…we have no such custom…

1 Corinthians 11:16

Apparently some Christian women at Corinth were praying and going about in public with uncovered heads, thus violating the cultural norm of the day.  Paul’s culture required all respectable women to wear a veil over their head in public as a sign of subjection to male authority, a practice still observed in many Middle Eastern cultures today.  Women who went about in public with their heads uncovered were seen as disrespectful renegades; some who did so were prostitutes, who were also known to go so far as to have their heads shaved.

The apostle addresses this controversy by first commending the church at Corinth for keeping inspired apostolic traditions, i.e., the New Testament (11:2; cf. 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; 2 Tim. 3:16-17).  Yet they still needed to understand God’s arrangements concerning authority in the home and in the church (11:3).  In the church (“in the Lord”), men and women each have their respective gender roles and depend on each other (11:11-12).  These gender roles are even seen in nature, in that women’s generally longer hair helps define them as female while men’s generally shorter hair helps define them as male (11:14-15).  Therefore, they must not ignore their respective gender roles as defined by the customs of their culture, which in Paul’s culture was the societal norm that women cover their heads while praying and in public (11:10a).  Men who wore a veil in public and while worshiping would appear effeminate in that culture, thus showing disrespect to God by showing disrespect for his gender and its divinely appointed role (11:2, 7).  In like manner, women who chose to worship and go out in public with heads uncovered would violate these cultural standards and thus show disrespect to God by disrespecting her gender and its divinely appointed role (11:5-6), that being that they were made from man and were created for the man (11:8-9; cf. Gen. 2:18-23).

This is true even though God did not command the universal church to observe these particular societal customs.  We know this first because Paul directs the Corinthian church to “judge for yourselves” whether it is proper for Christian women within these cultural parameters to pray with their heads uncovered (11:13).  If God’s will was for all Christian women to cover their heads while praying or in public, he would not have told Christians to “judge for themselves” concerning the matter.  Secondly, Paul had pointed out nature’s universal teaching about the difference between men and women as shown by their differing hair lengths, saying that women’s long hair, rather than man-made head coverings, “is given to her for a covering” by nature, i.e., God (11:15).  Finally, Paul says that neither he and his fellow apostles (“we”), nor “the churches of God,” have any custom similar to the societal standard of requiring respectable women to cover their heads while worshiping or praying.

Still, women in that culture who chose to wear a head covering and thus show proper respect for God’s pattern for male authority in the home and church would help the “angels,” angelos, literally “messengers.” (11:10b).  This refers not to celestial, supernatural messengers from God (cf. Lk. 1-2), but rather to human messengers (cf. 1 Kings 19:2) who proclaim God’s message to the world, i.e., preachers within the church (cf. Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18; et al) who were trying to bring the gospel to the lost without presenting a stumbling block that would turn them off to Christ.

God’s will was basically this:  “Even though there is no divine command for all Christian women worldwide to wear head coverings while praying, don’t flout cultural norms and offend people by refusing to wear the head covering like no one in this culture but the prostitutes are doing.  If you do, this will make people non-receptive to the gospel we messengers of Christ are preaching to them.”  This fits the context of how he had just told Corinth to give up personal freedoms if said freedoms prove to be stumbling blocks to salvation for those around them (8-10; especially 10:31-33).

In like manner, Christians today must be willing to give up our own rights to do or not do this or that without sin if we see that our exercising of those rights offends others and thus opens the possibility of turning them away from Jesus.

— Jon