Tag: 1 Corinthians

Where do the various topics in 1 Corinthians come from?

Q.  My Sunday school class has just started studying 1 Corinthians. I have your study guide and I agree that the questions Paul addresses are of two sorts, some that were asked in person and some that were asked in a letter (that we do not have today).

My question is, what are the clues to do the sorting? Before your book I just thought that the division came about halfway through 1 Corinthians where Paul says, “Now for the matters you wrote about.”  I thought that everything after that was addressing the questions from the Corinthians’ letter, and everything before that was addressing the questions delivered in person.  But your book does not sort them that way, so I was wondering what clues I might be missing.

Here is how my study guide to Paul’s Journey Letters divides up the material in 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians Outline
(click to enlarge)

You’ll see that I distinguish between “things Paul heard about” and “things the Corinthians wrote about,” rather than between “things the Corinthians asked about in person” and “things the Corinthians asked about by letter.”  This helps account for the way I sort out the material a little bit differently from the way you are used to.

I agree that it’s a perfectly straightforward reading of the epistle to understand that starting at the point where Paul says, “Now for the matters you wrote about,” he is answering questions that the Corinthians have asked him by letter.  That’s really the only explicit indication he gives of the distinction between where the questions have come from.  So why do I feel that two of the topics he addresses after this point (head coverings and the Lord’s Supper) actually aren’t things the Corinthians have asked about?

It’s because of the way Paul characteristically introduces topics as he takes them up in the letter.  Paul explains when he begins to address his first topic, divisions in the church, that “some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.”  Paul is in Ephesus, across the Aegean Sea from Corinth, and apparently some servants of a woman named Chloe (presumably a member of the community of Jesus’ followers in Ephesus) have just returned from Corinth with disturbing news of problems in the community there that weren’t mentioned in the recent letter to Paul.  So these aren’t so much matters that the Corinthians have asked about verbally via these servants; rather, they are matters that the servants have reported back to Paul.

And so Paul also says, as he takes up his next topic, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.”  And since he does not refer to “the matters you wrote about” until after he has addressed his next two topics, lawsuits within the community and believers going to prostitutes, it appears that these are matters he has heard about from Chloe’s servants as well.

As Paul does take up the topics from the Corinthians’ letter, he characteristically introduces each one with a standard formula, peri de, translated “now for” or “now about” in the NIV.  This is how he introduces his discussions of abstinence within marriage, whether to get married, food offered to idols, spiritual gifts, and the collection for the poor.  Paul does not begin his discussion of the resurrection with this formula, but he nevertheless appears to be responding directly to their questions in what he writes on this topic.

By contrast, when Paul talks about the observance of the Lord’s Supper, he begins not with the formula peri de but once again by saying, “I hear that . . .”  He doesn’t say this specifically when introducing the topic of head coverings, but he does use language of “praise” that is reminiscent of his adjacent discussion of the Lord’s Supper.  Regarding head coverings he says, “I praise you for . . . holding to the traditions . . . but I want you to realize . . . ,” and about the Lord’s Supper he says, “I have no praise for you.”

These are admittedly subtle indications that are open to different interpretations.  Nothing in them absolute rules out the division of material that you’re used to.  But if we do take them as cues to where the topics in 1 Corinthians may have come from, they suggest that Paul is actually grouping his material somewhat thematically in places.  He ends his opening discussion of things he has “heard about” with a teaching against going to prostitutes, and begins his discussion of the matters the Corinthians “wrote about” with thematically related teachings on sexual relations within marriage.  And since the teaching about spiritual gifts has largely to do with their use in worship, he addresses two other topics related to worship, head coverings and the Lord’s Supper, just beforehand, even though they are matters he has presumably “heard about” rather than matters the Corinthians have “written about.”  So in my understanding at least, Paul is not strictly dividing the two types of topics into separate sections of his letter.

I hope this explanation is helpful.  And I wish you all the best as you teach this fascinating letter in your Sunday School class!

Does the Bible tell women to wear head coverings?

I recently learned about the “Head Covering Movement” through a post asking about it on the Christians for Biblical Equality Facebook group.  In response to this movement, I’d like to use this post to make clear what I believe is the biblical teaching on this subject:

Women who wear head coverings are choosing to do something that the Bible says they should always be free to choose.  

But they are not doing something that the Bible commands all women to do.

This is the conclusion of a detailed study I made some years back with Laurie C. Hurshman on Paul’s teaching about the subject of head coverings in 1 Corinthians.  The study was published in Christian Ethics Today and it was later reprinted in Priscilla Papers, the journal of Christians for Biblical Equality.  I will summarize it here; you can read the longer version at the link just provided.

Paul’s assertion that “a woman ought to have exousia over her head” is the key statement in his teaching about head coverings, and the meaning of the word exousia is the key to understanding this statement.

Paul uses this term frequently in 1 Corinthians in both the noun form (exousia) and in the impersonal and personal verb forms (exesti and exousiazein, respectively).  Everywhere else in the epistle, the term refers to authority exercised, specifically in the sense of “being able to do what one wishes.”  (In the examples below, the English translations of this term are italicized.)

– When correcting the Corinthians for going to temple prostitutes, Paul says, “I have the right to do anything” (probably quoting the Corinthians’ slogan back to them) “—but I will not be mastered by anything.  More literally, “I can do whatever I wish, but I will not have anything do whatever it wishes with me.”

–  In the very next section of the letter, when discussing the Corinthians’ belief that it was somehow spiritual to abstain from sexual relations in marriage, Paul writes, “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.”  Again, more literally, “the wife does not have the right to do whatever she wishes with her own body, nor does the husband with his body, but they are to share their bodies with one another.”

–  As Paul continues his discussion of marriage and addresses engaged persons, he says that the one who “is under no compulsion but has control over his own will” can postpone marriage.  Once more, the reference is to one who has the freedom and the power to do what he wishes with his own will.

–  When talking about food offered to idols, Paul acknowledges that those who are spiritually strong may eat this food without danger, but he immediately adds, “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak.”  Exousia here means the freedom and ability to eat the food without stumbling.

–  As Paul continues this discussion of food offered to idols, he uses the term exousia several times to describe his own rights as an apostle so that he can illustrate the principle of voluntarily giving up rights.  He asks, “Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us? . . . If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?” But then he adds that “in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights.”

– Finally, in his discussion of the resurrection, Paul describes how Jesus will destroy every opposing “dominion, authority and power.”  In this case exousia describes a being who exercises authority.

Since exousia means authority exercised consistently throughout 1 Corinthians, there’s no reason to believe that when Paul talks about head coverings, the same term means authority submitted to, without any qualifying language indicating that Paul has suddenly given it an opposite connotation.

No, Paul is saying that “a woman ought to have freedom of choice regarding her head,” as Gordon Fee translates this statement in his commentary on 1 Corinthians.  In other words, she should be free to wear a head covering, or not, based on her own convictions before God.

The NIV translation is quite accurate here:  “A woman ought to have authority over her own head.”  By contrast, in my view, translations like the ESV, “A wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head,” badly miss the point.  They turn a proclamation of freedom into a restriction.  (The words “a symbol of” appear nowhere in the Greek; they have been added by the ESV translators.)

So why did this question arise in Corinth in the first place?  I think it’s a reasonable deduction that if Paul is insisting on a woman’s freedom to wear a head covering if she wishes, it’s likely that the Corinthians were forbidding women to wear head coverings for some reason.  (There’s a fuller discussion of one possible reason in the published version of our study and in my guide to Paul’s Journey Letters.)

But whatever the reason, since the essential point of Paul’s statement is freedom, it would be just as incorrect today for anyone to require women to wear head coverings as it was for the Corinthians to forbid this.  The principle should be, as Paul wrote to the Romans about all such matters of individual conviction, “Each one should be fully convinced in her own mind.”

So if a woman feels that she is honoring God (and perhaps her husband, if she’s married) by wearing a head covering, no one should forbid or discourage this.  But if a woman feels that she does not need to do this in order to honor God (or her husband), no one should require or even encourage this.  But full information about the choice, based on a sound interpretation of the relevant biblical material, should be provided to all who are interested.

And then, “A woman should be free to wear a head covering, or not, based on her own convictions before God.”