A tale of two halves

It is pretty common for us to emphasize certain areas of Scripture over others. I know I do and if you think you don’t do that, may I suggest you are kidding yourself.

I have to ask if there is any place that gets this treatment more starkly than 1 Corinthians 11? In the second half of 1 Corinthians, we have Paul speaking of the Lord’s Supper and those words are repeated in churches all over the world. Those words are known by most of the world’s Christians, at least to the point of recognizing them even if they couldn’t tell you where to find them in the Bible. I don’t know that any respectable Biblical scholar would suggest that Paul’s teachings on the Lord’s Supper are anything but universal.

But in the first half, we have a command and teaching that is treated completely differently. When faced with Paul’s admonition that women should cover their heads when praying and prophesying, and that to not do so is shameful, people stumble over themselves trying to explain it away. It is cultural, it is speaking of hair (when it clearly is not), it is only for Corinth, wedding rings replace head covers, etc.

Two doctrines in the same chapter. Two radically different approaches as if Paul shifted gears completely from one sentence to the next.

Well, you may say, that is because headcovering is not spoken of anywhere else in the Bible and the Lord’s Supper is. That is true. However, the idea of submission, of headship, of the creation order appears repeatedly throughout the Bible. This is not a new concept, it is a prevailing theme and it is manifested in the way men and women interact, but also in the wearing of a covering on the head of women. There is nothing in the text, or the surrounding text, that would imply this was a Corinthian problem. Even if you go back to 1 Cor 7:1 where Paul says: Now concerning the matters about which you wrote:, implying that he is answering specific questions posed to him by the church in Corinth, his answer is not specifically directed at Corinth but contains universal themes and truths. Paul does not say “because of Corinthian culture” or “because you have some gender confusion issues” or “your women are rebelling” or “because of those male prostitutes”. Nothing that indicates that these teachings are anything but universal.

On the other hand, Paul does reference specific issues found in Corinth when speaking of the Lord’s Supper (see specifically 1 Cor 11: 17-22). Yet we never hear anyone suggesting that the passages regarding the Lord’s Supper are cultural, or just for that time and place, or anything other than universal. As I have noted before, the Lord’s Supper is unquestioned as a command for the church despite its lack of specific directions on exactly how it should look. Many people are awfully dogmatic about specifics of the Supper in spite of the general silence on those same specifics in the Word, but when it comes to a clear statement like: “ but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head” (1 Cor 11: 5) and “But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.” (1 Cor 11:6) , we see dismissals out of hand.

It is commonly noted among adherents of head covering that we don’t treat the doctrine of headcovering the same as we treat doctrines elsewhere in the Bible, but we also don’t treat headcovering in the same way we treat other doctrines in the same chapter! (I know the chapters don’t exist in the original language)

I am not suggesting we dismiss Paul’s writings on the Lord’s Supper as cultural. What I am suggesting is that we treat 1 Cor 11: 2-16 in the same manner we treat 1 Cor 11: 17-34. I am calling for consistency in how we “rightly handle” the Word of God.