Axe to the Root Podcast Episode #65 

 Host: Bojidar Marinov

Recommended Reading: Paul and Gender, by Cynthia Long Westfall

 

Transcript:

Head-Covering: Freedom and Justice vs. Liturgy and Power-Play  

Welcome to Episode 65 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 30 minutes I will try to fix a gap in my teaching for the last 20 years. That gap is the interpretation of 1 Cor. 11:2-16: Paul’s injunction about women’s head-covering in the church. When I say gap, I don’t mean that I had taught a fallacious interpretation of the passage. As a matter of fact, I had no interpretation at all. I had been asked many times about my interpretation, especially by women, and especially by women who are sensitive about abuse of power in the church. But I always replied that I hadn’t gotten to that passage yet. I had nothing to say. I knew all the official interpretations – especially the so-called “Reformed” ones, by respected Reformed preachers. I couldn’t buy into any of them, though. All of them seemed quite out of character for Paul in his other epistles, and even in that same epistle of 1 Corinthians. All of them seemed to interpret the text quite out of the context: these several chapters of 1 Corinthians treat the topic of the church as one body, with everyone in it, male or female, equal in honor and dignity, and all these interpretations – even by the most respectable Reformed theologians and preachers, seemed to take this passage out of context and interpret it as if half of the church – the women, had lower honor and dignity. In addition, there was nothing ethical or judicial in the interpretations I was hearing: they were all focused on the liturgical trappings of head-covering as if they were the real thing; and I knew from both Biblical common sense and from experience that women can outwardly cover their heads and yet despise their husbands, and other women could never put on any covering and yet were pious and orderly in their conduct. Thus, head-covering certainly doesn’t correspond to the reality these preachers and theologians wanted to ascribe to it. And as far as I am concerned, when you interpret a passage for me, you better give me the ethical/judicial reality behind it that I can apply today, or I don’t buy into your interpretation. An interpretation that confuses liturgical symbols with ethical/judicial reality is not my cup of tea, thank you very much. I am a Reconstructionist; I need to know what covenantal issues are behind the passage. Symbolism is fine and nice, but symbolism is not real theology. Tell me what the passage says to justice and righteousness, and tell it in ways that account for both the historical context and the clear and precise grammatical meaning. 

Speaking of historical context and grammatical meaning, we have all adopted the claim that the historical-grammatical method is the best “conservative” method for interpreting the Bible. That is, the method that looks at the grammatical structure of the text and its direct and plain meaning, and then at the historical context and what the text would have meant for its contemporary readers. And then, of course, the interpreter, after he has discovered the grammatical meaning and the historical meaning in context, may try to discover what ethical/judicial application there is in that text for us today, of if there is such modern application at all. This is where I have my doubts about the historical-grammatical method: While the concept is good, it has been used by modern Reformed churchmen not to really interpret texts but to interpret covenant applications away. I have listened to tons of lectures and sermon where the preacher, claiming to be “sola scriptura,” conservative, Reformed, expository, and whatnot, takes a Biblical passage and builds a long, boring,