I'm just going to float a boat here. I'm not utterly committed to it, just a thought experiment. Play along.
What if, what if we took Paul's definition of 'head' at face value and ran it all the way through 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.
The head of every man is Christ, the head of every woman is man, the head of Christ is God.
1. Every man who prays with his head (Christ) covered, dishonours his head (Christ)
Understandable, Jesus is our mediator, wouldn't want to sideline him.
2. A woman who prays with her head (a man) uncovered, dishonours her head (the man).
She might as well be a baldy. Cover him up, he aint your mediator.
3. A man shouldn't cover his head (Christ) since Christ is the image and shininess of God.
4. Woman however is shininess of man
5. So women should have authority over their head (the man), because of the angels. (is this somehow related to Hebrews discussion of the place of humanity vis a vis the angels). Implicit here is an argument 'oh, so you are going to say JC isn't God because he is the ima,ge and shininess, I don't think so. So neither are women excluded from sharing in humanity,nor the kind of position humanity has over angels just because they are the shininess of men' let me remind you, that position was AUTHORITY'
6. But let me remind you that this sharing of humanity comes 'in the Lord'. One comes from, the other one through, but everything comes from God
7. Judge for yourselves, is it right for a woman to pray with her head (the man) uncovered?
As though he needed him to pray? As though he were the access point to God?
8. God's gift of a head (man) covering is the shininess of women.
hooo, a rather different reading to the normal one.
'Faithful Politics' podcast interview
3 days ago
3 comments:
What if we took a spell checker to this post? ;-)
Interesting. Can you spell out some more of the implications here?
Hmm, maybe I could avoid the charge of heresy by calling this 'puls'.
Well, I dont know what the implications are really, I thought I'd just give it a crack. It came from reading some Psalm 8/ Hebrews stuff about humans really being in authority over angels, which made me think of this tricky part. I'm sure this view is entirely unsupported by the grammar and scholarship etc. Though, maybe not,I'd have to check. (which I certainly havent). Some implications would be 1. a woman doesn't need to go through a man (other than Christ) to speak to or be spoken to by God. 2. The authority a woman has over a man in the church is part of her sharing in the authority of Christ as the true human, or at the least a sharing in the authority of a renewed humanity. And while there is some kind of ordering of shininess, men and women both seem to be able to Other implications, well, I'm sure it will implicate me in all sorts of terrible heresies to some people.
I've been arguing on the internets
See, I was looking forward to a discussion of the King of Assyria's view of headship in Isaiah 10:5 - 12:6, contrasting the grandiose claim of 10:8 with the rebuke of 10:15, and digging around in the context, meaning and significance of the 'charge sheet' in 10:12, finally pointing away from Pul and toward Christ, in the fascinating distinction between the axe of 10:15 and 10:34 and the shoot/stump/root of Jesse in 11:1 and 11:10.
Then I realised that I couldn't work out whether that was Pul, or some other dude, so you probably weren't talking about Tiglath-Pilsener at all.
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