1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Women must be Veiled in the Christian Assemblies. It is not clear whether this subject was discussed in the church letter.
Paul begins, in a way that surprises us after his grave censures, with praise for their steadfast adherence to his teaching and traditions. But he must inform them that the head of every man (as distinguished from woman) is Christ, the head of the woman is man, the head of Christ, God. Woman, Man, Christ, God, form an ascending climax in which the second stands to the first, as the third to the second, and the fourth to the third. The precise meaning is not clear. Headship suggests lordship, but Christ is lord of woman as well as man. Perhaps the thought is rather that of archetype and origin. Christ is the image of God and derives His being from Him, so man is related to Christ, and woman to man. In each case there is, of course, a differentiating element. Man has a primary, woman a secondary, relation to Christ, man a secondary, woman a tertiary, relation to God. We are reminded of Milton's similar depreciation, He for God only, she for God in him. 1 Corinthians 11:4 f. connects rather badly with 1 Corinthians 11:3 since we naturally interpret dishonoureth his (her) head to mean dishonours Christ (or the man). But what follows forbids this. The meaning must be that the man who veils his head for prayer or prophesying, dishonours it, and the woman who unveils it dishonours hers. The man dishonours it by suggesting that he is under authority, whereas he is supreme of created beings. The woman, because to dispense with a veil is no better than to cut off the hair altogether. The latter was the punishment of an adulteress; the absence of the veil would suggest that the woman was of easy virtue. Man's high dignity as the image and glory of God forbids his wearing it, woman's subordinate position as the glory of man requires her to do so. The use of glory is strange. It can hardly bear its ordinary sense in a context emphasizing woman's inferiority. Some such sense as reflection seems to be required. Man is original, woman derivative, she was created for him, not he for her. The next verse (1 Corinthians 11:10) is very difficult. Usually it is taken to mean that on account of her inferior position the woman should wear a veil on her head as the sign of the man's authority over her, on account of the angels. But to have authority must mean to possess authority not to wear a token of subjection. Ramsay (Cities of St. Paul, pp. 202- 205; Luke the Physician, p. 175) points out that in the East the veil isolates a woman from the crowd and secures her from interference and even observation. It is her authority, without it she is defenceless. This gives the right sense to authority, it is a woman's own authority, but it is not so clear how it links into the general argument and in particular how it is related to the last clause. This clause has been regarded as an interpolation by Baur and others. The sentence seems complete without it, and for this cause suggests that the reason is fully contained in what has gone before, whereas because of the angels seems to give a new reason which receives no development. The clause is nevertheless probably genuine. It does not mean, lest the angels who are at the worship should be shocked. The general meaning is that the unveiled woman is in danger from the angels as the daughters of men from the sons of the Elohim (Genesis 6:1-4 *). That story played a large part in Jewish speculations; what the modern mind might regard as fanciful, was for Paul a grave moral peril. Just as participation in the idol sacrifice may involve ruinous fellowship with demons, so the unveiling of women implied danger from and to the angels. [105] The significance of the veil is not merely that concealment would prevent angelic lust from being aroused. As Dibelius points out, it is a widespread belief that the veil has magical power. Its function is therefore to ward off dangers. The danger is specially present when the woman prays or prophesies (cf. Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. vii.). Apparently in the ecstatic condition, pressing into the spiritual realm, she is more exposed to the advances of the angels than in her normal condition. Hence she needs a means of protection. She needs it and man does not, just because she is inferior, further removed than he from the heavenly state; he is free to enter God's presence with head uncovered, she can safely do it only with a veil Dr. Grieve suggests talisman as an equivalent to authority. We must not set views aside because they are quite foreign to our world of thought, or because we are unwilling to attribute them to Paul, nor must we carry back to his time our popular angelology. Paul now guards what he has been saying. Man and woman are indispensable to each other, and if the woman was originally formed from the man, the man comes into the world through her, and both really, like all other things, have their source in God. He resumes with an appeal to their own sense of the fitness of things, which must show the unseemliness of a woman's praying to God unveiled. And nature teaches that woman needs a covering by giving long hair to a woman, but short hair to a man. He closes the discussion with the curt remark (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:38) that if anyone intends to be disputatious about it, he is in opposition to the custom of Paul and his colleagues and the other churches. The principle is that local idiosyncrasies should be controlled by general Church custom.
[105] Ramsay has recently (Teaching of Paul, p. 214) recognised that Paul regards women as in danger from the angels, but through obedience to the social conventions they gained authority and immunity from the power of demons or angels. The veil was their strength and protection. But are we to assume that the veil would have the same significance for the angels as for human beings? And what on this interpretation is the point of the emphasis on the necessity of the veil when the woman is praying of prophesying?