1Co11.2-16. Instincts. The Cover of Shame.

[donfriesen1]

[QUOTE=Esaias;1618805]

Paul taught women ought to be covered, and men uncovered, when praying or prophesying. Simple.

When Paul is seen as commanding the veil in v5 as a spiritual cover that all should keep, it creates problems because the whole of scripture fails to present this as a view to be held. For this reason Paul should be seen addressing two issues in 1Co11: A) Christian compliance with secular cultural norms. B) Spiritual compliance with expected (not commanded) spiritual symbols. (What causes great confusion in this regard is the coincidence that they both regard the head.) When so done it removes conflicting thoughts (if he commands a veil in v5 - he really does refer to a veil in v5 - it conflicts with v15 where it could be said that God commands long uncut hair for the veil. Do you really want to hold a view with such conflicts? See my commentary for more detail not given here). I'd rather have a view of 1Co11 which doesn't present such conflicts. Hence, the instincts view. It reconciles the conflicts with its explanations. Any who persist in views that God commands either veil or long hair must live with the holes of these conflicts.

Come into the warm waters of the instincts view for a comfortable swim - no icebergs. But I may have got bias-blindness. Open my eyes and give me sight. Point out the holes/icebergs of the instincts view. While you're at it, if you hold to the uncut long view which Esaias doesn't, fill the 11 holes of uncut long, which I've pointed out it contains.

The rest is just people's attempts to not do what the apostle said to do. Interestingly, nobody had a problem with this until around the 20th century.

Do we now rely more on history than scripture for evidence to support our views? History is wonderful and needs to be kept in mind, but our main focus should be on interpretation of the whole Word on any given subject. The veil as a command does not have 'whole scripture' as a foundation. Surely you must agree.

What is seen in scripture of the veil must be see from a cultural/custom context to make most sense.