One of the most difficult passages to interpret in the entire Bible is Corinthians 11:1-16. It raises the following controversial questions:

1) What is the issue that Paul is concerned about? Some kind of head covering or a way of wearing the hair?

2) Is Paul opposed to women “prophesying” in church without the required head covering or hair style, or is he responding to a requirement being demanded by the Corinthian church, and claiming instead that women should not be bound by this requirement?

3) What is the meaning of kephalē the Greek word translated as “head”) used as a metaphor?

4) What does Paul mean when he says that man is the glory of God, but that woman is the glory of man?

5) What does Paul mean when he says that a woman should have “authority” over her head?

6) What does Paul mean when he refers to the “angels”?

7) What does Paul mean when he says that “nature” teaches that men should not have long hair? Is this an affirmative statement or rather a question to be answered in the negative?

8) Do “man” and “woman” referred to in the passage refer to men and women in general or to husbands and wives?

9) When Paul says “we have no such practice,” to what practice is he referring?

10) How does what Paul says about women speaking in church in 1 Corinthians 11 correlate with the seemingly contradictory statement in 1 Corinthians 14:34b-35 that women should be “silent” in the churches? Do we read 1 Corinthians 11 in the light of 1 Corinthians 14 or vice versa?

The above questions should make clear that interpreting what Paul says about women and worship in 1 Corinthians is not a straightforward matter of just being faithful to the “plain sense” meaning of the texts. The texts themselves raise a number of questions to which there are no straightforward answers. As I pointed out in previous essays, the question of whether women should be ordained to church office is ultimately a matter of hermeneutics, not of simple exegesis.

In my book Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination (Baylor University Press, 2020), I devoted an entire chapter to 1 Corinthians 11, and I discussed 1 Corinthians 14 in another chapter. In my book, I identified the following schools of interpretation concerning 1 Corinthians 11:1-16:

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Lack of space prohibited detailed discussion of a key hermeneutical point in the essay Women in Holy Orders, written by myself and Bishop and Trinity School for Ministry Professor Grant Le Marquand: biblical metaphors must be interpreted through their narrative contexts, not by readings imposed from external references. I make this point at length in my book Icons of Christ, citing New Testament scholar Richard Hays, among others.¹ We know what it means for God to be Father not from Hebrew or Greek examples of fatherhood outside the New Testament, but from how Jesus Christ redefines what it means to be Father in the light of his own relationship as the Son to the God of Israel who is his eternal Father. We know what it means for Jesus Christ to be “head” of the church, or for men to be “head” in relation to women, from the New Testament context in which the term kephalē (“head”) actually occurs as a metaphor, not from six LXX translations of a handful of Old Testament passages, or from examples in pagan culture from outside the New Testament. The proper exegetical approach is inductive and a posteriori, allowing one’s understanding to be challenged and transformed by following the narrative logic of the actual biblical texts. Biblical symbols, metaphors, and vocabulary are interpreted through a careful reading of the actual texts in order to discover how the metaphors, symbols, and vocabulary actually function in the texts.

In contrast to the inductive approach mentioned above, throughout the Response to our essay from the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, the writers use a rationalist and deductive hermeneutic to decide that Paul’s use of the metaphor “head” necessarily means “authority.” The approach of the Response is a priori and deductive. That is, the texts are interpreted through the lens of concepts and ideas first derived from outside the text. In a previous essay, I noted that the terms “head,” “authority,” and “roles” are determining vocabulary throughout the Response. “Authority” is the dominating notion. Having decided that authority is the crucial issue, the writers of the Response conclude that when Paul used the word “head” to describe the relationship between men and women, the metaphor of “head” necessarily means “authority.”This can be shown in the following ways:

1) The Responders consistently appeal to sources outside of Paul’s own letters in order to decide what Paul must have meant.

Household Codes

In our original essay, we had mentioned the “household codes” of antiquity, and had stated that “In Ephesians 5:1-6:9, Paul challenges traditional pagan and Jewish ‘household codes’ which typically addressed male householders in their duties to exercise authority over their subordinates (wives, children and slaves), in the light of cruciform spirituality.”

This point concerning the way in which Paul modified and challenged ancient household codes is a standard observation in contemporary Pauline exegesis, recognized by numerous scholars. We included two entire paragraphs in which we explained how Paul modified these codes.

The Responders failed to acknowledge the significance of this discussion at all, but simply took the opposite approach: “It should be noted once more that Paul’s requirements for presbyters/overseers in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, assume the continuation of these social arrangements in the context of the Christian Church. The presbyter is to manage his household in such a way that his children are not rebellious.”

In Women in Holy Orders (and also in my book Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination Baylor University Press, 2020), we had challenged this reading of 1 Timothy and Titus:“It is also significant that these requirements for overseers (bishops), elders (presbyters), and deacons in the pastoral epistles (1 Timothy 3:1-12; Titus 1:5-9) are moral requirements, not job descriptions. It cannot be coincidental that identical language is used to describe women throughout the pastoral epistles” (p. 10). If identical language is used throughout the pastoral epistles to describe women as is used to describe the office-holders of bishops, presbyters, and deacons (and it is!), then these descriptions cannot be an endorsement of a male hierarchy of men over women since identical language is used throughout to describe both the office holders and women!

Note also that the Responders conflate the issue of male/female hierarchy and parent/child hierarchy. No one in this discussion is suggesting that parents should not exercise authority over children. Given that children lack intellectual and emotional maturity, there are good reasons for this. But adult wives and women are not children! To conflate the authority of parents over children and the authority of men over women is necessarily to infantalize women!

The key point is that Paul challenged the pagan household codes of antiquity by transforming them in the light of Christ’s example. The Responders claim instead that Paul rather endorsed these (pagan!) household codes. They make their point not by a careful comparison between ancient household codes and what Paul actually wrote, but simply note that in the pastoral epistles, Paul commands parents to exercise authority over children! Whether parents have authority over children is irrelevant to the issue of whether husbands have the kind of authority over wives that complementarians claim.

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