not to be in the way of God through our inflated pride is what we can do for God’s honour. The sweep is immeasurably wide in these two last verses: Paul visualises his Corinthians who are just nearest to him and who have understood him so well and yet have not understood him at all, provided they will take to heart his sharp warning, standing before Jews and Greeks and the Church of God, responsible and capable of responsibility, because they know that they are not to be concerned with seeking their own profit, that which is good for oneself, be it ever so good or so spiritual or so well founded, but that of the many, and that is: their salvation. For Paul it is the same as if he had once more said: God’s cause. In this sense he wants to regard the Corinthians as his successors (11:1). Like the angel of the Lord upon the path of Balaam, the great riddle once more looms across a human path, or even a solution of all riddles. Truly, it was no bad way that these Pauline gnostics took; an abundance of truth and strength was there, but Paul’s petition points the Corinthians to the better, as well as to the worse, way. Both the one and the other must accept the meeting with God at first as the end of their path.
§ 6
The next of the four chapters which still separate us from our goal, chapter 11, stands by itself. It is a remarkable chapter not only in its first part, but also in the second. Reference is made to two details of Christian Church life, respecting which Paul has to give advice or lay down rules, 11:2–16 deals with the veiling of women in the Church meeting. The passage is perhaps one of the most difficult in Paul’s writings. Conditions of the most concrete kind, grounded upon contemporary culture and civilization, and again what are plainly incidental and individual opinions of Paul of the most concrete kind, seem to have got into an inextricable entanglement so far as we are concerned. A question, for the significance of which we at first lack all comprehension, is treated with a fullness of detail which is almost a matter for astonishment and according to a method which, for us, is quite unconvincing. We need not be surprised that a modern exegete, rejoicing in the considerable contemporary data which he assembles here in a way deserving of our gratitude, eventually groans: “The guiding ideas of 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
