Both progressive and traditional types of Christians blatantly disobey the Bible... and this example about men and women proves it.

And so in following up with my previous reply to this post I would be interested in discussing the 1 Cor 11 text in an effort to ascertain authorial intent. It will probably be a long thread and many will just blast their opinions having not read my previous posts about exegesis but some of us could attempt to stay on the path of not responding to immature rhetoric or accusations about the motives of all those in Christendom that disagree with a particular view and just stick to the task of presenting our case.

Your position is the easiest to present up until the last sentence. Then it must be applied to a custom of "not wearing coverings" or a custom of wearing coverings which makes all the difference in the world as to authorial intent.

It would be my leaning that Paul meant the latter. Which would have resolved this issue but somehow didn't. Now I have the burden to present a persuasive hermeneutic as to why I think this last statement is referring to the custom of head coverings not being a law or burden to be enforced upon the churches.

I will have to work on that, because this sort of thing takes work if done correctly. Maybe I can use this for one of my future school projects.

And I should add that I have a theory, but I have to be willing to admit it if I discover that my theory cannot be supported or is wrong. That is the whole purpose of the exercise. Hermeneutics is the science and art of interpretation. If I discover that I was wrong about my interpretation of that statement (If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.) I have to admit it, and yet there is still more to discuss because the art of interpretation requires that we consider everything that Paul has taught and also everything Jesus taught and the whole tenor of the New Testament and the Holy Spirit that leads us into all truth.

3 But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man,

My husband is my head covering

Do you wear a doily at church?

nope i can not lift my husband over my head

Scholars abound on this platform, but it's encouraging to encounter honest ones now and then among all the supercilious dictatorial text authoritarians. And however superfluous that might sound, I think it necessary in illustrating the reality of the general environment we often find ourselves in when visiting the study forum in particular.

So, believing that it is your character to offer an honest, well thought out, and impromptu response rather than any expertly rehearsed answer whipped out of a pre-stocked arsenal, I'm interested in reading your opinion of the character of Paul's statement.
That is when Paul offers this (is it a hypothesis? I can't ascertain exactly), "If it is a shame that a woman prays with her head uncovered, then let them be shorn." I see it as uncharacteristic of Paul that he would order or even authorize the (holding down and?) shaving a woman's head if she is found praying without a head covering, but this seems to be what an alarming bulk of commentators insist, even if only implicitly, to be the case. Again, the exact characteristic of this statement currently alludes me. I just know there's something there I'd like to distinguish for a better understand of Paul's actual intent.

I have limitations. I write that because I have been doing this for 15 years now. I have heard it all. Maybe I will be suprised... but honestly, I see a road to now where. I am just being honest.

I have never seen it done. I have never see someone be unbiased.
Okay.
There. There is a problem. You claim that it is "edifying" . To who? Is it really edifying to dissent , to go against Tradition, the Church, the saints before us? Discovering authorial intent... that is to say that you think those before you do not know. Silly to me to think that people in 2022 are going to know better Greek, context, etc. The rules you put down suit the dissenter.

Already, here in this thread, fireballs have been dropped, even by you, on the Church Fathers, on Tradition. Do you want me to put up the quotes? You see. Your one sided rules that suit the dissenter.

Why can we not talk about motive? You are saying that you wish to disagree with Tradition... and do not question the motive. Strange.
Yes.
There is where you make a mistake. It is not a law. It is not a burden. You just say it is. You force that description on it, & completely mischaracterize it. You characterize it that way so that you can compare it to the Law, circumcision , etc. BUT, it is a worship practice, like the Lord's Supper, or the custom of meeting on the Lord's day /first day of the week. It is no more a law or burden than taking up the offering or praying the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, or Saturday. Some do. Some do not. All should

BUT, okay. We can try... but I am not so sure about sticking to those... biased rules, LOL.


Obviously, I like art. Here is my depiction of John the Baptist. But, your "art of interpretation" idea. I do not much like.

art - the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination

You propose a human endeavor, by you own definition... and maybe divorced of the Holy Spirit. For, if Tradition, the Church Fathers, are wrong, then they sinned. Bore false witness. In fact, blasphemed the Holy Spirit. What a charge ! What a judgement ! I dare not think that without evidence of such sin. And, it would have to be layers of sin, for it would be a conspiracy that even the laity participated in. This, this needs to be explained.

If you accept head covering as liturgy, and stop demanding that it is "law" and "burden"... you would not need to play sock puppets with the NT.

When you have a room of 15 people who meet regularly, say in a living room, you get to know each other. People learn what their gifts are and how to minister with them. It's a place where you can make mistakes and learn from them. No big deal. And the Lord inhabits this and heals this and unites this.
And when one is brought into the kingdom, broken, scared, hurting, and alone, Jesus embraces them through us.
We are a hospital that comforts with the comfort we have received. We are a family into which an orphan is adopted. We are a school for a student to learn. And we are an army, sent to rescue others from the enemy. We are the worship that our Savior God so richly deserves.

Paul was simply showing that an uncovered head would be as shameful as a bald head on a woman. It actually strengthened his argument for head coverings. Women with shaved heads in those days were prostitutes.

Perhaps, but I would think that Paul would make that clear with a statement rather than lead in with the question? "Is it shameful that a woman prays without a head covering?" This strikes me somewhat as a rhetorical question that is followed by an absurd answer. In one of my classes I used absurdity as literary technique of which another student objected to by reason of its absurdity to which our professor promptly defended as a legitimate tool in affective communication to demonstrate, well, the actual absurdity of the idea.

I don't think you understand my meaning by " hurling fireballs of judgment upon the heads of all those who disagree with us."

This is like when one suggests that those who don't agree with our view will be burned up like the chaff when Jesus comes back.

Saying I don't agree with everything that the early church writers said is not hurling fireballs of judgment upon their heads.

And tradition is not authoritative to me.

Also I do not consider the collection of early church writers to be authoritative. Their value is that they are a small sampling of writings that have survived. They tell us what these writers thought about things. They give us a peek at what a small number of writers from the time thought about things they wrote about. That is all.

And if you think they all agreed you have not read them. You quoted the ones that agreed with head coverings but not the ones that did not. They did not all agree about this or anything else. Most of their writings in extant was arguing with someone else about something.

They were not church "fathers" in the sense that they were "Popes" or running the church world wide. They had local influence and there was a HUGE vast number of church leaders who did not leave writings.

What if you were to take the list of authors and their extant writings from these early church writers and you were to randomly pick out the same number of authors and random equivalent pages from their writings and nothing else.

And then imagine being 1800 years in the future and that was all the writings from our day that survived. Then reading them and trying to ascertain what the church of our day believed. You would not have the whole picture. All you could say is that this is what these writers believed but you could not be sure about what all the others believed who did not leave writing samples.

And you would be wrong to call them the Church Fathers as if they were the main Church leaders of our day. They would just be random samples of surviving text from our time.

That is why I prefer the term "some early church writers and examples that have survived" rather than "Church Fathers." As this can cause the unlearned to draw the wrong conclusions as to the authority of these writers' opinions.

The "destination of the road" would simply be to practice presenting a reason for an interpretation using the common rules of exegesis and hermeneutics. Learning how to a good job of that would be the value in the exercise.

I don't consider it a waste of time if someone does not agree with my presentation. I benefit by thinking about the text and becoming familiar with it through the analysis process and it then sticks with me.

I don't think anyone has ever changed their minds about their interpretation from one of these threads on CC. I would not be so naïve as to expect that. LOL. But part of the reason is because so few do a very good job of presenting their case with scriptures and they resort to emotional rhetoric.

Of course we are biased. I become more biased over time as I learn more. But I can know the difference between a strong opinion bias and a settled theological bias based on previous study. My strong opinions are open to change with proper exegesis but proper exegesis will either support my bias or expose it as a faulty.

Personally I don't have any problem believing anything the Bible says. I noticed there are some things that people will shy away from, but not me. I mostly just follow the school of thought that the modern church doesn't really know much then I develop theolgies based exclusively off of the Protestant canonized Bible that I believe the early church espoused.

I think the main problem with most modern day scholars is they are afraid to break from traditional interpretations.

You did not respond to this above. Please do not hijack the thread. Before you start the game, with one sided rules and a stacked deck, please respond.

I wear hats. Some guys wear a baseball cap everyday. At church, according to Paul's instruction, the man should take his cap off. This is not a burden. This is not a law. It is a worship practice. It is liturgy. A woman is to cover her head. Why is that a problem for her? Why must she insist that it is a law, a burden? I answered that in my last post.

It is the meaning behind the practice that is railed against. My evidence of this: the deconstruction moves to the Traditional understanding of 1 Corinthians 14:31-38, 1 Timothy 2:11–15, 1 Timothy 3:1-5 , Titus 1:5-9, Titus 2:2-5, Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18-20, and 1 Peter 3: 1-6. You see it. You know it. Don't pretend otherwise.


There is this below in your way, and much more. I will not repeat the Protestant leaders.

And if you are one of those that would claim that Emperor Constantine institutionalized Christianity and made it the awful mess that it is, what do you think of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Apostolic_Church

The Armenian Orthodox Church claims apostolic succession through the apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus (Jude). They claim the apostles showed them their liturgy. What evidence do you have that they are wrong when their women veil, that they misunderstand? They have been doing this since the time of the apostles. Yet, you, now say they are wrong to impose this "law", this "burden" and they got it backwards.

You quoted yourself, and accused yourself of hijacking the thread you started.

That's good for a chuckle....

I love a good chuckle too. But your are chuckling at your own misunderstanding of my words, not actually what I wrote. Though you and me both know you are pretending. I quoted myself so as to show what was NOT responded to. I think you know that.

Now, you are treating me like progressives treat Paul, pitting his own words against each other. It is like some believe Paul to be delusional, and he argues with himself. Sometimes what moderns do in this is indeed a sock puppet show not based in reality.
If you claim to to be a champion of such, don't use illogic in an effort to call out what you pretend is illogic, LOL.

A little banter and jostling is fine. But seriously, please respond to my concerns.

I already responded. I don't agree with these writers who think that women must wear head coverings.

I don't agree that Tradition is authoritative. I am against most traditions and won't have anything to do with them.

If I were to walk in a church where women were all wearing head coverings I would turn around and leave.

Why? Because t gives me bad vibes of "ignorance, cult, legalism, outward ceremony substituting inward reality, bad hermeneutics, leaven of Pharisees" feelings.

You could say I was biased but I would say I am Spirit lead and I will not ignore that inward check. The reason that many are deceived is because they ignored that inner check. I've been there and I learned my lesson. I don't do that anymore.

I don't believe Paul taught that men should take off their hats in church. That is just Bad hermeneutics.

I don't care if men wear hats indoors or in the place where we meet together. Neither do the people I fellowship with. They are not of that older culture who had those rules. I would take off my cowboy hat in church so that it does not block someone's view sitting behind me. See that has the right motive God is interested in. Not some formal liturgy that means whatever you say it means but is questionable as to whether God agrees with that meaning.

Jesus taught about prayer. He never once told women to cover their heads. And this following parable reveals the heart of faith He wants to find when He returns and there is no hint that this widow is covering her head to be heard from on high. Luke 18

1Now he told them a parable on the need for them to praya always and not give up.b 2“There was a judge in a certain town who didn’t fear Goda or respect people. 3And a widowa in that town kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’

4“For a while he was unwilling, but later he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or respect people, 5yet because this widow keepsa pestering me,A I will give her justice, so that she doesn’t wear me outB by her persistent coming.’ ”

6Then the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7Will not God grant justicea to his electb who cry out to him day and night?c Will he delayd helping them?A 8I tell you that he will swiftly grant them justice. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes,a will he find faith on earth?

He does not say "will He find women covering their heads when they pray?" He is looking for FAITH and not just any kind of Faith, THIS KIND of faith that calls out to God to deliver justice and avenge her of her adversary. There is a lot to say about this but it has NOTHING to do with whether the woman is following the liturgy of head coverings. Let's keep the focus on the things that matter to God and not those that men think are important.

The problem with most liturgies in church history is that they are liturgies not Spirit and Truth. Not even the Lord Supper was supposed to have been turned into the ceremony liturgy that the ancient traditions turned it into.

And that is the only ordinance besides full immersion baptism that I believe in observing. But I don't like how it is observed today. Tradition and liturgy has made it something other than the fellowship meal observance it started as.

So I reject all these traditions and liturgies and outward ceremonies and costumes and man made efforts to feel religious. This is why Pentecostalism is spreading throughout the world. People are drinking from the fountain of the Holy Spirit and giving up liturgy for reality.

This woman's many prayers have gone up to God as a sweet smelling savor and all the angels in heaven love to hear her sing and rejoice at the many sinners that have repented. She has reached more people with the Gospel than most men will ever be able to talk to. She has impacted the world in our day and millions repent and give their WHOLE HEARTS to Christ through her ministry. And she needs NO Head Covering when she prays! Let's keep it real, follow the Holy Spirit and keep the mind of Christ.

'Cause once I was broken
But you loved my whole heart through
Sin has no hold on me
'Cause your grace holds me now

Healed and forgiven
Look where my chains are now
Death has no hold on me
'Cause your grace holds that ground
And your grace holds me now
Your grace holds me now
Your grace holds me now
Your grace holds me now, oh

So here I stand
High in surrender
I need you now
Hold my heart
Now and forever
My soul cries out

(Hillsong United)

I didn’t misunderstand anything.