Cheryl Schatz

Craig, you are right in picking that up. I see Paul use “head” in three different ways in 1 Cor. 11. That is part of what makes it so hard to follow, but it really makes sense to me. The key meaning of “head” in the passage is source as that is what Paul starts with and he later goes on to make it unmistakable by saying that the woman came through the man (her physical source) but that all men now come through a woman (the man’s physical source).

Into the mix Paul introduces cultural and spiritual shame. It was a cultural shame for a woman to be bareheaded, yet it was a spiritual shame for a man to wear on his head the symbol of the shame of his sin. After all coming to God in apparent humility (needing a covering) dishonors our spiritual covering. Because Paul goes back and forth between the real physical head to a metaphorical head and back and forth between cultural shame and spiritual shame, the passage has been notorious for its difficulty in following Paul’s thought. One thing that can help is to look for the connection. What “connects” man to Christ, what connects the woman to man and what connects Christ to God? The thing that connects them all in a similar way is called a “head”.

Then think how a man is so connected to his metaphorical “head” that the connection can cause shame by what he does (i.e. he wears a symbol of sin when his sin has been taken care of by his “head”). Think about how a woman is so connected to her “head” that what she does can shame him (by choosing to honor Christ by removing her symbol of shame, she can dishonor her other “head” with her bare head which is a cultural symbol of an adulterous woman).

Then think about how man and woman is so connected together than one is honored as source in the beginning and the other is honored as source for all men now (think mother’s day).

Then think about how our connectedness that makes us as having an interdependence with each other leads us to look beyond each other to the one who we are connected to as our original source and through whom everything came into being and through whom all holds together.

I think that the idea of connectedness is very strong in the passage and our connectedness comes both through our origin with one humanity and not two humanities, our needing each other and needing the gifts that God brings through each gender, must bring us to the conclusion that we need each other so that neither gender is disregarded just as neither gender is to be elevated as “lord” and sole source. For our sole source is to be traced back not to the first man, but to the last Adam who is our God and creator of all.

So if you ponder on how each part and each verse shows the connection between two things that shows how honor and shame can be a byproduct of how we handle the connection, it might help.

I find Paul to be one who looks at a problem from every angle possible thus he uses each meaning for “head” in the passage and by looking at all angles his argument becomes bullet-proof and brilliant. Paul was indeed a “deep” thinker who used his skills in argument to trace everything back to God.