1 Corinthians 11:3

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is the Christ; and the man is [the] head of the woman; and God [the] head of the Christ.”

The δέ is adversative: but; Paul proceeds to a point to which the eulogy he has just passed does not apply.

One is tempted to ask, as he reads the following sentences, why the apostle thinks it necessary to take things on so high a level, and to connect what is apparently so secondary a matter with relations so exalted as those of man with Christ, and of Christ with God. To explain his method, we must bear in mind the pride of the Corinthians, who thought they knew everything, and whom the apostle wishes, no doubt, to teach that they have yet something to learn: “ I would have you know. ” It is likely enough, from 1 Corinthians 11:16, that the ultra-liberals of Corinth spoke with a certain disdain of the ecclesiastical prescriptions left by the apostle, and that in the name of the Spirit some claimed to throw his rules overboard. Paul would give them to understand that everything hangs together in one, both in good and in evil; that unfaithfulness to the Divine order, even in things most external, may involve an assault on the most sublime relations, and that the pious keeping up of proprieties, even in these things, is an element of Christian holiness. Hence he begins with placing this special point in the life of the Church under the light of the two holiest analogies that can be conceived, and in which he shows the revelation of a Divine order. Those who criticise him presumptuously will thus be able to understand whence he derives the rules which he lays down in the Church.

There exist three relations, which together form a sort of hierarchy: lowest in the scale, the purely human relation between man and woman; higher, the Divine-human relation between Christ and man; highest in the scale, the purely Divine relation between God and Christ. The common term whereby Paul characterizes these three relations is κεφαλή (hence our word chief), head. This figurative term includes two ideas: community of life, and inequality within this community. So between the man and the woman: by the bond of marriage there is formed between them the bond of a common life, but in such a way that the one is the strong and directing element, the other the receptive and dependent element. The same is the case in the relation between Christ and the man. Formed by the bond of faith, it also establishes a community of life, in which there are distinguished an active and directing principle, and a receptive and directed factor. An analogous relation appears higher still in the mystery of the Divine essence. By the bond of filiation, there is between Christ and God communiön of Divine life, but such that impulse proceeds from the Father, and that “the Son does nothing but what he sees the Father do” (John 5:19).

The relation between Christ and the man is put first. It is, so to speak, the link of union between the other two, reflecting the sublimity of the one and marking the other with a sacred character, which should secure it from the violence with which it is threatened. The only question is whether, as has been thought by Hofmann, Holsten, etc., the point in question is the natural relation between Christ and man, due to the dignity of the pre-existing Christ as creator (Hofmann), or as the heavenly Man, the prototype of earthly humanity (Holsten), or whether, as is held by Meyer, Heinrici, etc., Paul means to describe the relation between Christ and men by redemption. The expression: every man, seems to speak in favour of the first sense; and the passages 1 Corinthians 8:6 and 1 Corinthians 10:4 might serve to confirm this meaning. Christ as having been the organ of creation, is the head of every man created in His image, believing or unbelieving. But 1 Corinthians 11:4-5 seem to me to prove that Paul is thinking not of man in general, but of the Christian husband. “Every man..., every woman who prays, who prophesies...,” this can only apply to believers. It is from 1 Corinthians 11:7 that Paul passes from the spiritual order to the domain of creation in general. What is true in the first sense, is that every man is ordained to believe in Christ and to take Him for his head, that is to say, to become a Christian husband.

The article ἡ is to be remarked with κεφαλή in the first proposition (it is wanting in the other two). This arises, no doubt, from the fact that the man may have many other heads than Christ; the article serves to point out Christ as the only normal head. In the other two relations, this was understood of itself.

This relation belonging to the kingdom of God has for its counterpart in the family the relation between husband and wife. Paul is here thinking chiefly of the natural and social relation, in virtue of which the husband directs and the wife is in a position of subordination. But this natural relation is not abolished by the life of faith; on the contrary, it takes hold of it and sanctifies it. Must we conclude, from the term used by Paul, that the Christian wife has not also Christ for her head, in respect of her eternal personality? By no means; salvation in Christ is the same for the wife as for the husband, and the bond by which she is united to Christ does not differ from that which unites the man to the Lord. The saying: “Ye are branches, I am the vine,” applies to the one sex as much as to the other. But from the standpoint of the earthly manifestation and of social position, the woman, even under the gospel economy, preserves her subordinate position. There will come a day when the distinction between the sexes will cease (Luke 20:34-36). But that day does not belong to the terrestrial form of the kingdom of God. As long as the present physical constitution of humanity lasts, the subordinate position of the woman will remain, even in the Christian woman. As the child realizes its communion with the Lord in the form of filial obedience to its parents, the Christian mother realizes her communion with the Lord in the form of subordination to her husband, without her communion being thereby less direct and close than his. The husband is not between her and the Lord; she is subject to him in the Lord; it is in Him that she loves him, and it is by aiding him that she lives for the Lord. If from the social standpoint she is his wife, from the standpoint of redemption she is his sister. Thus are harmonized these two sayings proceeding from the same pen: “In Christ there is neither male nor female,” and: “The husband is the head of the wife.”

These two relations, that of Christ to the man, and that of the man to his wife, rest on a law which flows from the nature of God Himself. In the oneness of the Divine essence there are found these two poles, the one directive, the other dependent: God and Christ. Paul evidently desires to rise to the highest point, above which we can conceive nothing. Some, like Heinrici, Edwards, etc., think that this expression: the head of Christ, can only apply to the Christ incarnate. But if the relation were thus understood, one of the two essential features would be wanting, indicated by the term head, and which characterize the two preceding relations: community of life and nature. We cannot, therefore, confine this saying to the Lord's human nature, and we think there is no ground for shrinking from the notion of subordination applied to the Divine being of Christ; see on 1 Corinthians 3:23. This idea of the subordination of Christ, conceived as a pre-existent being (1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Corinthians 10:4), springs out of the terms Son and Word, by which He is designated, as well as from the very passages where the divinity of Christ is most clearly affirmed (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:2-3; John 1:1; John 1:18; Rev 1:1). Holsten thinks that he escapes all difficulty by bringing in here the idea of Christ as the heavenly Man, according to the discovery made by Baur by means of the passage 1 Corinthians 15:45 seq. It is very certain that had it not been found in that passage, nobody would have extracted it from the one we are explaining. For the examination of this conception ascribed to Paul, we shall therefore refer to the passage quoted.

Thus, then, in the apostle's view, the relation between husband and wife in marriage is a reflection of that which unites Christ and the believer, as this again reproduces the still more sublime relation which exists between God and His manifestation in the person of Christ. Paul certainly could not say more in the Epistle to the Ephesians to express a higher notion of marriage than these words. M. Sabatier, expounding the idea of marriage in the Epistle to the Ephesians, says: “Husband and wife form an indissoluble organic unity.” Exactly; but can this “indissoluble unity” be more forcibly expressed than by comparing it, as Paul does in our passage, to the unity of Christ with the believer and of God with Christ? M. Sabatier adds, still expounding the contents of Ephesians: “The one does not reach the fulness of existence without the other.” Certainly; but is not this exactly what Paul teaches here in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12: “The man is not without the woman in the Lord, nor the woman without the man.” And on such grounds a progress is alleged as having taken place in Paul's ideas on marriage, in the interval between the Epistle to the Corinthians and that to the Ephesians!

After recognising, as a principle which controls all community of life, Divine and human, that duality of factors, the one active, the other receptive, which forms the basis of marriage, the apostle passes by an asyndeton to the application which he wishes to make of it to the case in question at Corinth.