Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ 1 Corinthians

[Megatron]

1Cor11:7 A man ought not to cover his head,b since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

Christians so considering Christianity doesn't teach this anymore and instead teaches all humans are made in god's image, can we expect you all to go back to your churches and correct this error?

Will you be reminding women that they in fact were not made in god's image? Rather made for the service and glory of man?

[jimwalton]

Genesis 1.26: "Let us make humanity in our image." *'Adam* is a Hebrew word meaning "human." It's a category, not a personal name. Then the text specifies in 1.27 that this humanity was characterized by sexual differentiation: a male *adam* and a female *adam*. They both bear the divine image.

Now, you should also understand that the "imageness" of humans to God in Genesis 1 is that they rule (Gn. 1.26, 28; also Ps. 8.3-8). They serve as God's vice-presidents, so to speak, taking care of the earth as God would. Together (the collective human species) they have the responsibility of seeing to the welfare of the planet as they use it for their benefit.

Now let's move on to 1 Cor. 11.7. Respectable women in Greek and Roman culture wore veils in public signaling that they were married. Sarah Ruden, expert in the culture, said it "was the flag of female virtue, status, and security." But society was changing, and the use of the veil was a matter of controversy in a cosmopolitan city like Corinth. Some in the church were throwing them away, saying that God had made them as equals (which was true). Others were claiming that going veil-less made them look like hookers to the outside world, and the church needed to be circumspect about such things.

Ruden continues: "I think Paul’s rule aimed toward an outrageous equality. All Christian women were to cover their heads in church, without distinction of beauty, wealth, respectability—or of privilege so great as to allow toying with traditional appearances. The most hurtful thing about bareheaded, gorgeously coiffed wives might not have been their frivolity but rather their thoughtless flaunting of styles that meant degradation to some of their sisters—as if a suburban matron attended an inner-city mission church in hip boots, a miniskirt, and a blond wig. Perhaps the new decree made independent women of uncertain status, or even slave women, honorary wives in this setting. If the women complied—and later church tradition suggests they did—you could have looked at a congregation and not necessarily been able to tell who was an honored wife and mother and who had been forced, or maybe was still being forced, to service 20-30 men a day. This had never happened in any public gathering before.

"This was Paul’s ingenious combination of common sense and radical defiance for dealing with a very touchy set of issues. Polytheistic literature gives us a context of how disturbing, how distracting to men and stigmatizing to women, the lack of a veil could be. This context supports the idea that Paul was being protective rather than chauvinistic."

In verse 7 specifically, Paul says "A man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God." The image is something in which men were created, being common to all, and continuing after sin. The "glory" part refers back to the rulership/sovereignty thing I talked about in Genesis: humanity was God's co-rulers.

"...but the woman is the glory of man." Look back to Genesis 2.23: "This is now bone of bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." The point of this text in Genesis is to show that they have a kinship relationship of equality. Man is not superior to the woman, nor the woman to man. They are of the same "stuff," equal in being and worth. She is his glory. She reflects in her personhood all that he reflects in his: the image of God, glory, and personhood.

Genesis never says that woman was made in the image of man. (It was Seth, not Eve, who was in the image of Adam, Gn. 5.3). 1 Corinthians 11 never says that the woman is not in the image of God. Leon Morris comments, "Her relationship to man is not the same as that of man to God. She has a place of her own, but it is not the man’s place. She stands in such a relation to the man as does nothing else, and thus she is called the glory of man. And it is precisely the glory of man that should be veiled in the presence of God. In worship God alone must be glorified."

Creation affirms the equality of the sexes (endorsed by Paul), but also gender and role distinctions between men and women (also endorsed by Paul). In the Corinthian context that distinction needed to be maintained via head coverings.

> Christians so considering Christianity doesn't teach this anymore and instead teaches all humans are made in god's image, can we expect you all to go back to your churches and correct this error?

There is no error needing correction in the church. You seem to be the one who misunderstands in thinking that 1 Cor. 11.7 teaches that women are not made in the image of God. It's you and I who need to talk, not the church and I.