressed to specific locales. Even in 1 Corinthians 1 we see the admonition of Paul against factions within the church. That was a problem apparently in Corinth because he specifically says it was an issue, but the application is universal. What about 1 Corinthians 5? I assume that no one brushes off the admonition against having relations with your step-mom as being a cultural issue!

What we see is the taking of a cultural norm, and I am not sure if it really is a cultural norm in Corinth or not, I am just taking their word for it, and then assuming that is what the Scripture is speaking of. I would hazard that many of the men who throw the “Corinthian culture” argument out really don’t know a thing about the culture in Corinth outside of what they have read someone else say about Corinthian culture. Good, solid, conservative Christian teachers would reject the idea of applying external culture to the Scripture in issues ranging from women teachers to divorce to homosexuality. Yet they will stumble over themselves in finding alleged cultural norms in Corinth to explain away headcovering. The modus operandi is to throw out some assertions about life in Corinth, say that is what Paul is talking about, quote a couple of famous contemporary Bible teachers and then slip out the back door. There is a logical fallacy here. Just because a condition exists does not in and of itself require that it is the underlying issue especially when Paul makes no mention of the culture of Corinth in relation to head covering. None.

The second point is this. Even if you say that 1 Corinthians 11 is speaking of headcovering as a cultural manifestation of a wife's Biblical submission to her husband, which I reject but go with it for a second, doesn't that mean that even if headcovering itself is not a universal principle, then the principle of a wife exhibiting submission publicly to her husband is a universal principle? Verse 10 says: That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. (1 Cor 11:10). If we say that headcovering itself was a cultural symbol, the underlying universal principle is that women should exhibit some sort of sign of the authority of her husband. But what symbol of submission do we see in our culture? Honestly, outside of headcovering there isn't one. I have already dealt with the wedding ring, that is clearly not a sign of submission. Some of the most cowed men in America have wives wearing rings. So what else is there? Is there a suitable substitute? Can proper behavior substitute for a sign or symbol of authority? If an angel or messenger or visitor sees women in church with heads bowed and praying, how can they tell who are living under the Biblical authority of their husbands without a visible sign? How can we tell a woman who accepts and embraces the authority of her husband from one who doesn’t? Maybe they can wear little buttons with an “S” for submissive? Or maybe, just maybe, they could wear a covering on their head.

I can assure you of this, within the church, a woman who is wearing a headcovering is seen as exhibiting submission to her husband. Many of the feminized, egalitarian, "submissive in name alone" women in church will pity the poor thing but they will understand what she is doing even in today's Biblically illiterate church. I am one of the few male bloggers who speak of headcovering, most of the advocates of headcovering are women and their husbands are the reluctant ones. Those women are not poor repressed creatures, they are seeking to walk more closely in accord with the Word and that should be praiseworthy and not downtrodden by self-proclaimed learned men. Would that more Christians sought a closer walk of obedience to Scripture in deed and not just word! I am convinced that for the majority of women in the church, the issue has little to do with head covering in and of itself, rather it is a visceral reaction to being told what to do coupled with a reluctance on the part of men to tell them what they should be doing. I get nauseous when I listen to or read of men from the pulpit dealing with Ephesians 5:22 or 1 Timothy 2:12 stammering or wringing their hands or telling jokes or worst of all apologizing to avoid the wrath of women because they are afraid to preach what God's Word says for fear of offense. Man up and preach the Word boldly or sit down and be quiet! If you cause offense to the unruly and disobedient and they stop giving, get a job and keep preaching!

Ultimately the practice of headcovering should have one goal, that is of giving glory to God. 1 Corinthians 10: 31 says So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. What we do, we ought to do for the glory of God. If you cover your head or if your wife covers her head, it ought to be done out of obedience to the Word in command and out of Biblical submission. But above all it should be done to the glory of God. Not so you can seem externally more pious than your neighbor, or so you can use it as an exclusion of others but as a humble submission to the apostle’s teaching.

(To those who rail against headcovering, how is doing so bringing glory to God?)