A few observations whilst we frame our questions

Paul makes an interesting move after his blunt statement in 1 Corinthians 11:10, "That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels." He seems concerned to preclude a patriarchal overinterpretation of his admonition and qualifies it by adding, "Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God."

Observe:

•If all things are from God, then both man and woman are from God. In other words, woman is not subsidiarily derived from the man and related to God only through the man (or, by extension, her husband). If she is as immediately derived from God as is the man, then she enjoys all the privileges of access to God that he does.

•While the creation order of woman from man (1 Corinthians 11:8-9; Genesis 2:21-22) necessarily means that the man is the head of the woman and therefore the husband is head/authority over his wife, the subsequent providential order must be given equal weight. After Adam and Eve's creations, every man thence was born of a woman. While we must say that woman is derivative of man, we must also say that man is derivative of woman. Accordingly, we ought not get too carried away by considering only the creation order and ought also recognize the mutual derivation and interdependence of man and woman.

•The Apostle himself wants to guard against excessive emphasis and prescriptions in gender relationships.

From which we can conclude, at the very least: honor your mother.

Another thing I don't know

I've been reading David Bentley Hart's translation of The New Testament. He translates 1 Corinthians 11:10 as "Therefore a woman ought to keep ward upon her head on account of the angels."

To this he appends a lengthy footnote which he begins with "No one knows what this verse means."

Thoughts (not answers) regarding the questions you should be asking

1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is difficult to translate, not least because New Testament Greek does not employ distinct terms for "husband" and "wife" as we currently and most commonly use those terms  (i.e. as referents to the male and female partners in a marital relationship). However, given 1 Corinthians 11:3 ("But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God."), I believe it is wisest to assume that Paul's discussion of gender relationships in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is directly applicable to a husband and his wife, rather than to male/female relationships in general.

That being so, one immediate application of 1 Corinthians 11:14 is that married men should cut their hair short. This has been a major concession for me personally, since my wavy flowing locks were once the envy of many a man and/or woman. But these are the sacrifices one makes for rigid Biblicism and the decision to take a wife.

When Paul says "Judge for yourselves" and "Does not nature itself teach you…?" (1 Corinthians 11:13, 14), he seems to be appealing to our intuitions about these things. That attitude can be kind of crazy-making when we're not entirely sure whether long hair is the same thing as having one's head covered and, more especially, when we're having trouble following the thread of his argument. Nonetheless, I believe he's on to something, especially when it comes to long hair on men. Men with long hair (often, not always, please don't anger-tweet at me) appear beautiful. There's something unseemly about a man who's more attractive than his wife. 

Case in point: it's a little weird that Elvis was prettier than Ann-Margaret. Which is just a fact.

Thus, it makes sense to me that a man must subordinate his own glory in order to highlight his wife's physical glory. Accordingly, I think Paul is on to something when he writes, "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?" (1 Corinthians 11:14-15) Male vanity is disgraceful, and doubly so when a man is vain about his looks. Nature itself teaches us that a man should set aside preening when he gets married and instead focus on making his wife's glory prominent.

How should he do that? I only have questions, not answers.

The questions you should be asking

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.

(1 Corinthians 11:7-12, ESV)

So here's the 100% most important question for gender relations today: what does it mean that woman is the glory of man?

I don't know, but I wish I did. I also, quite humbly, suggest that (nearly) anyone who claims he does know is very likely driven by an agenda which has made him unable to ask, or answer, the question in any genuine sense. In what follows, I will attempt to establish what we know and what we do not know in order to point out the questions which we should be asking.

Exegetically, the answer to our question must be related to 1 Corinthians 11:3: "But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God." (ESV) The meaning of the term "kefale" ("head") in 1 Corinthians 11 has been much debated over the last several decades, but I believe Wayne Grudem has demonstrated conclusively (in Appendix 1 of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) that it denotes a position of leadership and authority.

An observation: the "headships" of 1 Corinthians 11:3 are not presented as mutually exclusive, but overlapping; i.e. the man whose head is Christ is also under the headship of God (the Father).
[In Pauline usage, "God" is frequently shorthand for "God the Father, first Person of the Trinity," especially when used in conjunction with "Christ" or "Lord," terms which he uses to refer to the second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be the Christ. He uses these terms in these ways frequently, but not necessarily always.]
Otherwise, it would make little sense to say that man is the image of God, rather than the image of Christ. Woman is also the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), which means that Paul considers "glory" to be distinct from "image" (which sentence I carefully constructed to allow for the possibility that "glory" and "image" are related in a manner which I cannot currently grasp). Man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man, and Christ is the glory of God. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14, NKJV)

The Father's glory is made known in his Son, Jesus Christ. It would follow, then, that the husband's glory is made known in his wife. How should the husband so organize his life and his family's life that his wife makes his glory known to the world?

What does "glory" even mean when applied to fallen human beings? What glory does a miserable and sinful man have, and how is that conveyed in and through his wife?

Over the years, I have come to realize that the theophanies (appearances of God) of the Old Testament are appearances of the Second Person of the Trinity and not the First. (I'm open to being proven wrong on this point, but I'm pretty confident that God the Father did not appear, in himself, but instead made himself known during the Old Covenant era through the Son and the Holy Spirit.) In both the Old and New Testaments, then, God the Father does not make himself known directly, but rather puts his Son front and center, making the Son the focus of his worshipers' attention and letting himself be manifested entirely in his Son.

If the analogy is
God the Father : Christ :: the husband : the wife,
then should not the husband make himself entirely known through his wife? How would that even work?

I'll be honest: I am entirely satisfied with the "traditional" understandings of Genesis 1-3, 1 Corinthians 14, and 1 Timothy 2-3, but I'm not satisfied with "traditional" understandings of male/female and husband/wife relationships. I believe that's because there's a set of questions which emerge from 1 Corinthians 11 which we have not yet answered.

Let's start asking the right questions. The answers may be very illuminating.

An example of the wrong question

Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? 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. (1 Corinthians 11:2-16, ESV)

In my travels through presbyterian and reformed Churches, the question almost everyone asks about this text is, "Should women wear head coverings in worship?" Of course, this is the entirely wrong question to ask about one of the Bible's most important texts for gender relationships. (I'm not kidding: I put it right up there with Genesis 1, 2 and 3.) Since you asked so nicely, I'll explain why it's the wrong question.

An opening note: it's not clear whether the "head covering" in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is the woman's hair, a piece of cloth, or some other type of headgear (such as a lovely Easter bonnet, about which I could write a sonnet). It's even less clear whether this injunction applies to all women or only those of the married variety. These issues get even murkier in the original Greek (which is the case more often than you may think). However, that's not really much of a problem in practice, as we shall see.

Paul tells us the woman is to cover her hair while praying and prophesying, which are both speech acts. This is peculiar because later in the same letter he tells us that women are to remain silent in the Churches (1 Corinthians 14:33-34). Here we have a conundrum: why would the Apostle tell women how they should dress when they are doing something he has barred them from doing? Not to put too fine a point on it, he might as well require men to wear neckties when visiting bordellos.

In the broader context of 1 Corinthians, Paul identifies prophecy as a speech act directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, without any mediation by the speaker him/herself: that is, the speaker opens her/his mouth and out come the Spirit's (not his/her) words (1 Corinthians 14:1-5). The Spirit may also give prayer in this manner (1 Corinthians 14:14-17). Thus, when he joins "praying and prophesying" (1 Corinthians 11:4-5), he has in mind these sorts of unmediated, Spirit-gifted speech acts.

These were different in nature from the teaching (learning's necessary companion) Paul has in mind in 1 Corinthians 14:33-34. Teaching is the result of study and preparation: while Christian teaching assumes the Spirit's illumination of the Bible, the teacher's words are chosen and formulated into speech by the teacher her/himself. Paul can forbid women to teach at the same time he expects the Spirit to speak through them because the two speech acts are very different in origin and performance.

This means that the head covering regulations Paul sets out in 1 Corinthians 11 apply only in worship contexts in which one expects the Holy Spirit to start speaking through male and female Christians without warning or preparation. Since we live in a time during which the Spirit does not act in this way, we (and by "we," I really mean "Christian women") don't need to ask, "Should women wear head coverings in worship?" The point is moot.

[The above argument assumes the cessationist view of confessional presbyterianism. For brevity's sake, I will not attempt to defend that position here. I realize this may limit my audience to presbyterians, but I can live with that.]

It seems to me there's a hermeneutical problem which has led many to miss the obvious point that 1 Corinthians 11's discussion of head coverings is irrelevant to the contemporary Church: we often go to the Bible to find rules. For the serious Christian, it's awfully difficult to find a rule in the New Testament and not attempt to implement it. In this case, that rules-oriented hermeneutic (philosophy of interpretation) has led many to miss Paul's much more interesting teaching on gender relations and the questions it raises.

You're probably asking the wrong questions

While I was quietly minding my own business, controversy about Christian gender roles and relationships began heating up and, if the social medias are any indication, has reached a rapid boil. I am old enough to remember when the term "complementarian" was created in order to put a warm and gentle face on what was widely considered an outdated and sexist (even if Biblical) understanding of the husband-wife relationship. Now it appears "complementarian" has become a synonym for "male chauvinist pig-dog" and is indistinguishable from the irredeemable "patriarch."

(By the way, this is why I never label myself with terms created by evangelicalism or the broader culture. Their meanings tend to drift without warning while the phrase "Westminster Standards" remains entirely stable, and "presbyterian" mostly so.)

As I've tried to get up to speed on why so many pairs of undies are bunching up, I've been surprised to see that discussions are centered around the same old Biblical texts such as Genesis 3:16, 1 Timothy 2 -3 and Ephesians 5. Some might think me cocky, but I honestly believe there's not much more to be discovered in these texts: they say what they say and have been pretty well exegeted; while some misogynist wingnuts may apply them improperly, the spiritually and mentally stable know how to answer those misapplications.

To be clear, I'm surprised not because a goodly number of Christian folk are generally dissatisfied with common understandings and applications of Biblical principles of gender and role relationships. With them, I feel very strongly that something is missing. What surprises me is that so many are asking the same old questions and expecting different answers.

To be even more clear, I don't have answers. But I do have questions, questions which I am shocked to find that very few are asking but which are manifestly apparent from even the most cursory reading of 1 Corinthians 11.

OPC FG XXXI, 5

As you are no doubt aware, chapter XXXI, 5 of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's Form of Government clearly states that local congregations, and not presbyteries nor the General Assembly, have control over their own local properties. It's there because, as I hope you're aware, when the congregations which would become the OPC seceded from the old Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (often because their pastors had come under Church discipline for not affirming theological liberalism), the national denomination asserted ownership of their buildings and property. Often these congregations were sued in the civil courts; shockingly, the local congregation won control of their property only once, even though in every case the properties had been bought and paid for by the local members, not the national denomination.

This sad history is playing itself out again as the "mainline" denominations take another decisive step away from the historic Christian faith. (In the twentieth century, they denied essential Christian doctrine; in the twenty-first, essential Christian ethics. Since the Church has historically been defined first by doctrine and second by ethics, one wonders what of "Christian" is left to these "churches.") As homosexual marriage and ordination are institutionalized, another wave of congregations is seceding and is losing their properties. This week's Research on Religion podcast focuses on a law review article by Michael McConnell and Luke Goodrich, "On Resolving Church Property Disputes," which suggests ways in which civil courts can take a genuinely neutral approach to litigants in these cases. OPC history is not mentioned, but the Form of Government of our sister Church, the Presbyterian Church in America, does get a shout-out.

Of course, the very fact national denominations are taking local congregations to the civil courts is a manifest sign of their failure as Churches (1 Corinthians 6:1-8). This grasping after the things of this world is also what makes me laugh through my tears whenever a liberal protestant postures her or his communion as being much nicer than my own

hide-bound, reactionary fellowship.

Love Hopes All Things

(The below was delivered to the Rocky Mountain Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of America at its stated meeting in the building of Skyview Presbyterian Church on January 28, 2016, at which I represented the OPC's Presbytery of the Dakotas as a fraternal delegate.)

“Love hopes all things,” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:7. When love is directed toward God, that hope is obviously eschatological: love hopes that one day we will see our Lord face to face and know fully even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). But what is that hope when love is directed toward other persons? How about when love is directed toward the most unlovely of persons, other presbyters?

In that case as well, our hope must be eschatological. We may be quick to grant the salvation and piety of presbyterian brothers with whom we disagree, but slow to recognize that they may also act against their baser instincts and, with us, strive for the good of the Church and the souls of fellow believers. That slowness and distrust, of course, is cynicism, and whatever aid cynicism may be in surviving the cruelties of a fallen world, it is hope’s opposite. Cynicism bears nothing, believes nothing, hopes nothing, endures nothing. Cynicism presumes more than it can ever know while hope rests in the Lord’s perfect knowledge, as we read in Psalm 131.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me. 

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me. 

O Israel, hope in the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore. 

Love is not arrogant. Love does not know the hearts and minds, the innermost thoughts, of others. Love knows the heart is a mystery and so hopes that, even in a presbytery, common cause can be made with one’s brothers. Cynicism is arrogant: it knows the future and thus the futility of reaching out to those who have repeatedly proven their recalcitrance. Love knows the limits of its knowledge, and so hopes that presbyterians can work together.

Hope is always eschatological because it believes that the Christian love which will be manifest at the end may be realized now.

Such hope has been manifested in the OPC’s Presbytery of the Dakotas. At our September meeting, we erected two special committees. One is working to provide counsel to the Churches as to how to survive and prosper in the legal environments of the five states within our Regional Church after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. This has been a marvelous opportunity to bear each other’s burdens and receive counsel made more wise by collaboration. The other committee is proposing a revised set of bylaws which, Lord willing, will help institute a more presbyterian practice in a Regional Church still struggling with independency, fundamentalism, and congregationalism, even nearly 80 years after our denomination’s founding.

In light of our presbytery’s many failings, especially in its failure to discharge commonplace presbyterian duties to the Churches under its supervision, I feel compelled to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of my brothers who use the PCA as whipping boy and bête noir. Rather than seek to reform ourselves according to Biblical principle, we congratulate ourselves for not being as bad as a PCA in which we imagine liturgical aberration and theological innovation more prevalent than the Trinity Hymnal. We have been censorious and uncharitable, and for this I offer my most sincere apologies.

With that apology I offer another hope, perhaps the most audacious hope which presbyterian love can hold. I hope your Churches will regard each other as sisters, and your elders look to elders in other Churches as brothers. I hope we will soon see a new day of interdenominational cooperation, but first must come intra-denominational charity, coordination, and cooperation. Brothers, hold regular pulpit exchanges and joint worship services. Encourage the deacons of the various Churches to cooperate in shared mercy ministries. On behalf of my own session, I issue a standing invitation for a pulpit exchange to all your sessions, as a first step to the inevitable: a joining of the OPC and PCA. Furthermore, I invite you to send your young people to our summer Bible camp, a very successful ecumenical venture between our Presbytery of the Dakotas and the PCA’s Siouxlands Presbytery within our overlapping jurisdictions in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Love hopes all things, but love need not be naïve. Things changed for us reactionary social conservatives last summer, and you surely are wondering when a presidential administration (or its philosophically similar successor) which sued a Lutheran school over its employment practices will begin using the full force of the law to make things uncomfortable for Churches without “evolved” views on human sexuality. Our congregations, like most of yours, are small. Most of ours, as do most of yours, get by on the thinnest of financial margins. What congregations in our Regional Churches could survive a lawsuit over a refusal to marry a same- sex couple? A former member of your presbytery, Phil Strong, who is now in my presbytery, remarked to me last summer that “doing Church” the way the PCA and OPC have for years now is a luxury we may no longer be able to afford. We need to bear one another’s burdens: we must either fight together, or hang separately.

Love hopes all things. It even hopes presbyterians will learn to love one another in word and deed before the last day, when hope will pass away, along with faith, and love will abide forever.

Cutting the Eucharistic knot (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: p. 1416, vol. 2)

Presbyterians occasionally mock the doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation because a physical presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper seems to them inherently ridiculous, if not offensive to reason. It's certainly offensive to my reason, but I have some sympathy with Lutherans and Romanists who struggle to understand how Christ can really and actually be present if he is not physically present. As the literature on the Lord's Supper over the millenia amply demonstrates, determining the precise relationship between the materials of the bread and cup and the physical body of Christ is where many Christians and theological traditions get stuck.

Alexander the Great, so they say, took a non-linear approach to loosing the Gordian Knot, which was impossible to untie: he cut it in half. In a passage explaining why the administration of the Lord's Supper must be accompanied by the preaching of the Word, John Calvin discusses an error which arose because this did not happen.

[T]hey did not observe that those promises by which consecration is accomplished are directed not to the elements themselves but to those who receive them. Certainly Christ does not say to the bread that it shall become his body, but he commands his disciples to eat and promises them participation in his body and blood. Paul's teaching takes the same form, that the promises are offered to believers along with the bread and the cup.

Attentive listening to, and exegesis of, the words of institution found in the Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11 will keep us from focusing on what happens to the elements of the Supper: instead, they direct our attention to its recipients. Since they receive the sacraments by faith, and faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, we begin to see the Spirit is the agent who unites us to Christ.

Proper exegesis, Calvin suggests, offers the Romanist or Lutheran the freedom to step outside his or her dilemma and approach the sacramental knot in a non-linear and more fruitful manner.

The day of God

In 2 Peter 3:12, Peter refers to the moment of eschatological judgment as "the day of God," which is a tad unusual since it is usually called in Scripture "the day of the Lord." This is because it will be marked by the return of Christ the Lord in glory, and will be the occasion on which he judges the quick living and the dead. In the New Testament, "God" most often refers to the Father, and "the Lord" to the Son; "the day of the Lord" belongs to the Son and thus is the eschatological Lord's Day.

Although Calvin doesn't give the reference, I think he explains the anomalous term rightly when he says Peter is thinking of 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and the fact that the Son, when he has won the final victory over all his enemies, will "deliver the kingdom to God the Father" (1 Cor 15:24). In other words, what begins as the day of the Lord will conclude as the day of God.

Harold Camping is a clever man

Harold Camping has been deservedly subject to ridicule because May 21, much like May 20 and May 22, was notably free from apocalypse. Sometimes, the best way to deal with heretics isn't to argue with them from Scripture, but instead to giggle at their arguments supposedly taken from Scripture. Nonetheless, I give the man credit for how he explained away this present age's stubborn refusal to come to an end: the judgment was "spiritual."

This explanation has some plausibility because most people, including most Christians, tend to think "spiritual" = "having nothing to do with real life." Hence, Christians can be spiritual (i.e., religiously-minded) without having to give God ten percent of their money or one-seventh of their time because time and money are real, and God is spiritual. Contrast that common gnostic attitude, however you see it manifested, with the Apostle Paul's insistence in 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 5 that the spiritual/resurrection body is very much corporeal.

Camping, obviously, is trying to dodge accountability. Still, it's a clever, even an insightful, dodge.

Dog bites man

Pa Curmudgeon e-mailed me this New York Times article on the difficulty single pastors find in receiving a call in evangelical circles, thinking, no doubt, of my own experiences when a recent seminary graduate so, so long ago. Back then, I not only experienced the soft discrimination discussed in this piece, but actually lost a potential call due to being single. The elders of an OP Church were inclined to recommend me to their congregation, but decided not to because several members wrongly thought 1 Timothy 3:2 barred me and they didn't want to start a new pastorate with a fight.

If the quotes in this article properly represent Al Mohler's position, he's either ignorant or willfully ignorant. Of course evangelicals discriminate against single people in general and single pastors in particular. This prejudice is often more annoying than substantial, but is nonetheless real. Married Christians who would deny this are an awful lot like white people who don't think race prejudice still exists in America.

My advice to unmarried pastoral candidates: get over it. More precisely, why are you seeking the same sort of positions as your espoused and family-encumbered brethren? Paul, the patron saint of single pastors, wrote "I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is." (1 Cor 7:26) Singleness provides the opportunity to enter into the present distress and take risks for the sake of the Gospel and Christ's Church. Because I was single, I was able to take a relatively risky call which four married men before me had declined. Why would the Lord keep a man single unless he wanted him to take a chance for Jesus, a chance which a man who has to provide for a family really should not?

Ministers of Word and sacrament are in particular called to imitate and participate in Christ's sufferings (Colossians 1:24-27). Ironically, the discrimination into which Christians so easily fall can be a door opening to the privilege of filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body; that is, the Church.

The structure of 1 Corinthians 8-10

Whilst preaching on 1 Corinthians 8, I had occasion to comment on the unusual way in which the Apostle Paul deals with the sin of idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8-10. I wrote on the implications of his argument's structure in the October 2002 issue of New Horizons in an essay titled "On Charity."

Translating the end of 1 Corinthians 7

My most recent post was written a number of years ago as an appendix to a larger work on the emancipation of minors. I posted it here because I'm preaching 1 Corinthians 7:31-40 this coming Sunday evening (April 25, 2010, in case my biographers were wondering). Thus, I should say that my preferred English version for the whole of 1 Corinthians 7:25-40 is the New International Version because the translators clearly favor the exegetical view I set forth in said most recent post (which, for the sake of those biographers, I note is heavily influenced by Gordon Fee's New International Commentary), although it thinks the virgin is getting too old. Of even greater interest is that the NIV consistently translates "virgin" as "virgin," unlike any other modern translation I can find. (They do paraphrase "his" as "engaged," but that's because they're trying to make an obscure meaning clear). So, for once, the NIV is the most literal translation available in English.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, all you "essentially literal" versions.

The Relevance of 1 Corinthians 7:36-38 to Requiring a Woman to Always Be Under Visible Male Headship

For 1 Corinthians 7:36-38, the New American Standard Bible has

But if any man thinks that he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter, if she is past her youth, and if it must be so, let him do what he wishes, he does not sin; let her marry. But he who stands firm in his heart, being under no constraint, but has authority over his own will, and has decided this in his own heart, to keep his own virgin daughter, he will do well. So then both he who gives his own virgin daughter in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage will do better.

It is not uncommon to see this passage cited by those who wish to argue a woman ought never live independently, under her own authority, but must always be under the headship of a husband or a father.

Unfortunately, the NASB translation here is probably not the best. Those familiar with its presentation style know italicized words have been inserted into the text to “smooth it out.” The word “daughter” does not appear in 1 Corinthians 7:36-38, and so one need not necessarily conclude the “man” under discussion is the virgin’s father. Consequently, the Apostle Paul may very well not be discussing the question of when to give one’s daughter in marriage.1 Instead, he is probably addressing the situation of a man who is deciding whether to marry the woman to whom he is engaged.

An extremely literal rendering of the first half of verse 36 would read, “But if someone thinks he is behaving indecently concerning his virgin, if hyperakmos....” Hyperakmos is a compound word, an adjective found only here in all of ancient literature. Grammatically, it could be describing either the man or his virgin. Akme refers to the highest point of something, and in reference to women often meant sexual maturity. Hyper has either a temporal (“beyond”) or an intensive meaning (“exceedingly”). Thus, if this passage was addressed to a father, hyperakmos would be describing his daughter as “getting along in years.” If it were describing a young man contemplating marriage, it would mean “having strong passion.”

The latter understanding is favored by the phrase at the end of verse 36, “Let them marry.” Though the NASB has the singular “Let her marry,” this option has weak support in the Greek manuscripts. The “father interpretation” leans almost entirely on the verb gamizo in verse 38, which elsewhere in the New Testament means “to give in marriage,” as distinguished from gameo, “to marry.” In classical Greek, -izo and -eo verbs were distinctly either transitive or intransitive. By Paul’s day, however, that distinction had broken down, and gameo and gamizo may very well have been synonyms for “to marry.”

The question then becomes which of the two scenarios (father allowing his daughter to marry or a man contemplating marrying his fiancee) Paul was most likely to address. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is speaking to married and single persons about their marriages and whether they should marry. Leaving aside the verses we are examining, he throughout addresses the actual or prospective husbands and wives directly, always assuming they are immediately responsible for their decisions and conduct. He also very strongly states that those with strong sexual desire ought to marry (1 Cor 7:1-9). Therefore, it would be very strange for him to begin addressing the fathers of virgins when he has previously only addressed the parties to be married themselves. Moreover, he would be contradicting his previous statement in 1 Corinthians 7:9 if he were to say a father has the right to deny marriage to his daughter when she desires to marry and has reached sexual maturity.

Therefore, the English Standard Version seems to have the better translation of 1 Corinthians 7:36-38.

If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes; let them marry- it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

If the English Standard Version is correct, then 1 Corinthians 7:36-38 has nothing to say about the headship of fathers over daughters. Even were one to prefer the NASB translation, our text proves only that a woman is under her father’s authority until she marries. It does not prove marriage is the only way by which she may leave her father’s authority.

Given that the evidence for the NASB translation is less than compelling, one cannot from this one text build a conclusive argument that a woman must always be under the headship of either a father or a husband. As no other text or compilation of texts proves the case, one must ultimately conclude Scripture does not require that position.

The NT reads the OT

As I work through the Proverbs, commentators are quick to note that the eschatological expectations of the Jews before the time of Christ are not well understood, and that we ought not read the New Testament expectations of life after death into the Old Testament. Reading Hebrews and 1 Corinthians, however, it seems to me the New Testament reads its expectations of life after death out of the Old Testament.

On Charity

While preaching through 1 Corinthians, I was struck by chapters eight through ten. There, the Apostle Paul addresses idolatry. Apparently, some in the Corinthian Church had taken to attending feasts to the idols in their temples; that is, they were participating in pagan worship services. They had somehow convinced themselves that since idols were not really gods, their worship services were meaningless; thus; a Christian could attend without compromising his confession (1 Corinthians 8:4-8). Indeed, such attendance was proof of Christian maturity, since it showed one fully grasped the doctrine of monotheism and accordingly had no fear of false gods. Those who went to the idol feasts were, in their own estimation, the strong, and those who stayed away the weak.
Unsurprisingly, Paul condemns this thinking most vigorously. After all, the Second Commandment says “You shall not make for yourself a carved image- any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” (Exodus 20:4-5) There’s no exception clause in the Second Commandment. It doesn’t go on to say “But feel free to bow down to carved images as long as you maintain a mental reservation noting idols aren’t really gods at all, but only pieces of carved rock.” Worse still, Paul adds, idol feasts are in fact demon sacraments (1 Corinthians 10:14-21). As the Lord Supper Spiritually (that is, by the work of the Holy Spirit) joins us to Christ, so idol feasts spiritually unite one with demons. Participation in idol feasts is essentially a denial of one’s Christian confession: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons: you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.” (1 Corinthians 10:21)
But what fascinates me is how Paul waits until chapter ten to make this point. He begins his condemnation of the Corinthian practice in chapter eight by showing how the “strong,” who can make the mental reservations which permit them to attend the idol feasts, lead the “weak,” who can’t, into sincerely worshipping a false god. In fact, if all we had to go on was 1 Corinthians 8, we might well conclude participation in idol feasts contains no inherent sin, and is to be avoided only when it might compromise a brother’s conscience.
Our doctrine is clear: idol worship is a terrible sin. But Paul doesn’t begin with doctrine. He begins with charity. He exhorts the Corinthians to love their brothers by refraining from idol feasts in chapter eight. In chapter nine he defends his apostolic authority, not to instruct them on the Second Commandment, but to command them to forsake their sin of pride. The “strong” Corinthians are proud of their conduct only because they do not love their brethren more than themselves. Paul’s logic: What’s the point of teaching the Corinthians right doctrine if they’re not seeking to apply what they already know with love? Knowledge without love is worse than useless; it can kill the weaker brother, for whom Christ died (1 Corinthians 8:11). “We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)
We Orthodox Presbyterians are very careful about our doctrine, and are rightfully wary of those who pit love against doctrine. Indeed, the liberals in the old Presbyterian Church U.S.A. rallied under the banner of “love” so they could uncharitably persecute the orthodox in their midst. Paul himself insisted on correcting the doctrinal error of the “strong” Corinthians who thought idol feasts proof of their great knowledge. Still, we err whenever we think right doctrine sufficient in itself. Our doctrine, however right it may be, is worse than useless if not clothed in love. Love, not doctrine, is the chief Christian virtue, and love is always an identifying characteristic of the true Church. When we begin with love for our brethren, our knowledge will not puff up, but edify. Love enables us to use our right doctrine for the good of our brethren, in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnation of truth, who first loved us, and who will always love us.
“Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)