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The Meaning of Headship

IN THIS CHAPTER, I continue the discussion of headship and how it is normally explained on the basis of 1 Corinthians 11 and Genesis 2, highlighting some of the specific problems associated with a hierarchicalist interpretation. The first is the problem of interpreting kephalē as “one in authority” or “ruler.” The second is using 1 Corinthians 11:3 (Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman, God is the head of Christ) to make a claim for the idea that male-female relations reflect the relationship of the Son to the Father (and thus have some connections to trinitarian relations). The third is the idea that we can utilize 1 Corinthians 11:3, 7-9 (man is the image and glory of God and woman is the glory of man, etc.) to interpret Genesis 2 and vice versa, and then infer from these verses that man is placed in an authoritative position over woman at creation. Once we see the multiple problems associated with all of these moves, I hope it will become clear that the Bible is far from transparent on the issue of male headship as is so often claimed.

As we have seen, in 1 Corinthians 11:3 Paul uses the language of head in relation to God, Christ, man or husband, and woman or wife. God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man the head of woman. In 1 Corinthians 11:7-9, Paul seemingly explains further the relationship of woman to man with an apparent reference to creation. First Corinthians 11:7-9, therefore, is often used to shed some light on what Paul might have meant by using the word head in relation to God and Christ, Christ and man, and man and woman, but this is not at all a straightforward process. I have chosen, therefore, to study verses 7-9 first, because I want to demonstrate how problematic these verses are as an explanation for the man’s relation to woman and how it is not really possible to apply them in a straightforward way. In other words, before we use one or two verses to back up what we already believe to be true of other verses, we have to be sure that we know exactly what the texts mean in the first place. The question before us is, in what ways is it possible to use 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 to shed light on what Paul means by man as the head of woman in 1 Corinthians 11:3?

As we have seen, 1 Corinthians 11:7-10 in the NIV says,

A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels.

It may be that you find these statements confusing or even troubling, and if you do, you are certainly not alone. My own research has led me to study these verses in detail and to discover that the more obvious meaning of the text causes consternation and embarrassment among many, and even causes others to question Paul’s understanding here.

It is not, perhaps, immediately obvious what Paul means here in verse 7 about man (alone?) being the image and glory of God, or why woman appears not to be, or what it means for a woman to have authority on her head, and why it would bother the angels. On first reading, however, it does seem to imply that there is an inequality between man and woman’s relation to God and to one another. It is also clear though that not all translators of the Bible seem to be comfortable with this translation, and we have examples of how the idea of man as God’s glory has been modified. Compare this with the NRSV (emphasis added):

For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man. Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man. For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

You will see that the word for “glory” has been translated as “reflection,” and the translators have added the words “a symbol of” to verse 10. To choose “reflection” to translate doxa (glory) is an unusual decision because it is not a recognized meaning of doxa. I would be interested to know why the translators made this choice, but clearly something in the claim that man is the image and glory of God and woman the glory of man sounded wrong to them, otherwise they would not have made the decision to use a different word with different connotations. The sense of unease over 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 is well warranted. As a more blatant example of the kind of questioning that these verses elicit, Colin Gunton states simply and almost as an aside in relation to these verses that “Paul’s exegesis and theology are both questionable.”1 This is a bold statement. Why would Gunton go as far as that?

The claim that man alone is the image and glory of God does appear to cut across the Genesis accounts of creation in a number of ways. First, in Genesis 1 man and woman together are the image of God, and even then they are described as being in God’s image and likeness, not image and glory. Most importantly, this specific word, glory, is not used in Genesis 1–2 and never only with reference to the male of the species. This is not to say that humanity is not also God’s glory, but references to the glory of humanity are usually either with reference to all of humanity, male and female (e.g., Psalm 8:5) or with reference to disciples of Jesus Christ (e.g., John 12–14; Romans 8:18), who become glorious through him and their relation to him. The second account of the creation of man and woman seems at first blush to be closer to the statements in 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 because we read that Adam is created first and Eve is created out of his side as his companion who is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. This is not the only way of man relating to woman in Genesis, though, as in Genesis 4:1 we hear Eve declaring at the birth of Cain that with the help of the Lord, she has brought forth a man. Paul appears to acknowledge this in 1 Corinthians when he goes on to say, “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.”

All these questions converge to cause us to query Paul’s statements in verses 7-9. Where is Paul getting his theology from here and what does he mean by it?

WHAT DOES PAUL MEAN?

I have read multiple explanations for these verses, and it appears that there are two majority views rooted in either a hierarchical or nonhierarchical view of creation, which is why we explored differing views of creation first. The first majority view sees a hierarchical pattern in these verses, which are used to endorse a hierarchical view of creation, the like of which we have seen in previous chapters. The second view is based on the assumption that Paul does not fundamentally hold to a hierarchical view of creation, despite what we read here, since that is a misreading of the Genesis text, and so proponents of this view attempt to explain away some of the obvious problems in Paul. (This is endorsed by the fact that Paul goes on in verses 11-12 to present a mutualist view.) As we have seen in previous chapters, a hierarchical view of creation is not a given, it is an interpretative choice based on disputed words. The same principle operates here. We have a choice as to how to interpret these verses in 1 Corinthians.

The hierarchicalist view is based on the idea that these verses tell us Paul believed that male human beings are the image and glory of God in a way that female human beings are not. It follows that women have no glory of their own but have a derived glory consequent on their relationship with men. We have seen how this view claims to be rooted in the creation story in Genesis 2, as Paul himself seems to do in verses 8-9. In 1 Corinthians it sounds as if man as the original creation was created for God to bear his image and his glory, and woman was created with the sole purpose of being related to the male. So for this reason she has a derived or reflected glory (maybe that’s why the NRSV translates the word reflection). Her glory is hers because of her relationship to the man.

This is an obvious reading of 1 Corinthians 11:7-9, but we have also seen that there are some significant problems with this reading. First, it does not accord with other references to the creation of man and woman. Second, it sounds as if women really do not have their own place before God and have to come to him with some kind of go-between—a man? It also sounds as if the head covering is the symbol of that or the means by which she is able now to come to God. But why would it be the case that Christian women need a head covering to pray and prophesy before God and the church, and if it is, why has it largely fallen out of Christian practice? A further complication arises if we read on: Paul seems to contradict himself only a few verses later in verses 11-12 when he says that “in the Lord” man is not independent of woman or woman of man, but in fact they come from one another. So why would he have said what he did in the first place and use it as a reason for women to wear head coverings and men to go uncovered?

One last problem to note is that we are unsure as to which man Paul is referring to when he claims that man is God’s image and glory. Is it the first man (Adam), all men, all Christian men, or husbands? We are not sure, and whichever we decide on will change the meaning of the verse and how we imagine women are supposed to be related to men in terms of being their glory.

So the first hierarchical option leaves a number of us truly baffled. The theology of creation here is distorted in some way because we do not find a basis for it in Genesis. In addition to this, it is demeaning to women. It also seems to be contradicted almost straight away by verses 11-12. The strangest thing we are left with is that Paul appears to be using this distorted creation story to insist that women wear head coverings when they pray and prophesy in public. The fact that this has never been adopted wholesale as a Christian practice tells us something significant about how we really receive these verses. Is it possible to salvage a better meaning out of these verses?

A MUTUALIST VIEW

Is it possible to read Paul in a way that eliminates the obvious problems with both the theology and the coherence of the text? There are various ways of doing this, and mutualists attempt to find ways of reading this text that have a positive outcome for women. One argument is that Paul is not being directly contradictory here; he simply holds two views in tension. Mutualists go on to add that the second view of man and woman as interdependent (vv. 11-12) is the more important view because this is the state of man and woman “in the Lord.”

Perhaps Paul thinks becoming a Christian (in the Lord) makes a difference as if there was a condition in creation before Christ that is modified in Christian relations, and we are just privy to his thought processes here. The problem with the before-and-after Christ view is that Paul refers back to creation in verses 11-12 as well. When human beings procreate, men come from women. They are born from them and they always have been. When Paul goes on to describe the interdependence of man and woman, he is describing a primal condition of existence, not a Christian spiritual reality. His second statement is also part of the creation story and appears here as a corrective. Perhaps we simply should be honest about this and not try to reconcile the two in some forced way or make an arbitrary decision about what is more important when we have two opposing statements regarding men and women expressed in close proximity. In my view, they are contradictory statements that are hard to reconcile.

Further to this is the embarrassment that Paul enforced head coverings because women did not have their own glory. In order to avoid the implications of this as an apostolic teaching and practice for the church, it is common for people to claim that Paul is only referring to some kind of cultural practice in order not to bring shame on individuals and the church. The head covering is a cultural sign of honor and dignity, and the women who refused to wear one were rebellious and disrespectful of their cultural norms and their men. This is one popular reading that appears perhaps to paint Paul in a better light. He was caring for the women and their honor. Another similar interpretation is to claim that Paul was worried that men were behaving like women and women like men and that he viewed this kind of gender-bending as unacceptable and shameful. A further version of this would be that this is really about hairstyles and that Paul is concerned that men and women appear appropriately styled according to their gender and cultural expectations.

All these views are highly problematic. First, as we have seen, there is no evidence in the text that Paul’s reasons are cultural but quite the opposite. Paul gives his reasons for the woman to honor her head (man) and for man to honor his head (Christ), and they are clearly rooted in a creation theology. The stretch to claim that the shame and honor he refers to is purely cultural (and therefore not applicable today) is too great and ignores the import of the passage. A further problem to add to this is that we have no evidence from antiquity that all Romans, Greeks, and Jews would have conformed to one single view of the significance of head coverings or hairstyles. In other words, there was no one practice in a multicultural society that would have been recognized by all of them as honorable, either with reference to head coverings and bare heads or long and short hair. Women were by no means universally covered, as we know from depictions of women at the time. Similarly, men did not have one practice among Greeks, Romans, and Jews as to when they should be covered or uncovered in public or at worship. All three cultures would have been represented at the church in Corinth and would not have been accustomed to one universal cultural signifier when it came to men going uncovered and women being covered. Finally, I remain unpersuaded that this passage is referring solely to hairstyles. The majority reading is that Paul is referring to a covering for the physical head.

Another attempt to bring coherence to the text from a mutualist perspective is to explain that for woman to be man’s glory is an honor. A woman is a man’s crowning glory! I think it is imagined that this sounds so positive. However, if the sign of that honor is to have to wear a veil to appear before God, and if there remains the threat of punishment or shame for those who refuse and for their heads, the men, this great honor of being covered seems to be hopelessly tainted. The one who is really glorious before God (the man) goes bareheaded, presumably because his glory should be in plain sight, while the woman must cover because to be in plain sight is a source of shame. I am highly skeptical that this is a positive message for women, and I know many women who have yet to be convinced!

DECIDING ON AN INTERPRETATION

The idea of the natural or God-given superiority of men over women (the first majority reading) that can clearly be taken out of the first half of our passage (vv. 4-10) has featured in most readings of these verses throughout the ages. It is evident that as time has passed, this “plain sense” reading has become more and more of an embarrassment, and we find scholars trying to avoid the meaning of this reading one way or another. However, this embarrassment over the text is not just a modern phenomenon, which some people suppose. People committed to the notions of superiority/authority of men and the inferiority/subordination of women sometimes imply that pressure to change and to resist these patterns is coming from our culture—maybe shifting patterns in how men and women behave, how modern households are managed, work patterns, new ways in which masculinity and femininity are defined or perceived. There is, however, compelling evidence from the early centuries of resistance to reading this text as hierarchical.

Augustine refused to read this as a hierarchical text in any real sense, as he resisted the idea that women were fundamentally inferior or subordinate to men. In response, he formulates an extremely elaborate explanation of what Paul must have meant by making women wear head coverings, while all the while attempting to avoid a hierarchical reading.2 Augustine reads this to be saying that Paul is referring to the symbolic position of the woman as representing the lower parts of humanity, but this in no way maps on to any real or spiritual inferiority of woman to man. In order to make sense of Paul’s theology and the practice of head coverings, Augustine suggests that the woman symbolizes the baser parts of the human psyche (which are shameful and should be covered) and the man the higher aspects of the psyche (which should be uncovered to remain close to God). In reality, however, he asserts that all human beings have an equal share of both feminine and masculine spheres. Studying Augustine shows us that it is not true to say that we struggle with these verses because we are moderns, because we have been affected by feminism, or because we are trying to avoid the bits of the Bible that we do not like. All along, there has been discomfort among some that these verses tell us a hierarchicalist story, but one that sounds discordant to our ears.3 The problem with mutualist readings of this text is that they do not really work because they do not really reflect the content of the verses.

SUMMARY

I am persuaded by many commentators from years gone by, and by some contemporary scholars, that if these verses reflect Paul’s views accurately, then he did indeed believe that women were somehow naturally inferior to men or somehow less glorious and so needed a head covering to compensate for that.4 However, this reading is made even more problematic by the fact that this is contradicted straight away in verses 11-12 and that these latter verses reflect a Christian picture of men and women together in creation and in the Lord. It is also further complicated by the rest of Paul’s thought and practices that we know about from his other writings where he does not hold to the subordination of women in any shape or form, neither does he enforce head coverings. This is why I began by explaining Paul’s baptismal and temple theology of the new creation and the new humanity. Having studied Paul’s thought in general in this letter and in his wider letters, I am now convinced that verses 7-9 do not reflect Paul’s thought at all. My conviction is that these verses reflect Paul’s opponents’ ideas and that this very Greco-Roman view of creation has infected the church at Corinth while functioning as the men’s rationale to put the women in the congregation in head coverings for worship.

My conclusions are that what is articulated in verses 7-9 describes the corrupted creation story of the Corinthians that was being used to keep women in a particular place in relation to men—in need of a sign of authority. What we see is a creation account being used for a particular purpose. I believe that this account “places woman in a particular place in relation to God and also to man, which then redefines her identity as primarily rooted in her relationship to man rather than to God. Second, it writes her out of her shared role of image and likeness (and glory) bearer, and as the creator and bearer of man that we find in Genesis.”5 This reading has become more and more difficult for scholars to explain away, hence their attempts at coming up with different ways of avoiding this and letting Paul off the hook, none of which succeed. The rhetorical perspective (of Paul in conversation with his opponents) explains the change of tack in verse 11 because it is here where we hear Paul’s voice correcting the Corinthians. “Nevertheless, in the Lord . . .” There is a different story—a story where men and women are mutually dependent, knowing their debt to one another and their need of one another. These verses here fit so well with Paul’s radical view of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7, which we will come to in the next chapter.

For simplicity’s sake, I include part of my appendix to Women and Worship at Corinth where I demonstrate which verses of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 I propose represent Corinthian and not Pauline thought. The whole argument, however, warrants a close study, and I would commend more in-depth reading on the subject.

1 CORINTHIANS 11:2-16

I propose that the words in italics represent the Corinthian thinking and phraseology that Paul is quoting back to them. In what follows, I have added some punctuation to give an indication of Paul’s expression or tone of voice, and in some instances I offer my own translation.

I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions/teachings, just as I passed them on to you. But I want you to have understood that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, but the head of Christ is God.

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved.

So if a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head!

A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.

Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of/separated from man, nor is man independent of/separated from woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. Judge for yourselves: Is it fitting for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her in place of a head covering. If anyone wants to be dangerously divisive about this, we have no such custom—nor do the churches of God.6

MAN AS WOMAN’S HEAD

My first task was to highlight the problems we have of using 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 to interpret Genesis 2 and vice versa. A close reading of 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 shows us, in many ways, that it is incompatible with the Genesis accounts. This was important groundwork in trying to work out what Paul meant by the idea that man is the head of woman because we need to know how we can use his other references to men and women to make sense of male headship. Clearly, most interpreters of 1 Corinthians 11:3 assume that verses 7-9 should be taken into account, but I have demonstrated that this might actually just confuse us even further, especially if verses 7-9 do not represent Paul’s theology but the Corinthians’ theology that he is correcting! Whereas most scholars have assumed that headship must have something to do with Paul’s view of creation, we find, with my reading of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, verses 7-9 are now discounted in our interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:3 because I assign them to Corinthian thought and not to Paul. This will give us a very different result from a straightforwardly hierarchical reading and even affect the assumption that man as the head has something to do with men holding a special or privileged place. So here again we will see multiple problems in the assumption that Paul was teaching a straightforward connection between the notion of man as woman’s head meaning that man is the one in authority over woman. Let us look in more detail at the text.

THE TEXT

Paul begins, “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ.” Paul has begun by praising the Corinthians for holding on to the traditions as he passed them down to them. He follows this with a “but.” “But I want you to understand . . .” What is it that he wishes they had understood or wants them to understand now? We read three things:

• the head of every man is Christ

• the head of the woman is man

• the head of Christ is God

The word that Paul uses to link the three pairings (de) can be translated either as “and” or “but.” You can see in the NIV that the editors have translated it as “but” in the first instance at the beginning of verse 3, and then “and” after that as a conjunction linking the next two phrases regarding Christ as the head of man and God as the head of Christ. The fact that they use but between verses 2-3, “But I want you to understand . . .” means that they too think that Paul is praising the Corinthians for one thing (holding on to some traditions), but then correcting them on the particulars of this issue. Paul needs to correct them and so puts the “head” talk in context. And the context is that the head of Christ is God.

We know that this is the most important claim in this sentence because it comes last and is the climax of the sentence. This key pairing (God/Christ) at the end shapes how we should think of everything else. We also know from the verb form for “to know” or “to understand” (the perfect active infinitive) that Paul is saying he wishes they had understood something more clearly. So let us read this again with that in mind. “But I want you to have understood that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of woman is man, but the head of Christ is God.” In addition to this, and crucially in my view, we also have to acknowledge that Paul might have been referring only to husbands and wives. So we could say, “But I want you to have understood that whereas the head of the husband is Christ, and the head of the wife is her husband, the head of Christ is God.”

This is closer to what Paul meant. In brief here, the choice of husband-wife over man-woman resolves multiple issues as to which man Paul might be referring to and why, and links this verse in with Paul’s reference to the husband as the head of the wife in Ephesians 5. I will explain why in more detail later. Along with the editors of the RSV, I would also choose husband-wife rather than man-woman, but first let us examine what Paul might have meant by “head.” Because this last relationship (God-Christ) is the key to understanding the other two mentioned, we should work first at attempting to understand what Paul meant here in the hope that it will help us to define the other pairings.

There are various possible meanings for the word kephalē. These range from a literal, “physical head” (which is the normal meaning) to “source” or “origin,” “first principle,” “ruler,” “one in authority,” “crown,” “completion,” “the coping of a wall,” “the capital of a column,” and still other uses. So we face two challenges of interpretation with verse 3. First, we need to work out which definition of kephalē might have been in Paul’s mind. Second, we need to ascertain whether Paul is using the same word with exactly the same meaning in all three pairings. It appears he is doing so, but if so, then whichever meaning we choose must make sense in all three occurrences. If we begin with the God-Christ pairing, which I believe is the correct place to begin, this immediately rules out certain options. The first one it rules out is “physical head” for obvious reasons. The second one it rules out, in my opinion, is “one in authority” or “ruler.” However, this brings us into the heart of a fierce debate between hierarchicalists and mutualists, and much, if not everything, hangs on how we understand this little word kephalē because it is used on both sides almost as demonstrative proof that God is or is not a hierarchicalist!

For anyone who sees a rhetorical argument operating in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, there is now no longer any conceptual link between the “authority” over the woman’s head mentioned in verse 10 and the head of verse 3 because now we view the idea of a head covering as a Corinthian practice (signifying an authorizing sign or a stamp of male authority) that Paul disagrees with. What is going on in this passage, therefore, is that the Corinthians have taken Paul’s teaching on the head and marriage and come up with a distorted version of it in order to justify enforcing head coverings for women and bare heads for men. Paul explains again to the Corinthians what he did and did not mean by the husband as the head of the wife, and here we see his attempts to tell them that the use of the concept “head” does not mean that women are inferior or lacking in anything to necessitate a head covering.

If one insists that the entire passage reflects Paul’s views, then I concede that there is a compelling case for claiming that he believed that what one wears on one’s physical head is symbolic of a deeper spiritual reality, and that if women need a sign of authority on their head, it is a small step to imagine that men, as well as a veil, represent that authority, because man is the woman’s “head.” For those who hold to these views and believe them to be binding on the church today, the challenge remains first to explain Paul’s distorted creation theology (as we see Augustine attempting to do); second, to reconcile the contradictions inherent in the passage; and, third, to explain how the practice of head coverings should be implemented today. As I have explained, I have already parted company with this view because I believe defending verses 7-9 as Paul’s view is difficult to justify (1) from the text, (2) from the whole letter to the Corinthians, and (3) from Paul’s wider thought.

So, first, I do not link verses 7-10 to verse 3. Second, for a number of reasons I do not see a warrant for describing God as the one in authority or the ruler of Christ. In my other work, I have drawn heavily on John Chrysostom’s commentary on this passage. In my opinion, he has the clearest perspective on the problems associated with reading kephalē as one in authority or ruler, which he spells out in two main points. His first point relates to what we are able to say regarding the God-Christ relation. Chrysostom argues that we cannot make the claim that the Son is inferior to the Father in any sense because “the Son is of the same substance with the Father.”7 His second point relates to how far we can stretch the God-Christ and man-woman or husband-wife analogy. “Chrysostom goes on . . . to demonstrate the flaws in drawing a straightforward analogy between the nature of the relationship between Christ as the ‘head’ of man and God as the ‘head’ of Christ, and to issue a salutary warning against inferring a direct equivalence of the God/Christ relation to the Christ/man or the man/woman relation from this one verse.”8 He writes,

So that we must not try all things by like measure in respect of ourselves and of God, though the language used concerning them be similar; but we must assign to God a certain appropriate excellency, and so great as belongs to God. For should they not grant this, many absurdities will follow. As thus; “the head of Christ is God”: and, “Christ is the head of the man, and he of the woman.” Therefore if we choose to take the term, “head,” in the like sense in all the clauses, the Son will be as far removed from the Father as we are from Him. Nay, and the woman will be as far removed from us as we are from the Word of God. And what the Son is to the Father, this both we are to the Son and the woman again to the man. And who will endure this?9

Chrysostom’s caution is that we should be careful of applying this one word, head, in the same way in all three relations. It could lead us to the mistaken conclusion that just as woman relates to man, Christ relates to God. Absurdities will follow! Human relations between a man and a woman or a husband and wife are not equal to the relation of the Father, who is God, and the Son, who is also God. In relation to this final point, he rules out a subordinationist or hierarchicalist reading of this text by pointing out that if Paul meant to speak of subordination, the relation between man and woman or husband and wife does not constitute a convincing example. The reason he gives for this is that woman is subjected to man not at creation, where they are bone of bone and flesh of flesh, but at the fall, when woman “made ill use of her privilege,” became an “ensnarer” and “ruined all”! Note that for Chrysostom, the subordination of woman to man is part of the fall, not part of creation and that his interpretation of Genesis 3 falls into the mutualist category.10

KEPHALĒ AS SOURCE OR ORIGIN

If head as “ruler” or “one in authority” is too problematic, how about “source” or “origin”? This is a popular choice for the meaning of kephalē, but it too has its problems. It works quite well for the God-Christ relation. It even works quite well for the man-woman pairing if we focus only on the Genesis 2 story of creation and take it to mean a more literal understanding about the idea that woman comes from man as we see in the story. However, I have some reservations even with this, and mainly because I think that this view is still subconsciously taking into account 1 Corinthians 11:7-9, where man is claimed to have a closer proximity to Christ, which is then read back to verse 3, where Christ is the “head” of man—because man is the image and glory of God. In addition to this, we don’t have a creation account where Christ is the source of man alone in the same way that God could be understood to be the source of Christ or man the source of woman. When “man” is taken out of something, it is not out of Christ but out of the dust of the earth. Moreover, the whole Godhead created humanity, male and female. For these reasons I think source also has problems if we understand this in relation to creation.

There could well be some connotations of source, however, if we take 1 Corinthians 11:3 to be referring solely to husbands and wives, as this then lifts the whole concept of head out of the creation framework and places it into the framework of the mystical union of marriage. This accords well with the parallel passage in Ephesians 5, where we know that Paul views the marriage relation as an analogous relationship to Christ and the church. This is why I have a preference for the concept of head in 1 Corinthians to be read in the light of a marriage relation. We will come back to the implications of this in chapter five.

FIRST PRINCIPLE AND SOURCE OR ORIGIN

The truth is that we are not sure what Paul meant precisely in this context. He could have meant something like God is the first principle of Christ. This is an ancient concept meaning the principle from which something else is derived (so something like source) and is a possible translation. First principle would resonate with the idea of source but without the idea of one thing existing before another. It would also not mean that one thing had authority or rule over another. In the ancient world, something could be a first principle of another while also having coexisted. If one thing were the first principle of another, it would have told the readers more about what the two things share in terms of their essence and how they are related than their sequence. For Chrysostom, for instance, this tells us that they share an essence and are in perfect union.11 The difficulty for a modern reader, though, is that if we say something is the first principle of another, we do not understand it in this way and we lose the concept of perfect union.

In addition to this, we still have to acknowledge that all our analogies pose problems. God is not the first principle of Christ in exactly the same way as we could say that Christ is to the husband or the husband to the wife. We have to acknowledge that whatever is happening in verse 3, Paul has a metaphor in mind where one belongs to and relates to another in a particular fashion, which he describes in terms of a head that is normally attached to a body!

SUMMARY OF KEPHALĒ

How was this read closer to the time of Paul? Chrysostom, while admitting that it is difficult to settle on one definition absolutely let alone apply this definition both to God and humanity, settles on the “the notion of a perfect union and the first principle” with respect to the God-Christ relation.12 The idea of God as the first principle means that he is understood as providing the ground of being of the Son and the Spirit, but should not be understood in any sense of precedence or sequence. The Father is not there first! The Son is from all eternity, and the persons of the Trinity are coequal and coeternal. Furthermore, Chrysostom goes on to warn against applying the relation of the Godhead directly to the husband-wife relationship because when applied to the Godhead the notions are too high for us to grasp, “the union is surer and the beginning more honorable.”13 The relationship of Christ to God is not the same as the husband to Christ and the wife to the husband. We may not simply read off from the language of “head” when applied to God-Christ and apply it first to Christ-husband and then to husband-wife, even though we may draw out some similarities. If we move away from creation, some problems are resolved because we do not then have to explain why Christ is related only to man as his head. Instead, we place the head metaphor in the realm of the marriage relation so it will tell us more about to whom we are closely connected rather that from whom we are derived.

Fathoming the meaning of kephalē is a complicated task. Whatever we decide, we should remember Anthony Thiselton’s point that Paul deliberately chooses what Thiselton calls a “polymorphous concept.”14 In other words, this term has multiple meanings from context to context. “We should also remember that, in keeping with the rest of Paul’s theology, and particularly the theology expressed in 1 and 2 Corinthians, neither man nor woman [or husband or wife] whatever their position, would be able to distance themselves from a full identification with the crucified Christ.”15 Paul is correcting the Corinthians’ mistakenly hierarchical theology of marriage and male and female with his own teaching on mutuality and interdependence. His language of the head makes the most sense when we see it in a marriage context in relation to whom we may be related to in the closest possible union. My opinion is that what Paul had in mind here has a meaning that is closer to “cornerstone,” that is, some kind of foundational supporting relationship which ties in with his use of headship language in relation to husbands and Christ. Not only does this avoid a whole host of problems associated with mapping this verse onto a creation theology, but it also renders 1 Corinthians 11:3 entirely irrelevant to unmarried men and women who do not relate to anyone in this fashion. We will delve more deeply into this idea in relation to pictures of marriage in the New Testament in chapter five.

WOMEN’S SUBMISSION IN 1 CORINTHIANS 14

Another difficult passage for women that occurs in 1 Corinthians comes at the end of chapter 14. Here it appears that Paul commands married women to remain silent because they are subordinate to their husbands (as the law says), and that because of this they should not speak in church but should save their questions for their husbands when they get home. This message, coupled with the head coverings passage in 1 Corinthians 11 seems to confirm Paul’s misogynist views!

However, if we understand Paul in conversation with the bullying, domineering men of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 11, we can easily see a similar pattern here. The same men who have implemented head coverings for the wives in the Corinthian church (because their husbands are the image and glory of God, and the wives are the glory of their husbands) are mandating that they should be silent and in submission in the public assembly. Paul, however, comes out strongly against this, “What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?” In other words, he rebukes them for their misinterpretations and practices that demean women while claiming that they have the “word of God.” They are not the ones to decide that this is what the law says. Paul, the apostle, releases women to pray and prophesy in public along with the men, as he has just explained. They are not to sit in silence but participate equally with their husbands.