1 Corinthians 11:1-16

CRITICAL NOTES

[1 Corinthians 11:1 belongs to chap. 10, where see. Evans (in Speaker), Stanley, and others divide this chapter at 1 Corinthians 11:16, not 1 Corinthians 11:17, making 1 Corinthians 11:16 introduce the new topic]

1 Corinthians 11:2. I praise you … all things.—Not qualified or limited by 1 Corinthians 11:17, which refers to a new point, which had arisen in practice, outside the “all things already delivered,” whether orally, when Paul was at Corinth, or by the (possible) lost letter. Courteous, and no doubt true of the Church as a whole, though there were factious and rebellious exceptions. Certainly they deferred to his authority, when they submitted for his decision the questions the answers to which occupy so much of this letter. See also how this loyal feeling asserted itself in consequence of this letter (2 Corinthians 7:11 sqq.). Ordinances.—“Traditions” (R.V. and all Commentaries). “The delivered instructions, … directions in matters of discipline as well as of doctrine” (Evans). Ellicott suggests such (esoteric) topics as 1 Corinthians 6:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:5. Beet adds a new idea: “Probably the more or less definite instructions given by Christ to the apostles for the Church. Samples in 1 Corinthians 11:23; 1 Corinthians 15:3.” Important to note (as Stanley): “Always delivered, not ‘traditionally’ through many links, but direct from the teacher to the taught.” Hence entirely without analogy to the technical traditions of, e.g., the Romish ecclesiastical theology: “Not merely such acts and words as were supposed to have descended from Christ and His apostles, although orally transmitted instead of recorded in writing; but also the whole circle of dogmas and practices which had been instituted by Church councils and recognised by the Church” (Luthardt, Saving Truths, lect. viii.); which became an authority concurrent with Scripture. All verbal or written Apostolic directions which are needed in order to a statement of God’s will, complete for the purposes of Christian practice, have been put on permanent record in Scripture.

1 Corinthians 11:3.—As to husband and wife and the illustrative force of their relationship, cf. throughout Ephesians 5:22. There the stress lies upon their intimateness, their unity of relationship, and the obligation of mutual helpfulness and sympathy. In 1 Corinthians 11:33 her subordination to him is introduced, and is here the prominent point dealt with. Head.—Above the Body (Colossians 1:18), though, in a true sense, belonging to it; in close, living, life-giving union; directing it, and so every particular “man” in it. Man is woman’s “immediate head” (Beet), for Christ is her head too; in the Body there is “no male nor female.” Also distinguish between her equality and parallelism with man in her relation to Christ in regard to her personal spiritual life (1 Corinthians 11:11), and her social subordination to man (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:27, 1 Corinthians 3:23). “The meaning of ‘head’ must not be unduly limited or unduly extended. The general idea is that of supremacy or pre-eminence, but the particular character of that supremacy or pre-eminence must in each case be determined by the context and by the nature of the things specified. Thus, in the first member, [it] is in regard of nature and of headship of the whole human family; in the second, in regard of divinely appointed order and authority (Genesis 2:22; Genesis 3:16; see below, 1 Corinthians 11:8); in the third, in regard of priority and office,—the pre-eminence of the Father, as Bishop Pearson says, ‘undeniably consisting in this, that He is God not of any other but Himself, and that there is no other person who is God but is God of Him’ ” (Ellicott).

1 Corinthians 11:4.—The Romans and Jews prayed with covered heads, the Greeks with uncovered. Hence no suggestion that the men at Corinth did draw over their heads any sort of covering, e.g. the loose lap or fold of the outer “wrap,” like a Moorish haik. The Greek Christian would do by mere habit what profound Christian truth declared to be right for Jew or Gentile men. To cover his head was to assume openly the woman’s condition of subordination, and to disavow his manly right to stand with unveiled face before Christ. He thus dishonours his head (i.e. his manly self, culminating there), and dishonours also that other Head in Whom he has, and to Whose work he owes, his own honour as a man.

1 Corinthians 11:5. Prayeth or prophesieth.— Acts 2:18; Acts 21:9. In apparent contrast see 1 Corinthians 14:33. Sanctified good sense would draw a distinction between (say) a full, formal meeting of the whole Church for worship, where propriety dictated that she should ordinarily be silent, and smaller, half-social gatherings of Christian people in “prayer meetings”; or between her liberty at the family altar or in a gathering of women, and her seemly restriction in mixed or public gatherings. [Observe the antithesis, “the men … the women” in 1 Timothy 2:8.] In any case, whenever her praying is in any degree in public, let her not be “unveiled,” unsexing herself and making herself “masculine,” bearing herself like a short-haired man; she might as well go the whole length and be “cropped” [shorn] like a man. “Modesty is the conscience of the body.” A Corinthian woman’s veil would be the peplum, worn over the shoulders in the house, drawn over the face in public. [At Corinth a “shorn” woman would be a harlot.]

1 Corinthians 11:7.—Note, not merely “made in the image”; he “is the image and glory of God.” Note also, “woman is” [not “the image,” but only] “the glory of man.” She also—but the thought is outside of Paul’s view here—is “man made in the image of God.” “The male sex, as holding the highest power on earth and exercising undisputed sway over all else, is a visible pattern of God and a shining forth of His splendour” (Beet). Being what he is, man glorifies God Who made him thus; being what she is, woman glorifies man, to whom God has given her for a help-meet. The dependence found in both cases, of origin and relation, exalts and brings dignity to God and man respectively.

1 Corinthians 11:10.—Very difficult text; a crux interpretum.

(1) Pretty general agreement that “power” means her “veil,” the sign of man’s authority over woman. [Perhaps also: “It is a piece of natural fitness that nature herself should have put on the woman, in her long hair, a natural sign of subordination”; though this fits with still greater difficulty into the next clause.]

(2) Because of the angels.—Choose between (a) “Good angels,” present in the Christian assemblies, who will be grieved by anything disorderly or unseemly. In favour of this are: the far-fetched, obscure, precariously based, character of the argument involved in (b) below; the general use of Scripture, where “angels” means “good angels,” unless the contrary is made clear in some way; the wide concurrence of the Greek Fathers in this interpretation; the constant assertion in the New Testament of the vivid interest which these take in all that belongs to man and his redemption. Also, the worshipping heavenly company, of which good angels form a large part, and the companies of earthly worshippers, are really one great body of worshippers at the same throne of the same God, though locally divided or distributed—part here, part yonder; the human worshippers must do nothing unworthy of the angelic part of the great adoring company. (b) “Evil angels;” as many, from Tertullian to Farrar, who suppose Paul to refer to [and believe in!] the Rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 6:2. In favour of this are many Rabbinic sayings, and some fantastic Mahometan stories; against it, the consideration that a veil could hide nothing from spiritual beings, even though evil ones, and would neither defend the woman from their gaze nor shield them from temptation to which they might again at least desire to yield. To suppose that the veil is to defend the good angels [or the “angels of the Churches (Revelation 2:3)] from temptation (I) is to suppose them “weaker, in the matter of sensual desire, than average Englishmen now” (Beet). [The matter is of very little homiletic use in any detail.]

1 Corinthians 11:12.—God’s glory is His creature, man; man’s glory is his companion, woman; woman’s glory is her covering, her hair and its symbolised modesty of subordination.

1 Corinthians 11:16. Seemeth.—Not in the usual sense of the frequent translation of the Greek word, “thinketh that he is”; but, “is so pertinacious in disputing upon this point that, to put it kindly, he appears to others to contend, for the mere love of being in opposition. It would be true to observed facts of human nature to translate and expound “thinks that he is, and is rather proud of being.” We.—As distinguished from “the Churches of God” will mean “we apostles.” Custom.—Viz. “of women praying with unveiled heads.”

HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 1 Corinthians 11:2

The Women’s Veils.

I. “Solemn trifling,” cries somebody, “to think of putting these nugæ Paulinœ on permanent record as a piece of God’s revelation!” But in God’s works, and in God’s words, we are no competent judges of what are nugæ. This a sample case of how to deal with and decide the many small points of Church order and worship; e.g. such as, in mission-fields, or in communities for the first time becoming organised and civilised on Christian lines, often get an accidental significance and importance. As the same “laws” give shape to a globe and a rain-drop, so the same great principles apply to and regulate the gravest or the most trivial matters of Christian practice. There is no limit, upward, or downward, to the concern God takes in whatever bears upon His redeeming work for the race of mankind. Everything connected with His Church may be brought to some of the tests suggested here.

II.

1. Customary observance and Church rule. There is a power in the very idea of a Great, Whole Community feeling its oneness, and showing it, by some observance which is its universal badge and token. E.g. the eating of bread and the drinking of wine at a supper in connection with the death of Christ and the Christian covenant, and in faith and hope of His second coming, is everywhere—amidst all the varieties of ritual and interpretation—a differentiating custom, as between Christian and non-Christian; a uniting custom, as between Christian and Christian of all types, and creeds, and ages, and lands. The Church sees its oneness at the Table. This indeed is no custom of optional observance. But, to take another, not thus binding: For centuries, almost as far back as the very beginning of the Church, there has never been a day on which, somewhere, Christian voices have not uplifted Psalms 95 to God in public worship. The sections of the Christian Church are far enough removed from each other; in doctrine, in practice, very often in spirit also, they have been as widely sundered as they could well be, to belong to the same Body at all. Yet in the use of this psalm one common life thrills through from Church to Church. The diversities and divisions are real and deep, but they do not destroy the unity, deepest when all are at worship. Thus, then, when Churches which as separate communions are but of yesterday, sing this psalm, which has been interwoven for ages with the prayers and praises of the Churches of, at all events, all Western lands, hoary some of them with the associations of ages, the gulf of time is bridged over by the “custom”; the Church of the present avows its oneness with the Church of the past, and each Church claims its place in the great company of the Christian worshippers of the One God and Father. [The unity of worship even goes further. The Jew in his Friday evening synagogue service begins his Sabbath worship with this same psalm.] This is poetry, sentiment; but any thing which manifests, and makes real, the sense of unity is not lightly to be regarded. That woman, that Church, would be ill-advised who went in the face of the “custom” of all the Churches of Christ. If the uncovered head for the man, and the veiled head for the woman, be the universal Christian custom, that is worth something as a test by which to decide such a question as had been raised at Corinth. [So Burial—not necessarily Interment—v. Cremation.] Christian custom should prevail, as against personal “fad” or the freak of undisciplined individuality. If there be no good reason against, “fall into line” with the universal Church. And this the more when there is reason as well as custom in the practice.

2. Universal instinct of propriety as against any unnatural, perverted, temporary fashion, or the “crank” of some “contentious man,” fond of, glorying in, being “on the other side,” and in a minority—himself against the world. “Propriety,” indeed, may in regard to some points be read in the most opposite senses. To the Jew it means that a man cover his head with his hat, or turban, or tallith, when he prays. And that Jew would be censurable who in the synagogue, in mere freak or self-willed preference of his own course [= “heresy,” 1 Corinthians 11:19], should go against the received proprieties of the place and of his co-religionists by praying with bared head. [“In your prayers, in Churches and places of Religion, use reverent postures, great attention, grave ceremony, the lowest postures of humility; remembering that we speak to God, in our reverence to whom we cannot possibly exceed; but that the expression of this reverence be according to the law or custom, and the example of the most prudent and pious persons; that is, let it be the best of its kind to the best of essences” (Jeremy Taylor, “Holy Living,” ii., § 5).] But there are “proprieties” which are universal. The modesty which is the body’s conscience may, like the sense of sin which belongs to the soul’s conscience, be so violated and sinned against that it seems gone; but it is there, ineradicably deep in human nature, and can be awakened and appealed to in all. Nature has a voice, and can be heard speaking in her very physical differencing of the sexes. Long hair for the woman, shorter for the man; this is not fashion, it is of no one age or nation. “Fall then into line with” Nature in your rule for Church order. “Your Jew and your Roman covers his head when he worships. He does not understand, as you Christians do, the headship of man in and with Christ. But even he does not tolerate that his women should worship with uncovered head.” Paul’s principle appeals to the universal womanly instincts and fine perceptions. In extraordinary circumstances a woman, like Philip’s daughters, may “prophesy”; the gift brings with it its own call for exercise, and overrules many prudential or conventional considerations. In quasi-domestic life she may “pray” (1 Corinthians 11:5) openly and as the leader of the devotions of others. But the proprieties as well as the custom of the Churches will make this the exception (1 Corinthians 14:33), only to be departed from under the clearest necessity. Woman’s place and work and open participation in the conduct of worship are all to be decided and adjusted in conformity with this second test. A local impropriety at Corinth made a “shorn” head, or uncovered, “a shame” to a woman. Even this local conventionalism must not needlessly be offended against by a Christian woman anxious to assert her equality with the men as before Christ. Even the Gentiles must be “pleased,” if possible (1 Corinthians 10:32). And in many another small detail of Church order, an instinct which works for fitness and propriety is a criterion not to be left unused. The “angels,” too, have their sense of fitness which should have consideration. But this belongs rather to the next criterion.

3. Revealed truth is, however, the supreme standard of appeal. Where there are no express directions there may be exemplar facts. There may be “leading cases,” each of them carrying a principle. Yet example, even Apostolic example and practice, if certainly established, is not necessarily Church law, unless the apostles have made it so. [An argument often urged in the controversy re Episcopal v. Presbyterian system of government.] The Apostolic example may sometimes be more honoured in forsaking the literal and exact and mechanical copying of it, whilst seizing the essential principle and adapting its form and embodiment to the changed environment and necessities of a new time or a new world. The true law may lie deeper than the letter of their practice. But any practice of theirs put on permanent record in the Scripture is, with this proviso, legislation and Divine direction for the Churches (1 Corinthians 11:16, “we have no such custom”). The histories of the Bible are didactic; they may be legislatory also; they are parts of the revelation, one of the methods of the revelation, of the mind and will of God. Nature, with its long and short hair for the two sexes—how comes it thus? Who made “Nature”? Who made such a detail of “her” arrangements so significant? How has it happened that “a mere resultant of the processes which have evolved sex” is ethical, and finds something innate in man and woman responsive to its dictate? “All things of God” (1 Corinthians 11:12). Go back to Eden and the Creation story. See the finished work of the creative “week” (1 Corinthians 11:7):—

“Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure,
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad;
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadornèd golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amiable delay.”

—Paradise Lost, iv. 288–311.

Not in this particular case only, but in all, let men get back to God’s facts; let them dig down beneath the accretions of speculation, or fashion, or error, until in God’s own utterance of His will, above all in Revelation, they get to rock. In everything, not, “What thinkest thou?” but, “What seest, hearest, readest, thou of the works of God?” That only is final; the supreme arbiter of all, whether in actual use or only proposed, in connection with the order of the Church or the life of His people. [Revelation and propriety combine in the appeal made by Paul to the presence of angelic spectators, who are also, as is suggested in Critical Notes, co-worshippers in the great company of adoring ones to which believers “are come” already (Hebrews 12:22), and with which in a glorious reality they are already associated in the one joint homage of Heaven and Earth. But so obscure is the whole matter, so small a corner of the veil is drawn back, so momentary and partial is the glimpse we get of these angelic critics of the proprieties of Christian observance and worship, that very little practical use can be made of the motive Paul appeals to. We dare take in the obscurity no step, except the one we here take with our inspired guide, in the unfamiliar world within the veil, where we have, indeed, planted our foot, but we hardly know what it is we see. Yet more thought and honour might perhaps be paid to the “big brothers” told off, “sent forth,” to take charge of us (Hebrews 1:14), without our running into all the fanciful, Rabbinic, and apocryphal poetising about each man’s “guardian angel,” and the like.]

SEPARATE HOMILIES

1 Corinthians 11:11. Man and Woman.—How all the arguments, 1 Corinthians 11:2, assume the historic truth of the story of Genesis 1,

2. Paul, it is admitted, does so; to him the relation of the sexes, the order of the family life, originated in the history, and rest upon it. Possible to admit the truth of all the teaching here about the relative positions of man and woman, and to regard the history as myth. But in that case the truth stands without known basis, or without any unchallengeable basis. A mere “happy” use of an old myth will hardly afford an argument such as—not Paul only, but—the inspiring Spirit might employ. The creation facts, and the physical facts of everyday knowledge, say that, subordinate as she is, the man needs the woman; and that, though he has headship, the man is made for the woman, and not alone for himself or his God.

I.

1. Man and woman both are needed, to exhibit manhood in its perfection of idea; neither without the other. Fitted respectively for restless activity and quiet retirement; to fight in the battles of life, to heal the wounds of the combatants; the stronger mind, the better-disposed heart; men arriving at truth by slow reasoning, women by quick intuitions; men consequently gaining more by the way, but oftener missing their way altogether (Luthardt); hence men oftener sceptical, women “naturally” more religious; [“an irreligious woman is a man spoilt, and doubly corrupting to those men over whom she acquires influence” (Luthardt);] man’s the initiative, generative, originating mind, woman’s the receptive and reproductive mind. Broadly true, and correspondent to, and founded in, physical differences; but with many exceptions in detail.

2. The distinction and the unification mount higher.—God is both Father and Mother in His love. No woman ever misses anything in Him because He is “Father.” He is ideal Parenthood. So, too, the painters are guided by a right instinct when they give to the face of their ideals of Christ a somewhat feminine (not effeminate) manhood. He is Man and Woman; in Him neither is without the other. No girl ever feels that Christ does not understand her because He was “only a boy”; no woman ever feels that He is not for her because He is a man. His “sex” never occurs to the mind or heart. He is man and woman, strength and tenderness; the wisdom of both types of mind and heart are in Him; perfect Manhood.

3. The perfectly rounded Christian character combines and exhibits the best characteristics of both. If women are “more religious” than men, it is because it is easier for them to enter by “Little-children Gate” into the Kingdom. Dependence, docility, belief in what comes on authority,—all that makes the little child typical of the character which alone can enter, all these are nearer akin to the woman’s character and habit than to the man’s. The man enters the kingdom “not without the woman,” developed, or submitted to, in him. The perfect manhood of grace needs, however, to add to faith “virtue” (perhaps = “courage”). As between man and God there is no room in man for self-reliance, but, as between man and man, and in doing the work of God in the world, there is room and need for “the man.”

III. Christianity, the Church, the work of God, each needs, and has availed itself of, both “man” and “woman.”—It would never have succeeded, it will never succeed, so far as human conditions of success are concerned, unless by the employment of both. The presence and interaction of the sexes is a valuable element in the educational effect of the Church upon its members. Sanctified family life, with the reciprocal, incessant, little-adverted-to, training of husband and wife, brothers and sisters, is the seminal instance and example of the training given by, and gained from, the brotherhood and sisterhood in the Church of Christ. Each sex has its gifts and capabilities complementary to, lacking in, those of the other. Woman can reach where man is excluded; man can dare where woman may not go. Wisest Church organisers utilise both to the utmost of possibility. Romans 16 is a picture of an early Church, and is full of women who, like the men, are “in the Lord.” Nor are they simply receivers of blessing; they “labour,” and even “labour much in the Lord”; they can with their husbands lay down their own necks in running risks and daring death to save an apostle’s life. Indeed, Priscilla may precede Aquila; possibly just as in a Church to-day there are godly women who, without unwomanly obtrusiveness, have so much more of initiative than their equally godly and devoted, but quieter, husbands, that every one says, or thinks, “Mrs. and Mr. ——.” “In the Lord,” in the sphere and realm where He is supreme, and where everything bears the stamp of His lordship and ownership, “Woman” and “Man” are both required. Neither is without the other. In the new creation in the soul, in that other new creation, the “kingdom of God” on earth, the original, natural order of the Creator’s idea is being perfectly restored.