| Home | Our Hope | |
| Bible Study |
|
July 28, 2013 |
| Foundations of a Tradition | ||
Some of the traditions in the church are traditions created by man without any Biblical or other foundation. Christmas is one of those. Nothing in the Bible requires us to observe Christmas. But other traditions in the church have a foundation. For example we observe Communion at the request of Jesus. We can change or sweep away the traditions that have no foundation, but not the ones that have a foundation. In this lesson we will look at a tradition that the church of Corinth was nor observing.
These verses are organized in a particular way. Understanding this will help us understand what Paul is saying. The breakdown goes this way
We'll focus on the first and last of these sections to start because they provide the necessary context to understanding the passage.
2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you.
16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.
From these two verses we see
To further back this up, we see 1 Corinthians 4:17 showing that Paul taught the same things to every church.
17 For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.
He also says "… my way of life in Christ Jesus … agrees with what I teach". Verse 1 in the passage we are studying in this lesson says much the same thing
1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
So from these two verses we see that this passage of scripture will be about traditions within the church of God
The problem with this passage is that it doesn't say what the problem is. That is quite common in Paul's epistles. Sometimes he will say exactly what they are doing wrong, as he does in the following passage about the abuses of the Lord's Supper. But sometimes Paul leaves it for the reader to figure out what they were doing wrong, from what he tells them about doing it right.
It is just not clear what they are doing wrong here. We will see that the issue is length of hair when praying and prophesying and head coverings but the details are a mystery. There is a special emphasis on women, but men are also mentioned.
Paul offers two arguments from a spiritual foundation. It is through these that we first get his teaching on what is right and a hint at what the Corinthians were doing wrong. What is right: When praying and prophesying men should not cover their heads but women should cover their heads.
His first argument is that God is the head of Christ who is the head of man who is the head of woman, therefore
4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.
5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head
Paul's logic completely escapes me here and I know of no one who understands it. How does covering or uncovering the head relate to the order of God -> Christ -> man -> woman? We understand the ordering but not how it relates to covering and uncovering. But even though I don't understand I accept that Paul is an Apostle of God and so I accept his argument.
Paul elaborates on this argument in the following verses
7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
Unfortunately this doesn't help us. We still can't see the connection to head coverings. How does being the glory of God mean that a man should not cover his head.
Paul's second argument from a spiritual foundation is that it is an offense to the angels for a woman to have her head uncovered when praying or prophesying. This argument is also lost on us.
So we have two arguments from a spiritual foundation that the modern church does not understand
Paul offers a single argument from a natural foundation
13 Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.
This is an argument that we understand and I think most would agree with. From a man's perspective, women with very short hair or shaved heads are interesting because they are different but they do not look natural. I'll leave the women's perspective to the women. But we do need to understand something. Our consciences can be seared. If we see something wrong done often enough we become used to it and eventually see it as normal, even natural. In that state we can be confused about what is natural.
The last part of the last verse above tells us something important. A woman's long hair is her head covering. She does not need to wear a scarf, hat or other covering. From this we understand that when Paul says ‘head' he is referring to only the head not the hair.
In teaching the churches Paul teaches that hair length matters and that the traditions are different for men and women. He gives three reasons, 2 from a spiritual perspective and 1 from a natural perspective. So we know this isn't just a tradition that some people dreamed up and other people can discard.
The Corinthians tried to discard it and Paul felt it was necessary to correct them in his epistle. Let us also not forget that Paul was guided by the Holy Spirit. If this was only an issue in Corinth it could have been left out of the epistle as we see in verse 33 of this chapter (1 Corinthians 11) that other things were left out.
33 […] And when I come I will give further directions
Paul and the Holy Spirit felt this was important enough that it needed to get to the Corinthians earlier rather than later and the Holy Spirit knew that the epistle would spread to the other churches of Paul's time and that we would still be reading it almost 2000 years later.
Some commentators have claimed that this passage was all about temple prostitutes who had shaved heads and Paul did not want the people of God looking like temple prostitutes. They use this to declare that Paul was therefore setting up a local rule, just for the Corinthians, and thus not one for us. But
But how short is too short and how long is too long? Paul gives us no guidance there.
1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. 3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.
7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.
13 Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.
There are many interpretations of this passage. What the most popular ones seem to have in common is that their authors were determined to find a reason why Paul's teaching shouldn't apply to us. But should it apply to us and if so how? The foundations for Paul's arguments are eternal – the nature of God has not changed and neither has the nature of man. If his foundation was on fashion trends or temple prostitutes we could easily discard them. But that isn't the case.
This tradition is not out of line with others of Paul's teachings. In other places he discusses how women should dress, what they shouldn't wear in their hair, how people should behave in their meetings. Verses 23 through 29 of this chapter have become the traditional words to be spoken at Communion / The Lord's Supper.
We have to ask, what is the purpose of traditions. Traditions unify a people. Militaries have lots of traditions to unify their people into a whole. Roman Catholics traveling to another church know what to expect when they walk in. They know what the candles are for, what the water is for, and the motions to make. But man-made traditions can have a downside; they can become a requirement. Long after anyone remembers how the tradition came about, people continue to blindly observe it. If it had any worship value when it started that is lost to formulaic procedures.
The Roman Catholic Church has a large number of traditions without foundations that have become meaningless rituals. For this reason Protestant churches stay a long ways from traditions and even make a point of changing frequently to not get stuck in traditions. What little we have that might be called traditions, Baptism and Communion, we call commandments. Their spiritual basis is clear.
With this tradition of hair length the spiritual foundation is not clearly understood by us, but plainly Paul believed the foundation existed. Each person must judge for himself.