<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"] I think what we have here is a failure to communicate. </font><hr></blockquote><p>Pilgrim referred me to this exegesis earlier and thus I now refer you to it as well. Since, I was unable to find Hodge’s exegesis of I Cor 11 on-line I typed this out for your exegetical flavoring (sorry, if there are any omissions: Greek and it is long).<br><br><center>[color:blue]CHARLES HODGE’S COMMENTARY ON 1 CORINTHIANS</center></font color=blue><br><br>CHAPTER 11<br><br>The impropriety of women appearing unveiled in the public assemblies, vs. 2-16. The improper manner of celebrating the Lord’s Supper which prevailed in the Corinthian church, vs. 11-34. <br><br><ul>On the impropriety of women appearing in public unveiled, vs. 2-16. [/LIST] Having corrected the more private abuses which prevailed among the Corinthians, the apostle begins in this chapter to consider those which relate to the mode of conducting public worship. The first of these is the habit of women appearing in public without a veil. Dress is in a great degree conventional. A costume which is proper in one country, would be indecorous in another. The principle insisted upon in this paragraph is, that women should conform in matters of dress to all those usages which the public sentiment of the community in which they live demands. The veil in all eastern countries was, and to a great extent still is, the symbol of modesty and subjection. For a woman, therefore, in Corinth to discard the veil was to renounce her claim to modesty, and to refuse to recognize her subordination to her husband. It is on the assumption of this significancy in the use of the veil, that the apostle’s whole argument in this paragraph is founded. He begins by praising the Corinthians for their obedience in general to his instructions, v. 2. He then reminds them of the divinely constituted subordination of the woman to the man, v. 3. Consequently it was disgraceful in the man to assume the symbol of subordination, and disgraceful in the woman to discard it, vs. 4, 5. If the veil were discarded as the symbol of subordination, it must also be discarded as the symbol of modesty. An unveiled woman, therefore, in Corinth proclaimed herself as not only insubordinate, but as immodest, v. 6. The man ought not to wear a veil because he represents the authority of God; but the woman is the glory of the man, v. 7. This subordination is proved by the very history of her creation. Eve was formed out of Adam, and made for him, vs. 8, 9, and, therefore, women should wear, especially in the religious assemblies where angels are present, the conventional symbol of their relation, v. 10. This subordination, however, of the woman is perfectly consistent with the essential equality and mutual dependence of the sexes. Neither is, or can be, without the other, vs. 11, 12. The apostle next appeals to their instinctive sense of propriety, which taught them that as it is disgraceful in a man to appear in the costume of a woman, so it is disgraceful in a woman to appear in the costume of a man, vs. 13-15. Finally he appeals to authority; the custom which he censured was contrary to the universal practice of Christians, v. 16. <br><br><ul>2. Now I praise, you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered (them) to you. [/LIST] Now I praise you. The particle rendered “now”, either simply indicates the transition to a new subject, or it is adversative. ‘Though I exhort you to imitate me as though you were deficient, yet I praise you that you remember me.’ The Corinthians, although backward in following the self-denial and conciliatory conduct of the apostle, were nevertheless in general mindful of the ordinances or rules which he had delivered to them. The word “tradition”, here rendered ordinance, is used not only for instructions orally transmitted from generation to generation, as in Matthew 15:2, 3, 6, but for any instruction, whether relating to faith or practice, and whether delivered orally or in writing. 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6. In reference to the rule of faith it is never used in the New Testament, except for the immediate instructions of inspired men. When used in the modern sense of the word tradition, it is always in reference to what is human and untrustworthy, Galatians 1:14. Colossians 2:8, and frequently in the gospels of the traditions of the elders. <br><br><ul>3. But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman (is) the man; and the head of Christ (is) God. [/LIST] Though the apostle praised the Corinthians for their general obedience to his prescriptions, yet there were many things in which they were deserving of censure. Before mentioning the thing which he intended first to condemn, he states the principle on which that condemnation rested; so that, by assenting to the principle, they could not fail to assent to the conclusion to which it necessarily led. That principle is, that order and subordination pervade the whole universe, and is essential to its being. The head of the man is Christ; the head of woman is the man; the head of Christ is God. If this concatenation be disturbed in any of its parts, ruin must be the result. The head is that on which the body is dependent, and to which it is subordinate. The obvious meaning of this passage is, that the woman is subordinate to the man, the man is subordinate to Christ and Christ is subordinate to God. It is further evident, that this subordination is very different in its nature in the several cases mentioned. The subordination of the woman to the man is something entirely different from that of the man to Christ; and that again is at an infinite degree more complete than the subordination of Christ to God. And still further, as the subordination of the woman to the man is perfectly consistent with their identity as to nature, so is the subordination of Christ to God consistent with his being of the same nature with the Father. There is nothing, therefore, in this passage, at all inconsistent with the true and proper divinity of our blessed Lord. For a brief statement of the scriptural doctrine of the relation of Christ to God, see the comments on 3:23. It need here be only further remarked, that the word Christ is the designation, not of the Logos or second person of the Trinity as such, nor of the human nature of Christ as such, but of the Theanthropos, the God-man. It is the incarnate Son of God, who, in the great work of redemption, is said to be subordinate to the Father, whose will he came into the world to do. When Christ is said to be the head of every man, the meaning is of every believer; because it is the relation of Christ to the church, and not to the human family, that it is characteristically expressed by this term. He is the head of that body which is the church, Colossians 1:18. Ephesians 1:22, 23. <br><br><ul>4. Every man praying or prophesying, having (his) head covered, dishonoreth his head.[/LIST] Such being the order divinely established, (viz., that mentioned in v. 3,) both men and women should act in accordance with it; the man, by having the head uncovered, the woman by being veiled. As the apostle refers to their appearance in public assemblies, he says, Every man praying or prophesying i.e. officiating in public worship. Prophesying. In the scriptural sense of the word, a prophet is one who speaks for another, as Aaron is called the prophet, or spokesman of Moses. “Thou shalt speak unto him, and put words into his mouth,... and he shall be thy spokesman,” Exodus 4:15, 16; or, as he is called, 7:1, thy prophet. The prophets of God, therefore, were his spokesmen, into whose mouth the Lord put the words which they were to utter to the people. To prophesy, in Scripture, is accordingly, to speak under divine inspiration; not merely to predict future events, but to deliver, as the organ of the Holy Ghost, the messages of God to men, whether in the form of doctrine, exhortation, consolation, or prediction. This public function, the apostle says, should not be exercised by a man with his head covered; literally, having something on his head downward. <br><br>Among the Greeks, the priests officiated bareheaded; the Romans with the head veiled; the Jews (at least soon after the apostolic age) also wore the Tallis or covering for the head in their public services. It is not to be inferred from what is here said, that the Christian prophets (or inspired men) had introduced this custom into the church. The thing to be corrected was, women appearing in public assemblies unveiled. The apostle says, the veil is inconsistent with the position of the man, but is required by that of the women. Men are mentioned only for the sake of illustrating the principle. <br><br>Dishonoreth his head. It is doubtful whether we should read his or his own head. This is a point the ancient manuscripts do not decide, as they are not furnished with the diacritical marks. It depends on the connection. It is also doubtful whether the apostle meant to say that he dishonored Christ who is his head, or that he dishonored himself. The latter, perhaps, is to be preferred, <br><br>1. Because, in the immediately preceding clause the word is used literally, ‘If he cover his head, he dishonors his head.’ <br>2. Because, in v. 5, the woman who goes unveiled is said to dishonor her own head, i.e. as what follows shows, herself, and not her husband. <br>3. It is more obviously true that a man who acts inconsistently with his station disgraces himself, than that he disgraces him who placed him in that station. A commanding military officer, who appears at the head of his troops in the dress of a common soldier, instead of his official dress, might more properly be said to dishonor himself than his sovereign. <br><br>For a freeman to appear in the distinguishing dress of a slave, was a disgrace. So the apostle says, for a man to appear with the conventional sign of subjection on his head, disgraced himself. If the man be intended to represent the dominion of God, he must act accordingly, and not appear in the dress of a woman. <br><br><ul>5. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with (her) head uncovered dishonoreth her head; for that is even all one as if she were shaven. [/LIST] Praying and prophesying were the two principal exercises in the public worship of the early Christians. The latter term, as above stated, included all forms of address dictated by the Holy Spirit. It was Paul’s manner to attend to one thing at a time. He is here speaking of the propriety of women speaking in public unveiled, and therefore he says nothing about the propriety of their speaking in public in itself. When that subject comes up, he expresses his judgment in the clearest terms, 14:34. In here disapproving of the one, says Calvin, he does not approve of the other. The veils worn by Grecian women were of different kinds. One, and perhaps the most common, was the peplum, or mantle, which in public was thrown over the head, and enveloped the whole person. The other was more in the fashion of the common eastern veil which covered the face, with the exception of the eyes. In one form or other, the custom was universal for all respectable women to appear veiled in public. — The apostle therefore says, that a woman who speaks in public with her head uncovered, dishonoreth her head: her own head; not her husband, but herself. This is plain, not only from the force of the words, but from the next clause, for that is even all one as if she were shaven. This is the reason why she disgraces herself. She puts herself in the same class with women whose hair has been cut off. Cutting off the hair, which is the principal natural ornament of women, was either a sign of grief, Deuteronomy 21:12, or a disgraceful punishment. The literal translation of this clause is: she is one and the same thing with one who is shaven. She assumes the characteristic mark of a disreputable woman. <br><br><ul>6. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. [/LIST]That is, let her act consistently. If she wishes to be regarded as a reputable woman, let her conform to the established usage. But if she have no regard to her reputation, let her act as other women of her class. She must conform either to the reputable or disreputable class of her sex, for a departure from the one is conforming to the other. These imperatives are not to be taken as commands, but rather as expressing what consistency would require. Shorn or shaven, the latter is the stronger term; it properly means to cut with a razor. <br><br><ul>7. For a man indeed ought not to cover (his) head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. [/LIST] The woman, and the woman only, ought to be veiled; for the man ought not to cover his head. This does not mean, he is not bound to do it, but should not do it. The reason is that he is the image and glory of God. The only sense in which the man, in distinction from the woman, is the image of God, is that he represents the authority of God. He is invested with dominion. When, in Genesis 1:26, 27, it is said God created man in his own image, the reference is as much to woman as to man; for it is immediately added, “male and female created he them.” So far, therefore, as the image of God consists in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, Eve as truly, and as much as Adam, bore the likeness of her Maker. But in the dominion with which man was invested over the earth, Adam was the representative of God. He is the glory of God, because in him the divine majesty is specially manifested. But the woman is the glory of the man. That is, the woman is in this respect subordinate to the man. She is not designed to reflect the glory of God as a ruler. She is the glory of the man. She receives and reveals what there is of majesty in him. She always assumes his station; becomes a queen if he is a king, and manifests to others the wealth and honor which may belong to her husband. <br><br><ul>8, 9. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. [/LIST] The subordination of the woman to the man is here proved from two facts recorded in the history of their creation. First, the woman was formed out of the man, and derived her origin from him. He, and not she, was created first. Secondly, she was created on his account, and not he on hers. In this way does the New Testament constantly authenticate, not merely the moral and religious truths of the Old Testament, but its historical facts; and makes those facts the grounds or proofs of great moral principles. It is impossible, therefore, for any Christian who believes in the inspiration of the apostles to doubt the divine authority of the Old Testament Scriptures, or to confine the inspiration of the ancient writers to their doctrinal and preceptive statements. The whole Bible is the word of God. <br><br><ul>10. For this cause ought the woman to have power on (her) head because of the angels. [/LIST] There is scarcely a passage in the New Testament which has so much taxed the learning and ingenuity of commentators as this. After all that has been written, it remains just as obscure as ever. The meaning which it naturally suggests to the most superficial reader, is regarded by the most laborious critics as the only true one. By, “power”, the apostle means the sign or symbol of authority; just as Diodorus Sic., 1:47, speaks of an image as “having three kingdoms on its head.” The apostle had asserted and proved that the woman is subordinate to the man, and he had assumed as granted that the veil was the conventional symbol of the man’s authority. The inference is that the woman ought to wear the ordinary symbol of the power of her husband. As it was proper in itself, and demanded by the common sense of propriety, that the woman should be veiled, it was specially proper in the worshipping assemblies, for there they were in the presence not merely of men but of angels. It was therefore, not only out of deference to public sentiment, but from reverence to those higher intelligences that the woman should conform to all the rules of decorum. This is the common and only satisfactory interpretation of the passage. Of those who dissent from this view, some propose various conjectural emendations of the text; others vainly endeavor to prove that the word “power” may be made to mean a veil; others take the word literally. And as to the last clause, instead of taking the word angels in its ordinary sense, some say it here means the angels, or presiding officers, of the church; others, that it means messengers or spies from the heathen who came to observe the mode in which the Christians worshipped, and would report any thing they observed to their disadvantage. The great majority of commentators acquiesce in the interpretation stated above, which satisfies all the demands of the context. <br><br><ul>11. Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. [/LIST] That is, although there is this subordination of the woman to the man, they are mutually dependent. The one cannot exist without the other. In the Lord. This does not mean that the one is not in the Lord to the exclusion of the other. The apostle is not here speaking of the spiritual equality of the sexes. In Galatians 3:28 and elsewhere he abundantly teaches that in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female; that the one is as fully a partaker of all the benefits of redemption as the other. And it is also true that he teaches that this equality of Jews and Greeks, bond and free, before God is perfectly consistent with the social inequalities existing in this world. But these truths, however important, and however they distinguish the Christian doctrine of the equality and dignity of woman from all other forms of religious doctrine on the subject, are foreign to this connection. The apostle’s single object is to show the true nature and limitations of the subordination of the woman to the man. It is a real subordination, but it is consistent with their mutual dependence; the one is not without the other. And this mutual dependence is by divine appointment — according to the will of the Lord. These words are used here, as so frequently elsewhere, as an adverbial qualification, meaning religiously, after a Christian manner, or divinely, i.e. by divine appointment. The same idea is substantially expressed by those who explain the words in the Lord as tantamount to “in Christianity;” in the sense that it is a Christian doctrine that the man and the woman are thus mutually dependent. <br><ul>12. For as the woman (is) of the man, even so (is) the man also by the woman; but all things of God.[/LIST] The one is not without the other, for as the woman was originally formed out of the man, so the man is born of the woman. This is a proof, not of the admitted equality of the sexes in the kingdom of God, but of their mutual dependence in the kingdom of nature. It therefore confirms the interpretation given of the preceding verse. But all things are of God; these subordinate relations of one creature to another are merged, as it were, in the supreme causality of God. It matters little whether the man was of the woman or the woman of the man, as both alike are of God; just as he before said, it matters little whether a man were a Jew or Gentile, bond or free, since all are alike before God. <br><br><ul>13. Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? [/LIST] This is an appeal to their own sense of propriety. The apostle often recognizes the intuitive judgments of the mind as authoritative. Romans 1:32; 3:8. The constitution of our nature being derived from God, the laws which he has impressed upon it, are as much a revelation from him as any other possible communication of his will. And to deny this, is to deny the possibility of all knowledge. It is comely, is it becoming or decorous? <br><br><ul>14, 15. Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for (her) hair is given her for a covering.[/LIST] Doth not nature itself. The word, “nature”, sometimes means essence or substance, sometimes the laws of nature or of our natural constitution; sometimes, the instinctive feelings or judgments which are the effects of those laws. The form which feelings assume is necessarily determined in a great measure by education and habit. The instinctive sense of propriety in an eastern maiden prompts her, when surprised by strangers, to cover her face. In an European it would not produce that effect. In writing, therefore, to eastern females, it would be correct to ask whether their native sense of propriety did not prompt them to cover their heads in public. The response would infallibly be in the affrmative. It is in this sense the word nature is commonly taken here. It may, however, mean the laws or course of nature. Nature gives the man short hair and the woman long hair; and therefore nature itself teaches that long hair is a disgrace to the one and an ornament to the other; for it is disgraceful in a man to be like a woman, and in a woman to be like a man. Wearing long hair was contrary to the custom both of the Hebrews and Greeks. The Nazarites, as a distinction, allowed their hair to grow. Numbers 6:8; see also Ezekiel 44:20. It was considered so much a mark of effeminacy for men to wear long hair, that it was not only ridiculed by Juvenal, but in after times seriously censured by church councils. To a woman, however, in all ages and countries, long hair has been considered an ornament. It is given to her, Paul says, as a covering, or as a natural veil; and it is a glory to her because it is a veil. The veil itself, therefore, must be becoming and decorous in a woman. <br><br><ul>16. But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.[/LIST] The arguments against the custom of women appearing in public unveiled having been presented, the apostle says, if any man, notwithstanding these arguments, is disposed to dispute the matter, or appears to be contentious, we have only further to say, that we (the apostles) have no such custom, neither have the churches of God. To be contentious, i.e. disposed to dispute for the sake of disputation. With such persons all argument is useless. Authority is the only end of controversy with such disturbers of the peace. The authority here adduced is that of the apostles and of the churches. The former was decisive, because the apostles were invested with authority not only to teach the gospel, but also to organize the church, and to decide every thing relating to Christian ordinances and worship. The authority of the churches, although not coercive, was yet great. No man is justified, except on clearly scriptural grounds, and from the necessity of obeying God rather than man, to depart from the established usages of the church in matters of public concern. <br><br>Calvin, and many of the best modern commentators, give a different view of this passage. They understand the apostle to say, that if any one seems to be disputatious, neither we nor the churches are accustomed to dispute. It is not our wont to waste words with those who wish merely to make contention. The only reason assigned for this interpretation, is Paul’s saying we have no such custom; which they say cannot mean the custom of women going unveiled. But why not? The apostles and the churches constituted a whole neither the one nor the other, neither the churches nor their infallible guides, sanctioned the usage in question. Besides, no other custom is mentioned in the context than the one which he has been discussing. “If any one appear contentious,” is not a custom and suggests nothing to which the words such a custom can naturally refer.”

Reformed and Always Reforming,