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Originally Posted by coksiw
The text is clear as water to me: uncut hair and covered for a woman, and short and uncovered for a man.
The question here is how you apply it. Is the "the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head" the goal, then making the headcovering a cultural implementation of a symbol of being under authority, or is it for all ages regardless of the cultural meaning of a headcovering?
I believe the first. The headcovering was an implementation or cultural expression of being under a husband, and submissive to him during worship. That whatever you did publicly in the congregation, prophesying or praying, was under the approval of the husband. Praying or prophesying without the headcovering, was an cultural expression of being an independent woman, that does thing publicly with or without the husband approval. My argument goes in line with the purpose of it explained in that verse: a token of being under authority.
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However, I see also good points in those that defend the opposite: that the headcovering is not cultural but still applicable to us in our culture.
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Reasons why the headcovering is NOT a localised temporal cultural expression, but instead is for all women in all cultures:
1. Paul does not address any cultural practice of headcovering, but instead appeals to purely
theological, and
natural, reasons. If any one of the reasons applies, then the command applies. The reasons are:
- The man is the glory and image of God, and the woman is the glory of the man. Since that is still true today, for all humans, it follows that the man ought not to cover his head and the woman ought to cover hers.
- The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. This speaks of Adam and Eve's creation, and demanded a symbolic acknowledgement via headcovering 4000+ years after Adam and Eve. There is no reason to think the next 2000 years did away with the need for the prescribed symbolic acknowledgement of an historical fact that has not changed.
- The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. Again, this refers to Adam and Eve 4000+ years prior to the prescribed apostolic requirement to signify that creation fact via headcovering, and nothing about that creation fact has changed in the last 2000 years. Therefore the apostolic command is still valid, as given.
- The angels are given as a reason for a woman to cover her head. Regardless what anyone thinks that means, one thing is certain: Angels still exist. Therefore, the need for a woman to cover her head still exists.
- Nature taught in Paul's day that it is comely for a woman to have long hair and unseemly for a man to have such. This is given as yet another reason for the woman to be covered (and the man to be uncovered). Has nature changed recently? If not, then since the reason or proof still stands, the requirement still stands.
Now, all these are distinct reasons for the Christian woman's headcovering. If any one of them still prevails, is still in existence, still applies, is still in force, then the requirement for a Christian woman to cover her head while praying or prophesying still prevails, is still in existence, still applies, and is still in force.
2. There was no "cultural headcovering" at that time. Jewish women were covered during worship, Roman women were usually but not always covered, Greek women were usually but not always uncovered during worship. There was
no standard practice throughout the Ancient Near East, Greek society, or the Roman Empire.
3. Paul gives reasons for a woman to be covered,
and for a man to be uncovered. We often forget 50% of the teaching here, that applies to men, and not women only. The practice Paul is commanding is not that women need symbol of submission to their husband, but that both men and women need to signify their submission to God's Divine Order.
4. Attempting to substitute "wedding rings" as many do today
fails. Wedding rings were common in Romanised society, yet Paul makes no reference to them. Wedding rings on both a man and woman do not display the DISTINCTION demanded by Paul's teaching. Wedding rings say nothing whatsoever symbolically about headship, covering (atonement), and the order of Creation and Divinely established authority, the distinctions between man's glory and God's, or any of the other significations Paul gives to the uncovered/covered head.
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Nowadays, if you are an unbeliever, and you see a woman with headcovering on the street, you don't associate it with a conservative idea of woman expressing her voluntary submission to her house order, but instead you associate it with some "strange religion". It doesn't carry the same meaning it had back then.
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Sorry, that is simply not true. My wife and daughters, no matter where they go, are assumed to be conservative Christians because of their headcoverings. They have all learned directly by experience that people, especially men, treat them differently when they are wearing headcoverings than when they are out and about without one. Even sinners who are obviously felons and dope heads and bikers and gang bangers change their behaviour around them and suddenly say "ma'am" and apologise profusely if any foul language escapes their lips, ESPECIALLY if it involves profaning the name of the Lord. Every single one of them has assumed they are either Pentecostal or at worst Mennonite.
The wedding ring, often claimed as todays substitute for the headcovering, signifies no such thing and in fact is generally ignored by the general population. My wife found this out (prior to her being convinced about headcoverings) when we still wore wedding rings many many years ago. She came home one day and was upset, and told me as she was out and about running errands she had several men hit on her, in spite of her rather visible wedding band. She even pointed her ring out to one of them and they were like "Ok, nice ring, so uh when are you gonna have a date with me?" They didn't care.
The headcovering is never said by Paul to be necessary for the outside culture to know anything about the woman, her marriage, relationship with her husband, or even her religion. The reason all have to do with a visible demonstration IN THE CHURCH CULTURE of the divine order. Paul says "What have I to do to judge them that are without?" While the headcovering can be a witness to the outsiders, that is really not its purpose.
As for "not carrying the same meaning it did back then" that is a rather myopic modern western view. The majority of professing Christians, including the majority of Oneness Pentecostals worldwide, believe in headcovering. Only in America and western Europe has the headcovering been wholly abandoned and forgotten and thought of as some strange thing, and that only in the last 100 years. It was feminism and "women's equality" and modernistic liberalism which promoted the new fangled idea that the Christian woman's headcovering was some archaic outmoded cultural artifact of the dusty past.
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