AUDIO
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Phillip Jensen speaks on Anger as part of a series on emotions in the Christian life, delivered at the Australia Day Convention 2010
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In church the other day we had one of those moments that church-attending ought to give you - a moment of real discomfort and dissonance. Frankly, if your church isn’t making you uncomfortable some of the time, then change. Well, I mean, if your church doesn’t allow the Word of God to make you feel uncomfortable…
You see, we had a reading and a sermon from 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. And I am not just going to trot out the old line about how this challenges our cultural assumptions - blah blah.
No: for us twenty-first century Christians, this text comes as a test to see if we really do hold to the authority of the Scriptures. Do we really believe it when the reading is finished and the reader says ‘this is the word of the Lord’? Can we really say ‘thanks be to God’?
This particular text, it seems to me, refuses to be mastered and written off by the knowing exegete. It is teasing and mysterious and confronting and awkward. What can ‘on account of the angels’ mean? What does Paul mean by ‘nature teaches us’ (phusis)? It’s the Bible at its best - turning our worlds upside down, judging us just when we thought we were going to judge it. It can only be preached - and heard - with fear and trembling.
Let me be honest: I don’t like what this text appears to be saying at first blush. It jars. It seems offensive and embarrassing. I squirm in my seat, hoping that visitors will not be put off. And if you can’t confess to the same feeling of dissonance, I suspect you are either not reading the text or you are completely other-worldly.
A friend of mine told me that when he was preaching on 1 Corinthians 11, the reader began with an apology, saying that he had been asked to read the passage and that he disagreed with it. It was a fun way to start a sermon!
But shouldn’t the word of God - if it really IS the Word of God spoken into the world that opposes God - get precisely this reaction from us? I am not for a moment conceding that the Bible is irrelevant to the contemporary world. What I am saying is that its strangeness is something we need. If it was completely ‘relevant’, we should begin to doubt it.
And this Word proves trustworthy again and again. What I mean is that the Bible as a whole proves profoundly true to my experience of life. If it is ornery in places, then I tend to give IT the benefit of the doubt… or plug away and see what comes in to view. I tend to assume that the problem is with me, not with it...even when I can’t see quite how always.
Reading the Scriptures is a task that takes centuries to get right. So what if we haven’t got it all nailed down right now?
If 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is a litmus test of whether we as "twenty-first century Christians [...] really do hold to the authority of the Scriptures" then the answer is clearly a resounding 'No' and we can all pack up our bags and go home!
If anything, this passage is a classic example of the selectivity we apply to the bible, our hypocrisy in claiming ourselves as the truly 'bible believing' ones, and the bizarro logical contortions required to try and uphold the "trustworthiness" of the text while skirting around the issue that's actually spoken about!
How can we even discuss this passage with a straight face? If ever there was a "plain reading" we ignore, this is it. To wander off into "mystery" is just a cop out.
With that said, I think our attitude revealed in our treatment of this text is correct -- Paul's understanding of gender is antiquated -- it's just a shame we don't apply it consistently!
And whilst I don't think Paul's expressed understanding of gender is antiquated, there are genuine questions as to what aspects of his commands are culturally-specific to his day and the community his readers lived in, and whether he would expect obedience to look different in our communities today. This is particularly relevant in this letter where Paul is concerned for things such as being all things to all people for the sake of their salvation, and not bringing the gospel into disrepute by our conduct, whether individually or as the gathered church.
- Men should pray/prophesy with head uncovered
- Women should pray/prophesy with head covered
- If a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him
- A women's long hair is her glory
Disagree with those commands? Well, as Paul says "If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God."
Seems pretty clear to me! Yet we ignore all of them, more or less, insofar as they're inconvenient. And you can't argue culture relevance -- Paul grounds his argument in our relationship with God, our men and women's relationship to each other in creation, and nature itself -- the "very nature of things". Nothing about culture there!
Now contrast this argument with 1 Tim 2 -- genuinely difficult passages "But women will be saved through childbearing...", clear commands based on gender, rooted in the creation story, and yet we think it's absolutely clear and take it very, very seriously -- we divide over it, and declare the very authority of the word of God is at stake!
Yet our approach to the different passages couldn't be more different. If that isn't hypocritical selectivity, I don't know what is. Frankly, it's embarrassing. Don't you agree?
MJ, thoughts?
I still think that there is more to explore regarding the cultural background than you allow. Paul was speaking to a church in the first century, who had to uphold the gospel and not bring it into disrepute in that context, just as we must in ours. In this passage Paul seems to appeal to 'the way things are': customs and the like. The commands you refer to weren't arbitrary to-do's; they were meaningful expressions of the cultural language of the first century Greek speaking world which has particular connotations in that context. By even mentioning head coverings / hair and the message they communicate to others, Paul certainly IS talking about culture to some extent.
Gordon Fee, in his commentary, argues that by the idiom 'the very nature of things' Paul is referring simply to the way gender expressed itself in their society (p527). Rather than utterly rejecting their cultural modes of expression and bringing Christ to unnecessary public scandal, Paul says that the Corinthians should express gender differences in accordance with these customs.
Paul plugs the biblical creation order into this cultural setting. Men are not to cover their heads because in their society that communicates something contrary to the created order. And so on.
continued...
I'll leave it there - but thanks to this conversation I can't wait to do some proper work on this text!
The first is, as Matthew notes above, separating the cultural from trans-cultural no easy task for such passages. I would add, given this, that interpretation of such passages is a place where there can be legitimate differences. However my experience is that many Sydney Anglicans clergy would disagree and would by contrast see adherence to a complementarian interpretation of such passages as a test of biblical fidelity. You seem to suggest this in your second paragraph. However, when I look around the evangelical world I see much greater diversity of opinion on this topic that I see in Sydney. For instance, all four authors in the Counterpoints "Two Views on Women in Ministry" (Zondervan, revised edition) state that they "believe one can build a credible case within the bounds of orthodoxy and a commitment to inerrancy for either one of the two major views we address in this volume". So why, at least amongst the clergy, is the position in Sydney so strongly complementarian and why is this viewpoint seen as a touchstone of orthodoxy?
The second puzzle is, given the degree to which the complementarian perspective pervades the pulpits, why is it that the congregants overwhelmingly, at least in my experience, lead completely egalitarian lives?
Regards, Roland
Matthew offered I think a great response to Luke so i won't go over that again. I will say that I think this text does provoke pretty much everyone who reads it. The question we were led to confront in our complementarian congregation was 'why don't we have any women prophesying, since Paul seems to assume women will have an upfront speaking/prophesying role in this passage?'
Also: I think we often forget to mind the gap between interpretation and implementation when it comes to these texts. That is: even when we decide what the text means, we still have to figure out how we will be obedient to it in our context. We aren't replicating the 1st century church (and anyone who tells you they are is pulling your leg) - we are trying to be faithful to the teaching of scripture in our context 2000 years down the track. We will take into account (sometimes critically) all kinds of oddities that shape our practices - for example, our denominational and cultural customs.
By the way guys: sweeping generalisations about what 'the diocese' or óur pulpits' do or don't think or do are almost impossible to respond to. Keep it specific.
On your Blogging Parson site you made a comment that "in a church sub-culture which is so determinedly complementarian, it behoves us to bend over backwards to eradicate any hint of sexism." Is the church sub-culture to which you referred to there the Anglican Diocese of Sydney? If it is, then my question becomes, why is the Sydney Diocese "so determinedly complementarian" given the wider context of both complementarian and egalitarian interpretations within evangelicalism?
Regards, Roland
I think it's far fetched to imagine that Paul was saying "Hey everyone, it looks like non-Christians have these certain customs, so it's probably a good idea if we follow them too (otherwise we'd bring shame to Jesus), and if they drop those specific customs, no biggie, they're meaningless after all! Just go with the flow."
Consider the final verses of the passage: "Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God."
This is an argument from authority to do very specific things, not simply follow whatever cultural customs are in vogue! (Fee's reading only makes sense if we say belief in certain natural absolutes was, in fact, cultural -- & I agree.)
Yet we explain it away by adding this whole layer of cultural nuance to Paul that I don't find in the text. But when it comes to 1 Tim 2, cultural nuance be damned! That passage is an unavoidable absolute for all time that exemplifies the authority of the bible.
Surely we can't have it both ways.
Well spotted, this is a great mystery indeed. I mean, at least culturally conservative Americans, crazy though they may be, try and live complementarianism the other six days of the week. It even provides fodder for TV shows (Wife Swap etc)!
I'm not sure where Michael said "in a church sub-culture which is so determinedly complementarian, it behoves us to bend over backwards to eradicate any hint of sexism" but I can't resist -- some might see that as, by definition, a failed mission, no? ;)
Consider this: Is it racist to say black people are "equal but different" when the difference is an obvious physical difference? No -- they're still equal.
But is it racist to say black people are "equal but different" when the difference is a black person can't teach a mixed congregation of whites and black adults, only black adults (and mixed children)?
By complementarian logic, no. How is that not an outrage?
My question in relation to the “determinedly complementarian” character of the Diocese though was actually different. It was more a sociological question. Notwithstanding that an individual much form his/her beliefs and decide one way or another, when there are competing interpretations it is common that both viewpoints will find adherence, and within evangelicalism this appears to be the case. Why then is the diversity in opinion less evident in Sydney which is “determinedly complementarian”?
Regards, Roland
Just to clarify though: I think this text is as challenging for the complementarian point of view as it is for egalitarians. That was the point rather the clumsily made here. Whatever is happening here, women are speaking publically in the church meeting in a manner approved by Paul. How rarely this happens in our churches!
Why are churches in Syd circles so determinedly complementarian - and yet, without the kind of hairy-chested ideological baggage you see in some US complementarian circles? The sociological answer is complex. The issue of women's ministry became in the 1980s and 90s something of a cause celebre in our denomination. Rightly or wrongly, it was held to be a symptom of a wider disease - namely, the gradual dismantling of biblical authority in our churches. And so here the line in the sand was drawn. Our particular church polity allows for a diocesan culture to develop in a way that perhaps doesn't occur in other denominations.
I'm back from some time in the Middle East, including Egypt this past week.
Sitting with my wife somewhere or other drinking coffee in Cairo this past week watching young women walking by, several thoughts flitted through my mind:
... thank goodness we were being spared plunging necklines and bared legs for a while at least, and then again
... my goodness how darned attractive they all looked, and nearly every one with a veil!
R Scott Clarke from Westminster Seminary California has written a terrific book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, in which, inter alia, he tackles what he calls the quest for illegitimate religious certainty or QIRC and the quest for illegitimate religious experience or QIRE. I reckon Michael's point in relation to head coverings for women (1 Cor 11) touches on the issue of QIRC and the more general point that we can never know God as He is in Himself but ...
but only as He chooses to reveal Himself in cultural relevant ways that the people who were the direct recipients of that revelation could even begin to understand.
Oh how right you are, David :^) Welcome back.
I reckon Michael's point in relation to head coverings for women (1 Cor 11) touches on the issue of QIRC and the more general point that we can never know God as He is in Himself but only as He choose to reveal Himself in cultural relevant ways in order that the people who were the direct recipients of that revelation could grasp with assurance what God wanted them to know.
Why can't the problem be with the Bible?
what do you mean 'another'?
In my experience the Bible is profoundly relevant today. The Bible itself encourages us to see it that way: it is God's message 'once for all delivered' (Jude 3).
Actually there are various forms of slavery that we condone today (e.g. prison). I don't think the Bible ever does 'blame' demons for sickness: it sees sickness as an aspect of the world being under God's judgment in the present. It does see demons as part of the spiritual powers that Jesus had to overcome though.
It is also worth realising that we mustn't just privilege our age or culture as the measure of what is true or relevant. Many cultures past and present thought/think that those very things are important issues.
When I said "another", I was referring to slavery and demons. Ok, maybe the bible doesn't 'condone' slavery but it certainly doesn't condemn it. (Acts 16:16-18)
And illness (madness?) was said to be cured by driving out the demons. (Matthew 8:28-32) Do you see demons as being real today or just a primitive explanation of a medical condition that was not understood 2000 years ago?
Prison is not slavery. Prison is punishment for wrong doing.
I would suggest that 1 Corinthians 11 is irrelevant today. What difference does hair length make? And who decides how long is long and how short is short? As I asked before, why can't the problem be with the Bible?
Why do you say "If it was completely ‘relevant’, we should begin to doubt it." In my mind, irrelevancies such as this do cause me to doubt it...
Cheers.
Certainly, the scriptures see slavery as an undesirable thing - no one wants to be enslaved, or poor, or sick - and the salvation imagery of the kingdom of God includes freedom from slavery and captivity. But there's no suggestion that owning or approving of slavery is fundamentally incompatible with Christian living in this age. Rather, slavery is discussed in the context of a power relationship, and the scriptures have plenty to say about that (mainly variants of "exercise your worldly authority like God exercises his divine authority, while remembering that you are more like your subjects than God.").
Perhaps our culture is naturally distrustful of all power relationships (especially those that feel inherent rather than voluntary), and we as Christians need to be discerning about this?
!!
I think this does highlight an important point though - progressive/relative morality. Despite vast social change from NT (or OT) times to today for the better and worse, some of those changes have been for the better -- the view that slavery in all its forms is abhorrent is not one articulated by Paul, for example. Likewise, we don't marry off 12 year olds any more (and certainly not to older men, which now would land you a lengthy jail term and a spot on the sex offender list), yet this was common in NT times, and you could take the view that Paul endorses it (better not to burn, etc).
And of course we don't see women with short hair/men with long hair as a gender-debasing disgrace, as Paul did.
(Absolute morality is a lot less 'absolute' than we like to think.)
This brings us back again to v14-16, and I'd still be interested to hear MJ's interpretation. Michael?
"Abhorrent". Interesting term. Means "self-evidently vile / evil ", or something like that.
If you'd said "unnecessary", "undesirable", or words to that effect I'd probably be with you. I'm just as happy that slavery as an institution is all but eliminated in the modern western world, and likewise fully support efforts to stamp out various underground forms. But when we move from something the new testament writers were explicitly ambivalent towards to declaring it a universal moral outrage then perhaps our priorities have become confused?
Possibly true. Though one could take the extreme opposite position that morality is merely cultural, at which point complaining about slavery is merely cultural arrogance and we should shut up and let other cultures do their own thing. Heck, if people in our culture want to keep slaves, then that's good for them, no?
So, we're faced with a choice - do we accept some NT norms on morality and gender are antiquated (hair lengths, slavery, women teaching men etc), or do we endorse everything Paul endorses, as he endorsed it (i.e. explicitly or implicitly)?
And here we have the great schizophrenia, and I'd say flat out hypocrisy (when there's pretense, it is hypocrisy), of complementarianism and how we treat the bible. Some issues are absolute litmus tests because we've created sides over them -- you're with us or you're against us, and the very authority of the bible is at stake -- and others we can happily ignore with absolutely no consequence. I mean, how arbitrary is that?
If we want to endorse Paul's views on gender and how that works itself out in practice (teaching, head covering, hair lengths) especially when he's explicitly writing to ensure traditions are followed, then fine, do that.
But the current cherry picking is absolutely absurd.
No I can't see that the Bible teaches that demon possession is an explanation of illness (though many 1st C people most likely saw it that way). The NT doesn't treat it as the cause of illness, though demon possession can manifest itself in symptoms that look very much like some illnesses. Peter Bolt has demonstrated that many people in NT times saw illness and demons as having a common source whilst not being identical.
And yes, I think that demon possession still occurs today but is less visible in our society. It is particularly visible in the gospel accounts because Jesus was bringing the Kingdom of God and Satan rose up to oppose him.
Re: slavery. I think that is a complex topic that can't be addressed here. There are different forms of slavery/bondage and different things that people are enslaved to. My point was just the the texts addressed to slaves are relevant to a lot of people today even though they aren't in exactly the same situation as those slaves addressed originally by Paul.
Les, my answer to your question 'why can't there be a problem with the Bible?' was given above:
...continued...
that means we expect it to be relevant to every age. (I assume by 'problem' you are asking 'why can't the Bible lack relevance for today?')
From a biblical perspective, this is a nonsense. Fundamentally, we are all in an authority relationship with God, where he is in the authority position. And yet this relationship is consistently described using worldly imagery: king to subjects, father to children, master to slaves. Other images are used for God, but usually to stress other aspects of the relationship (eg husband to Israel: love and faithfulness).
Once we accept that we are not, and never will be, on top of the heap, worldly authority relationships become easier to embrace. All worldly authority, whether pure or corrupt, is exercised under God as ultimate authority. Thus, to place ourselves under the authority of another human is not to become less human, but to remain human, since humans are naturally under authority.
But we must also avoid the opposite failing, seen in many non-western cultures, which is to accept human authority as absolute. No worldly authority stands alone; it is all under God and answerable to God, and can be called to account on that basis.
Thoughts?
Intriguingly enough, pioneering criminologist Cesare Beccaria proposed 'perpetual slavery' as a suitably dreadful alternative to capital punishment (It; En.)
Straw man. Please read my post again. Tthe themes of shame/honour are very big in Corinthians, hence my attempt to reflect Paul's concerns.
What is the rationale for what Paul says? I think he is connecting creation concerns with the meaning that 1st C cultural 'language' attached to dress, hair, etc. I don't see how Fee's argument fails to uphold absolute morality - it just holds that the way the creation norm is expressed differs according to the cultural language of Paul's listeners. The churches had 'no other practice' because they lived in that culture.
Re: 1 Timothy 2, yes we have to consider the cultural situation it was said in. That is part of good exegesis. I don't think there is the wholesale rejection of that point in Syd-Ang exegesis as you suggest. Furthermore, the complementarian position is based on grappling with far more of scripture than just this one text!
BTW Luke, I honestly want to understand and obey the Bible. To that end I appreciate your challenges but would find it easier to listen to you if you didn't label us 'hypocrites' every time you write.
I think it's tricky. Even if we restrict ourselves to Paul, there seem to be at least categories of behaviour: good / evil, desirable / undesirable, and cultural. There's stuff that is inherently pleasing or offensive to God. There's stuff that Paul believes "works better" either theologically or practically if done in certain ways, but there's a certain amount of freedom in how you go about it, and there's stuff that's a theological non-issue except in so far as it creates or lessens barriers to hearing the gospel. Some things Paul clearly pins in one or other of these categories. Others we are left to guess. And like all of his contemporaries (definitely including Jesus himself), Paul sometimes exaggerates to make a point.
I think there's a strong temptation for each of us to categorise various instructions according to our own prejudices, whether they be pro- or counter-cultural. I don't think it's easy to avoid this, even when digging deeply to follow the patterns of thought that lead to a particular instruction. Grabbing hold of an instruction we like and declaring it definitive in the face of contrary instruction isn't helpful; nor is deciding that there are possible contrary positions so it's all "cultural" and we can follow the world.
I do think that there's a legitimate "complementarian" position between applying everything at face value and assuming it's all cultural, but the details are not trivial to discern.
Matthew & Andrew, sure, I just think cultural relativism is a very selectively applied tool.
Let's come back to the text. Paul says: "Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.
[...]
Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God."
I think arguing that Paul was implicitly saying "Just do what's appropriate in the culture" is a long bow to draw -- if that was his intention, why doesn't he just say that? Why paint it as tradition from nature itself? I think we have to be very careful of reading things into the text that just aren't there.
I can't see this as anything other than Paul passing on a specific tradition that is to be followed, and is founded in 'the very nature of things' which to me is what you say when you're denying it's 'just a cultural thing'.
Now, 1 Tim 2...
Same deal -- Paul is (in the complementarian reading) passing on specific instruction that he grounds in the nature of the created order (which is problematic in itself, but be that as it may...).
So why do we reject one and not the other?
If we're going to take Paul at face value, and commands on gender grounded in creation must be followed, fine, be consistent!
But to simply paint one as make-or-break for the authority of the bible, and one as 'oh well it's cultural and complicated and mysterious' is, as I've said repeatedly, absurd.
If anyone is saying that, then I agree with your conclusion. More could be said, and it is worth thinking over those texts, their setting, and associated issues more (and I intend to in the near future)... but need to write a sermon now.
Thanks everyone for the discussion.
No.
I disagree. Even with 'perpetual slavery', there is the chance that your owner will, for some reason, release you (ok, that is no longer perpetual) whereas capital punishment is the end - no further chances.
So, in 1 Tim 2:11-15, is Paul basically saying women should be quiet, submissive and pregnant? And he disapproves of "braided hair" too...
Do you agree with me when I ask 'how is this relevant to living a decent moral life today?'