1Cor 11:2-3 - Creation Order

2-3 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife {Greek gune. This term may refer to a woman or a wife, according to the context} is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.


Starting a new line of thought, but still dealing with the lack of submission to God through self-control and obedience, Paul begins to deal with the conduct of men and women in the church. They have heard and received instruction ("traditions" does not mean historic customs) from Paul on many things but for this next instruction he wants to be sure they start at square one. He starts with the underlying Biblical principle upon which his practical instruction will be based.

This is not going to be about establishing rules for veils and hats for women in church. Rather, it is going to be about the order of creation that God established and maintains in human relationships - specifically between husband and wife.

Everybody who ever entered the creation, up to and including Jesus Christ - God in the flesh and second Person of the Holy Trinity - is under authority. The buck stops at God, who is self-existent and answers to no one. How Jesus could be both unanswerable God and submitted to the Father at the same time I leave to the theologians. It had something to do with His office and purpose - but I am not the one to extrapolate it all.

And so we will try to avoid getting caught up in the twin errors of the feminist/male chauvinist and the cultural conformity/separation debates. It is not about rights but about duties. It is not about culture, but the order of creation reapplied and reinforced to the church. The guiding principle in avoiding all that emotion and in generating more light than heat is to step back and ask what Paul is telling us in the text.

What concept is being communicated by the word "head"? The context clearly refers to lordship and the honour due to the hierarchy established by God Himself. True, in Corinth the immediate context does indeed refer to the custom, or the cultural practice of women covering themselves as a sign of respect and submission to their husbands. But the important thing is not the outward means by which respect and submission are shown so much as the conformity in heart to the order that God has ordained. A woman in our culture may indeed go hatless and without a veil - even hairless - and still have the attitude of heart that worships and obeys God through a proper assumption of the role God ordained for her, which is to respect, obey and support her husband.

Again, the means of the observance are, in and of themselves, nothing. It is the underlying belief and the intent of the heart that God is concerned with - and that Paul is always emphasizing in matters "indifferent". Clothing and hairstyles are indifferent. Respect and submission as God ordained them are not.