Cheryl Schatz

Now concerning the head covering of 1 Cor. 11, the quote you gave shows a great misunderstanding regarding the spiritual nature of the head covering. The head covering was worn because they felt that because of their sin they were unworthy to look upon God. It was worn because of the shame of their sin. John Lightfoot brings this out in his commentary and he has issued a challenge for anyone to prove that the head covering meant subjection. It did not. The man had no other cultural mandate to wear the covering except for the shame of his sin. Is this honoring to Jesus who died to take away our sin? We should all shout “Of course not!”

There were many misunderstandings of Paul and these misunderstandings made Paul hard to understand. We should not take grave misunderstandings from early church fathers and use them as the test for orthodoxy or for the issue of women in ministry. The thing that really gets is puzzling – that those who believe that Paul was fighting for women to have a head covering as a mandate from creation now no longer force women to cover. Is it a Biblical mandate from creation or not?