the following demonstration are totally incomprehensible to us.” I do not, however, feel disposed to surrender forthwith. When we look at the matter, it is only the
substance that is totally impenetrable: in 11:2–10, the meaning of the
custom of veiling woman, and man going bareheaded, and in verses 13–15, the alleged
natural order that man must wear short and woman long hair, a principle to which Calvin delicately objected in a sermon upon this text, referring to the old Gauls and Teutons (
Op. xlix. 743). But let us take this matter as we find it, i.e. as a custom which was the definite rule then and there, and which Paul, for reasons which cannot further be established, considered to be right in itself. With such a man as Paul, the substance need not be taken so tragically, whether the intention be to elucidate its pragmatical aspect, or whether this is, as here, not the case. The assumption of the passage is that there was a disposition in Corinth to
abolish the custom. This must, then, have been the expression of a tendency to make the superiority of man over woman invisible, or even to deny it altogether. Fashions are the expression of outlooks on life. In deprecating the fashion, Paul deprecates the outlook on life which it embodies. Paul’s own tenets are to be understood as the expression of an opposite outlook on life. Whoever is otherwise acquainted with Paul will not be surprised to learn that what we meet with here is also a conservative outlook on life. He is not the man to support a more or less powerful tendency designed to effect a transformation in the customary relation of the sexes. He represents the patriarchal principle that woman should be subordinate to man. It is open to argument whether this opinion is calculated to render the obscurity, that is, what is to be understood only contingently, less obscure, or whether what we are concerned with here is an insight springing from ripe wisdom into the natural limitation of human life, the significance of which goes beyond an arguable opinion. Paul expressly declares his concrete judgment upon the
covering (of women) to be arguable; verse 16 teaches this, and, in point of meaning, should be compared with verses 7, 12. (“But to the rest, speak I, not the Lord.”) Whether Paul also said that from the
outlook on life at the back of this judgment, is another question, probably
not. But this question is not decisive. In my opinion, Paul can be understood in the main—what he
means he
says, although one cannot endorse the attitude towards man and woman which emerges here, as in chapter 7 with his opinion of marriage, or here, with his pronouncement upon the fashion in question. Obviously, behind his outlook on life here disclosed, there is still something else, a
third something: a principle which neither stands nor falls with this outlook on life, but which
finds expression for him in this outlook on life; and that is the principle that it is better, more obvious, more intelligent, in life’s relations of subordination that are naturally given, to revere the majesty of God than, out of liberal indifference or because protesting is enjoyable, to scorn this primitive, not unequivocal, not eternal, but at any rate perceptible, word of God. This passage, too, although in another sense, is a parallel to Rom. 13. Let us, then, assume as given: Paul affirms
in concreto the subordination of woman to man to be a case to which that principle is to be applied, and we learn how he, prompted by that
concretissimum, the veiling question, effects the application: 11:3, the metaphor of a four-runged ladder downwards: God, Christ, Man, Woman, always the higher of the lower “head.”
“Kephāle,” means, in addition to head, also sum, connexion, origin, and end. It is clear that in the relation of Christ to man, that has a totally different application from the relation of man to woman. But it
applies, Paul means, as much or as little as anything can apply in the corruptible shape of life and order of life amidst which we find ourselves. It is important that even in the relation between man and woman there are plain and insurmountable barriers (insurmountable at least within this world). These barriers point us to above. By their incomprehensible and yet so palpable existence, they remind us of that altogether other incomprehensible existence, of the Head of the Church in heaven, whose Head is God Himself, of the origin and end
par excellence, of the first origin and the last end. In this sense, woman is to consent to her subordination to man, but man, too, shall observe this subordination, not for the sake of his own dignity, but for the sake of the dignity of the order whose representative he is on earth. The man who covers his head in the community—that is, masquerades as a woman—dishonours his Head, Christ (11:4). He forgets, not his manly honour, but the finger-post to above, which is the real meaning of his manhood. And every woman who is uncovered in the Church dishonours her head, the man, not by her rebellion against him as man, which is expressed in negligent manner, but by her rebellion against the order, which she encounters in him, by her forgetting what man signifies for her (11:5), She must have carried the neglect of manners, perhaps, somewhat further still (let her also be shorn), in order to demonstrate to herself and everybody
ad oculos upon what
path she was treading. If she will not do this, then let her refrain from that (11:6). 11:7–10 is a variation of the fundamental idea of 11:3: A man is to assert his manhood as the created image of God, as God’s reflection upon earth, first created, not for the sake of woman. And hence woman must wear on her head in the Church a sign of the power that is established over her, not the power of man as such, but the power of God over His creatures represented by man. The power, authority, is in fact the covering. The last words of 11:10, “because of the angels,” are difficult—what are they doing here? It was Tertullian—who was probably somewhat obsessed with such things—who first gave currency to the explanation that the angels in question were the fallen angels mentioned in Gen. 6:1
et seq., with their lust after the daughters of men, because they were fair, and Lietzmann thinks that the numerous contemporary parallels to this idea constrain us to accept this explanation, although he perceives, and himself confesses, that they “are completely foreign to the context.” The phrase “because of the angels” only fits into the context because it forms a repetition of the “For this cause” at the beginning of the verse. In that case, however, the explanation must be sought in Calvin’s direction: If women begin to masquerade as men in the Church, they thereby manifest their dishonour to the angels of Christ (the angels who serve praying believers); they make them into witnesses of the dissolution of the order of which they are guilty! And that is to be avoided! Apart from what has been said above, the explanation of the notion of the unconditional superiority of man revealed by 11:1–10 is to be sought in 11:11–12, where we are at once reminded that the same Paul (Gal. 3:28) also knows that in Christ there is neither male nor female. In the Lord, is neither the man without the woman,
nor vice versa; but all things from God. The question is not one of different relation to God; compared with the great distance between God and man the little distance between woman and man is not without importance, not at all, but it is still really small, quite small, in fact nugatory. Nor is the question one of temporal order, as such, but of the divine order manifested in it—and that is twofold. In the time of Paul, Christianity was still too good to surrender itself to the sanctification of such an earthly order. Women are not to let this perturb them, said Calvin in the Geneva Chancellery: The main thing they have and enjoy! “It is a little thing that in this world we have some little superiority: for the whole is only a metaphor. A corruptible splendour!” (
Op. xlix. 728). This is undoubtedly Paul’s opinion. But we are dealing with an
order, that is what he means here. 11:13–15 will then, with more or less success and penetration, attempt to show how this order is also akin to nature, and 11:16 closes with the statement: in the “Churches of God” this order has so far been valid, and this ought to be known in Corinth. If we have so far rightly interpreted the whole spirit of the Epistle, we may also be permitted to place in the series this piece, this halt, which sounds this time in a very unexpected place and yet proceeds from a direction that is now no longer unknown to us, according to its critical tendency, “from God.”
And likewise, it now also asserts with the second half of the chapter. In 11:17–33, too, we are dealing with a repudiation of a powerfully flourishing type of man in the Corinthian Church, with his tendency to wilful and self-seeking assertion of his influence. It is that which connects the two halves of the chapter. Here, as there, it is, for the rest, in phenomena peculiar to religious life in Corinth that Paul sees this tendency in operation; there, in the breaking down of the barrier between man and woman, here, in the divisions, which, already mentioned and discussed in the first chapter, seem to have broken out directly in divine service, and then, above all, in the profanation, in fact the dissipation, of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Glancing at both, Paul says (11:17): Your coming together, your cultus, serves the worse rather
