How we should be approaching 1 Corinthians 11 (head coverings)
Why is this not standard operating procedure?
In advance of our episode on head coverings, let me plant this seed:
The reason most people find this passage so perplexing is that it seems so utterly out of left field. It’s as if Paul just drops the whammy direct from heaven about this new practice that is simultaneously so strange that his own explanation barely makes sense to us; and yet so important and ubiquitous that he knows no other custom — nor all the churches of God (v. 16). But how did all the other churches know to practice it before he wrote 1 Corinthians? Where did this custom come from, such that absolutely everyone was doing it right from the start of the New Testament era?
Let’s generalize this question to see if there’s a general answer that might apply here.
When the apostles are establishing the church, what is the basis for any and every matter of doctrine and practice? Is it not the Hebrew scriptures, interpreted through the lens of Christ’s teachings?
every scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for setting aright, for instruction which is in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete—for every good work having been finished. (2 Ti 3:16–17)
If we were to render the Greek more dynamically: the effect that scripture has on the man of God is to “perfectly put him together” for every good work. The same root is used for putting together broken nets (Mt 4:21); of the disciple who, when he is finished is like his teacher (Lk 6:40); the vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction (Ro 9:22); the restoration of a man overtaken by sin (Ga 6:1); the perfecting of the saints (Ep 4:21); and the worlds being framed by the word of God (He 11:3). Paul tells Timothy, in other words, that the scriptures — which at that time was primarily the Old Testament — are profitable to completely and comprehensively prepare the man of God, setting him in order to do any and every good work.
Now, are prayer and prophecy good works?
Is how you do them part of that good work?
Is wearing the appropriate headgear, while doing them, good work?
And does scriptures say something about this — something that the apostles were aware of? Something they understood, through the teaching of Christ, to have changed, because of Christ?
This is my hypothesis. This is the only way to make sense of Paul recording an otherwise perplexing and incomprehensible instruction about covering the head.
It should actually strike us as very strange — even perverse — that nearly no one tries to understand 1 Corinthians 11 through the lens of Old Testament instructions about head coverings. If we know that the Old Testament is the body of instruction about the old covenant, and the New Testament is the body of instruction about the new covenant…and if we know that the new covenant overturns the old covenant so comprehensively that scripture describes us as now living in a new world (2 Pe 3:5–13; Re 21:1), and being new creations (2 Co 5:17)…then surely we ought to be consciously setting New Testament laws next to Old Testament ones, to examine how things have changed?
That is the approach we need to make sense of head coverings in the New Testament church.
“You have heard it said of old…but I say to you.”
We should read all of the New Testament in this light, seeking to understand how it changes our relationship with God, both individually and corporately. The new covenant is a better covenant, because it establishes a new and better cosmic order under Christ. I think most Christians intuitively grasp this at some level, but they don’t understand how radical the break was that occurred at the cross — and they don’t let it sink in to the level of their hermeneutics.
Also, interestingly, all the churches have the same practice.. including the church at Jerusalem which was 'zealous for the law' (Acts 21). It seems that that particular zeal characterized that church over the span of time. Ultimately, the kind of zeal in Jerusalem was immature from a Christian perspective, although the Apostles were willing to 'work with it' knowing that the time of reformation would come. But my point is that the uniformity of practice spanned all churches including Jerusalem.. there could be a good indication there, of continuity from Jewish times and even before (Abraham's extended family). It would seem strong that the leading aspect in 1 Cor 11 is universal (Christ is the head of every man, etc)
I am actually more intrigued by the appeal to nature in v. 14 than the OT parallels, as valuable as that comparison will be. The didactic power of nature is such that Paul can say, more or less, "you ought to know this just by looking at male and female." It raises for me the question of whether we even need Scripture as a justification to have our wives covered in worship - Paul seems to self consciously appeal to nature as an even more plain witness than his own words he writes on the matter. What do you think? Open to being persuaded otherwise.