The Case for Christian Headcovering

Join us here in Ogden this June for our annual new Christmas press conference. This year's theme, the War for Normal, features a great lineup of speakers as well as a whole bunch of fun events to make new friends with like-minded saints. Tickets are more affordable than ever this year with a brand new family pass covering your entire household for one low price. Head to newcrissonempress.com/20206 for tickets and more information. This episode is brought to you by Keep Wise Partners. Your partner for Small Business Finance and Accounting. Since the days of early church history, it was a common practice for women in worship to cover their heads. Across virtually all Christian denominations and centuries, the practice was observed, even in the Reformation, men like Luther and Calvin defended the practice. Luther said, "The wife should put on a veil just as a pious wife is duty-bound to help bear her husband's accident illness and misfortune on account of the evil flesh." End quote. Calvin, in his lengthy commentary on Corinthians, "Speaking of verse 10 in 1 Corinthians 11, "in the term power, authority in the ESV, "Paul means a token by which she declares herself to be under the power of her husband. "And it is a covering whether it be a robe or a veil or any other kind of covering." Calvin goes on to say that the vailing is not exclusively to be practiced by married women, but virgins also quote, "For Paul looks beyond this to God's eternal law, "which has made the female sex subject to the authority of men." In the Catholic Church, even in 1917, the Code of Canon Law stated that, "Man in a church or outside a church, "while they are assisting at sacred rights shall be bare headed. "Women, however, shall have a covered head and be modestly dressed, "especially when they approach the table of the Lord." But then, by 1983, that statement had been removed. So what happened? Did the church discover some new understanding of the exegesis for the biblical text of 1 Corinthians 11? Far from it. What happened was feminism. As R.C. Sproul Jr. once put it, quote, "I do know this that until 50 years ago, "every woman in every church covered her head. "What has happened in the last 50 years? "We've had a feminist movement." End quote. R.C. Sproul Sr. said, quote, "It does disturb me that the tradition of the women covering her head in America "did not pass away until we saw a cultural revolt "against the authority of the husband over the wife." End quote. In fact, Betty Friedan, or Betty Naomi Goldstein, as she was named a birth, was one among many Jewish feminist leaders who, along with the Marxist agenda, pushed for the removal of head coverings from Christian worship. Goldstein was, in fact, active in Marxist revolutionary organizations from a young age. But why head coverings? Because they were trying to erode the clear symbols of hierarchy, authority, and male headship inherent to the Christian faith. Goldstein pioneered the modern feminist movement, and she co-founded the National Organization for Women, now, in 1966, which passed a resolution only two years after its founding in 1968, demanding that women stop wearing head coverings in churches, due to the covering being a symbol of subjection. The statement reads, quote, "Whereas the wearing of a head covering by women at religious services is a custom in many churches. And whereas it is a symbol of subjection within these churches. Now recommends that all chapters undertake an effort to have all women participate in a national unveiling by sending their head coverings to the task force chairman immediately." At the spring meeting of the task force on women in religion, these veils will then be publicly burned to protest the second class status of women in all churches." It wasn't new exegesis, but new Jewish Marxist feminism that brought about the societal move away from head coverings in worship. Contrary to this modern egalitarian slop, this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, 2 through 16. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything, and maintain the traditions even as I deliver them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. "Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head. Since it is the same as if her head were shavened. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head." For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God. But woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him. But if a woman has long hair, it is her glory. For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God. End quote. If you believe the hype, what I just read out loud is insanely difficult as a passage to understand. Something of a total mystery for us, something leaving us with almost no idea of what it is that Paul would have us do. Strange, we tell ourselves, that God would give us such confusing instructions. Oh well, moving on. Now this is, frankly, nonsense. Sure, there have been differences of interpretation here and there, but overall, the central requirement of this passage in terms of its practical application has been quite readily understood for centuries and centuries of Christian practice. And further, the central reasoning of the text is not opaque or impossible for us to understand, but it's actually quite clear. My hypothesis is that we have pretended that this is an extremely difficult passage to understand, to excuse our modern practice of disobeying it because we are embarrassed or offended by it. A modern practice of disobedience borne, in other words, of feminism, rebellion, and sexual chaos. But the central demand of the text that women wear a head covering over their hair, at least in the context of gathered worship, is so plain that it was unanimously practiced in virtually every corner of the Christian faith until modern times. Thertullian, an early church father, born about a century after Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, wrote a treatise around the year 200, called on the Vailing of Virgins, where he argued that unmarried women ought to wear a head covering and not just married women. That was the only real debate at his time, not whether or not they should cover their heads at all, but whether Virgins should as well. He specifically noted that the Christian women in Corinth continued to cover their heads to that day, including the unmarried women, the Virgins. So apparently, they understood what Paul meant. Likewise, Clement of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, William Tindale, Arrasmus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Bunyan, John Gil, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, H.A. Ironside, AWP, Martin Lloyd Jones, and R.C. Sproul all agreed that Paul here requires women to wear a covering on their heads at the minimum in gathered worship. Now those names alone, and that's quite a truncated list, by the way, bring us from the second century to the 21st century. Now, we don't arrive at the truth on the basis of a popular vote. We don't determine what the scriptures teach on the basis of popular vote, but my question is simply this. Are we wiser today in the scriptures than these men? Have we grown wiser in our understanding of the text than all of them? Did we discover the secret and hidden key that unlocks the meaning of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 11 that all of them missed? Our answer is no. They were right, the moderns were wrong. And so in this episode of the Kings Hall podcast, we'll talk about why we think head coverings are a biblical practice and why the church should return to them. This episode of the Kings Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world. Well, welcome to this episode of the Kings Hall podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Eric Conn, joined today by the one the only, the very focused, Brian Sovey. Oh, it's focused. Pastor. Mr. Pastor Brian Sovey, that's the only thing I actually answered to. I mean, you've got a fancy cup here. I've got a fancy cup. We're ready to rock. We're locked in water, water, uh, fascinating conversation today, Brian, on head coverings. Yeah. Uh, before we jump into that, we do have some exciting news. I was watching on the X feed. That David Edgerton, as we speak, is interviewing with Joel Weben. Yeah. About his new book, Reviling Wives, white nights and reviling wives. I mean, reviling wives are all the rage. They really are quite popular today. And I think everywhere. We can all agree for your Thanksgiving festivities for your Christmas festivities, it would be good to discuss for vying wives with absolutely everybody bringing up at the dinner table all the time. You know, that was a great point that you raised, mother-in-law. You know, there's a book that's coming out from New Christmas. It's about reviling. No, I don't mean you. And speaking of our topic today, head coverings, New Christmas impress is going to be releasing a book called Girl Cover Your Head. Girl cover your head. You put the picture right here of the cover. There you go. Some people are probably excited. We're not actually releasing that book, but we could. We could. It depends how excited they guess. Tell us if you want us to. Yes. So very excited about that. We also have the Boniface option. Yeah. Andrew Isker's book is coming out. Henceforth. Yep. Oh, both in preorder at newcrisonimpress.com. And if you put both of them in your cart and check out, it will automatically give you 15% off your whole order. We already have free shipping in the US. Great, great prices and great products. Premium hardcover additions to both of those books. And we're just, you know, we're very excited to get those in your hands. I think I don't know when this episode is going to come out, but those books will be shipping. I think right around the first week of December is when they hit our warehouse. We will have them out and shipping to you in time for Christmas. But during that preorder, we're doing that 15% off if you buy both promotion. So definitely pick up a couple copies there. Really. And like we said, if you're a pastor and you want to buy a bunch for your session or leadership sessions, wives, you're just saying, we're just saying. They should do. Yeah. Shoot us an email and we'll give you a special pastor's discount. But we do have already like if you buy five or more of pretty much any combination of our books, five books or more, you can use the code bulk 15 all caps BULK 15. That'll get you 15% off as well. We also have our new challenge coins and Alfred Pins. So there's a lot happening. There's a lot of swag to be had. There is. I think is what you're saying. Yep. You've worked hard, worn every hat, and now you're ready to expand your business. The only problem is that now you're stuck doing tedious bookkeeping. That's why we here at New Kristen Impress use key wise partners to help keep track of our finances. They provide outsourced bookkeeping, fractional CFO services, and strategic advisory for growing small businesses. Their goal is to help alleviate the burden of tracking your finances so that you can focus on business growth and community impact. Plus, they'll soon be launching their own small business friendly accounting software. So visit KeepWise.Partners to learn more today. 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With pure ingredients from their family farm and emission rooted in Christian excellence, they're building a new standard. Do you want to be chiseled like a Greek God? Visit AthosPerform.com and use code ncp20 for 20% off your next order. Ben, did you know that Jeff Bezos just bought another yacht for his third wife? Why would I need to know that? Because it just goes to show that we Christians are giving our money away to people who don't share our values like Jeff Bezos in Amazon. Look, I agree, but it's hard for Christian businesses to be found by Bible-believing Christians online. Well, I think I just found the solution. The Reformed Business Alliance is an online directory created to connect Christian consumers with Christian products and services while boosting businesses SEO. Wait, really that exists? It does. And all Christian business owners get a free month on the website. All you have to do is go to reformedbusinessalliance.com/ncp to claim your free month or 10% off a yearly subscription. I might start a business just to get on that site. We do have a lot of haters, Brian. We do. And I think that number will go down after this episode. Yeah, I think you're right. Headcoverings is a pretty uncontroversial topic. It is kind of interesting as we delve into that now. When I first was introduced to headcoverings, I was going to a Presbyterian church. And there were one family that headcovered. And it was my friend Anthony, shout out Anthony. He listens to this. Yeah. I like to call him Anthony. Just because, you know, really? Because he likes it. But I saw his family headcovering. And this is so silly. But I was like, are you guys from the Middle East? And he was like, no. No, we're from here. We're from America. And I'm like, yeah, but where were you born? Yeah, America. Also America. Here, that was kind of my first introduction. But I guess for the person who came out of like big, even normism, which I did. In just generic evangelical culture, this is, it's a culture shock. And so like, I guess just from the beginning, if you would just address that person, like, how do you typically talk to people in a way that you're like, look, just hear me out. Yeah, hear me out. This is actually a biblical thing. Yeah. It used to be normative. Totally. I usually start when I'm talking to somebody new, I say, like, look, this is not in the top five most important doctrinal issues today. I genuinely don't think so. I think there are bigger doctrinal issues that are at stake, but it is an important issue because it's important that we obey the Lord's commands when he gives them. So usually what I, what I do is just say, hey, this may sound weird to you. But if whether you were Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and I mean, like Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Southern Baptist, like pretty much charismatic, pretty much any Christian on the, on the average way over the average, like the vast majority threw through history, from the earliest recorded history in the early church through the middle of the 20th century, roughly, warhead coverings, at least in worship. And the East still does it. Correct. And to be clear, the covering, I'm not talking about a Muslim hijab that covers the face. We all with unveiled faces be holding the glory of the Lord are being transformed from one degree of glory to another into the same image. Christians don't cover their faces in worship. Went men and women. But yeah, women would wear a cloth veil or covering over their hair of some sort. And sometimes it looked like, you know, a smaller bonnet, sometimes it looked like a hat, sometimes it looked like a veil that would cover all the hair up. But with some variation of that was worn in nearly every Christian tradition. Now, there are little, there are variations in when some people in lots of Christian areas and cultures and times, they would wear them women would wear them all the time. Sometimes it would be a distinguishing characteristic that once you got married, you started wearing a head covering. Yeah, Calvin was one who said it's for virgins too, but they had to debate that. That was a debate because the text, it wasn't debated that they wore them though. No, in the text, there's some ambiguity because Paul uses a word for men and women that can be translated variously, man or husband and woman or wife. So the ESV that we read, it does translate at wife pretty consistently through most of the passage. But other translations will just translate it man or woman. So there's some variation, again, Tertullian around 204, wrote and said on the valing of virgins and he was speaking to this debate about married women only or virgins. He said, well, in Corinth, the virgins veil as well, 150 years later. So it seems like the tradition from Paul was that the virgins would veil as well. And the reason for this was as a symbol of authority, on their head, it relates to the hierarchy of authority from God to Christ in his incarnation, not Christ in his deity, but Christ in his incarnation in his humanity, then the man and then the woman. So it's a symbol of authority. It also relates as we'll see, I think, to the hierarchy, I believe, the hierarchy of glories, present and worship. Do you agree with Calvin? You know, you read one of the quotes, which is interesting, where he says there is a sense in which men in general rank hierarchically above women. And now we've heard a lot of stuff in our day, which is like the only man that a woman has to submit to as her own husband. But it seems like even the reformers were saying, actually, there's more to it at a societal level. Yeah, so a couple of distinctions, I think, are important to make. One, the answer, I think, is yes. There is a sense in which hierarchically or in terms of rank, God placed the man or man, man over the woman or women generally. And I'll explain that biblically, because it sounds in our day very controversial. But then there's another sense in which I would say we don't translate this into a requirement that all women have a duty that is identical to submit to all men. in the same way. - In the same way they would do the wrong thing. - No, in the same way they would do their husband. But we see that God made in the passage in 1 Corinthians 11, he does say that God made, that the woman was not made, or rather the man was not made for or from the woman, but the woman was made for and from the man. And from this distinction, he's talking about hierarchy and submission and glory and things like that. And so the woman was made to be a helper, a user connecto, a helper suitable to her husband, but then also societally in terms of their ontological nature, in terms of various offices of leadership in the world, God appointed that men would take roles of leadership normatively, not women. So this is true in the home. The husband is the head of his wife and she has a duty to obey and submit him. It's true in the church, God only appoints men to teach and hold authority in the church as elders and pastors. It's true in the state, God appoints men to rule as civil rulers and as Isaiah three teachers. It's a curse actually for women to rule over a nation. That's a curse. The fact that we see this in America today shows us how far we've come. We're actually engaging in self-cursing in that sense. So there are many men that women need to submit to in her life, not just her husband, when it comes to those different spheres. And then also just generally speaking, because of all of that, you see that societally, men have a preeminent role in terms of the leadership. When you bring all that together, the family, the church, the state, societally, culturally, men ought to and we're designed by God in their nature to have a role of leadership, of headship societally. So there are some nuance there, I think, biblically, especially that asterisk that like, it wouldn't follow that my wife is shopping at Walmart for something and some guy comes up to her and says, "Hey, shine my shoes." Is she bound by God to obey that command? No, no, of course not. But the male sheriff and the male judge and the male senator and the male pastor, there are many men in her life that she has a duty before God to submit to in different ways. And there's probably also a general disposition among women towards, you know, particularly like nobleman in their community and stuff like that, that you would want to honor. One of the things I think that is interesting as we get into sort of some of the feminism aspect with Betty Friedan, i.e. or a.k.a. Betty Goldstein. And you know, it's funny 'cause people were like, I'd like to see some sources. So I was sharing on acts, just like the Google search bar. Yeah, here it is. Like literally it's on Wikipedia. There's article after article after article. She was an active Marxist, Jewish Marxist. But this was actually one of the linchpins. I had been reading the theological arguments. And one of the linchpins for me was obviously the church history. But then realizing that this was a central cog in the feminist agenda. Yeah. That actually did change my mind quite a bit and say, wait a minute. Oh yeah. When you go, wait a second. So you're telling me that, and I'm going to give some nuance to this in a second, you're telling me that virtually all Christians until the 20th century had covered Christian women. And honestly until like the 50s and 60s. Yeah, like the mid 20th century. And that the driving factor was culture change related to feminism. So then following that, all of a sudden, you see all of these arguments that are like, oh, well, that passage is really about, it's about Bacchanalian rights, women putting their hair down. It's about women, female prostitutes in Corinth. It was about filling the blank with some cultural explanation. Or, oh, you know, actually Paul was just meeting the long hair is the covering, not that there's no additional covering needed. It's right there in verse 15. All of a sudden we come up with all these arguments. Or, oh, that was just for the exercise of special charismatic gifts that have since ceased. And so we no longer need head coverings. You know, like all of a sudden we come up with, that we come up with arguments to justify a practice, the practice of rejecting the head covering. And that's the direction that it seems to be working. That should give you, before you hear the arguments, even from the text, that should give you, it shouldn't settle it for you, but it should give you an op-reor-ice suspicion of the dismissal of the head covering. - What is also interesting too, I looked this up, and you know, again, I use Google. But I said, you know, like how many of the feminists were Jewish Marxists. And almost everything I read, including mostly from like Jewish sites, they were like at least two thirds of the people were Jewish. They were largely behind the feminist movement. It was highly Marxist. And that makes sense, because even going back to Frederick Engels, like one of the chief aims was to destroy households by destroying male authority. - Yeah. - So Engels, one of his first works is on patriarchy. - Yeah, and I mean, in this time period, you have to remember that we have with Marxism and Marxist Leninism and Marxism Leninism and communism. This was a time prior to the whole story of the Soviet Union and communist China, where there was in the zeitgeist, this brand new, we're doing scientific approach to politics. We're gonna fix all these problems politically with central planning and central power. It was a new utopian political religion that had not yet seen all the evidence that since, you know, obviously clearly dismantles and disproves this idea. And a lot of this was coming out of Eastern Europe and particularly Jews in Eastern Europe. - Yeah, the Bolshevik Jews. - There's a ton of connection, not all of them were Jews, but it's important to note that a significant portion of the leadership were Jews. - And it's worth stating too. I mean, you have Sigmund Freud. You have the psychological movement. Again, Jewish Marxists that infiltrate in America. You've got the Frankfurt School. All these movements that come to America, and this is why like Abbey Shryer in her book, and she's Jewish and she's pointing out this problem with bad therapy is the book, but like all the transgendarism, it came out of the same world. - Yes. FDR's cabinet was full of Eastern European immigrants who happen to be Jews. So we should call this this episode something like on the Jews and head coverings. It's basically where it's going. But culturally that's the soil that grew this movement and the fruit of the movement was cast off your head covering. Get rid of the head covering. And I think what's so interesting, we'll get into the text in a moment, but Paul is making an argument primarily from creation, from nature. Not from culture. - Yeah, he's making an argument from God's creation and what we learn about it in special revelation. From nature in God's creation and what we know about it from natural revelation and from the order of worship, propriety in worship, in gathered worship, and what we know about the angels and their relationship to worship. - So I think it's interesting, given that, that when you have a rebellion, especially sexual rebellion in the 1960s, head coverings have to go obviously, because they're admitting they're saying this is a sign of submission. - Yeah. - And we're acknowledging that. But then you also get things related to the passage, like the first thing that a woman does when she goes lesbian or some sexual degenerate path, what does she do? She gains a bunch of weight, she gets fairly fat, and then she shaves her head. - Yeah, when she dies, if you're remaining straggled, some violent shade of neon, which is not a mistake, like they know what they're doing, they're revolting against God's nature. - Yeah, Paul says, like, he basically says, judge for yourselves versus 13 onward. Is it right for a woman to prayer prophesy with her head uncovered? No. And then he goes in this argument from nature about a woman shaving her head, and men having shorter hair, women having longer hair. And people today, like when we come to this passage, we go, what is Paul talking about? This is so hard to understand. Some men have long hair, some women have short hair. Like how is this nature, men and women both grow hair on their head, so how does nature teach us this? And we're pretending like we don't understand what he means. We understand what he means. Generally speaking, in culture, men have had shorter hair than women. And women's hair has been considered a glory in a beautiful thing. - I've actually read a lot on this time period because I remember getting in trouble on X for the men and long hair and women to wear hair all that. And people are like, well, Jesus had long flowing locks. And actually when you do the history and the research, you read through that time period, more than likely, Jesus had a short Roman style haircut. - That was the norm. That would have been the norm. It would have been very abnormal for him to have like hair to the middle of his back. - Jewish men typically had short hair. If they took a Nazarite vow, which was unusual, then they would grow their hair until the end of that vow, but it was supposed to communicate something is out of the ordinary. - Yeah, it's abnormal. - It was a strange thing. And the thing is like you pointed out, feminists get this. They get that if they want to rebel against their sexual nature, they should shave the sides of their head, get a dye haircut, diet an unnatural color. They should do all sorts of things to obscure God's creation, piercings and tattoos and all these things. What is that? It's basically saying, I hate God. I hate the way He made me and I am God. I can remake myself in whatever image I want. - It's interesting too. I totally agree. Even the B-Hive hairdo like done up, that came about as a way to put hat companies out of business because most women, like it was unthinkable even to go out in public without something on your head. And so even the development of hairstyles that would radically change how women approach society. - Yeah, and that's actually one of the, one of the aspects that people won't say they're well, Brian, it wasn't a unilateral tradition about head coverings. There was all very, all this variation. I would say, yes, there was variation in terms of when I can many Europe, Christian European nations, it would be normal for a young woman not to wear a head covering until she got married and then she would put on a wimple or a head covering. And that would signify culturally, this is a married woman versus an unmarried woman. So you have some variation. Yeah. Most of the time in many, many Christian traditions and places, the women would always have a head covering in public. But they would consider it unthinkable to go out without their hair covered into public settings. You get to the reformation and actually, yes, there is debate in the reformation. You have different like in France, for example, there was a group that they rejected the head covering like men would wear coverings on their head instead. Calvin did actually promote the use of head coverings for men, even like in preaching. And he said something like, you know, now a man ought to take his hat off for like to acknowledge the passage. But then he says something like if his head is cold like he, and there was no, there was no heat in the church. So like you kind of get it. There was at that time, definitely a question amongst a lot of the reformation and the Protestant Christians of what is Roman Catholic accretion and what is biblical? Yeah. And you did, I mean, you did have times when they would say like, well, the head covering is this or that. But even in spite of that, coming out of the reformation, the Protestant traditions maintained head covering, generally speaking on down into the 20th century. So it's just, there is, so there is not a lot that you can point at or there are many things you could point out where there'd be wide disagreement between Eastern Orthodox Roman Catholics, Baptist Presbyterians, Lutherans and Anglicans. Can you find them all agreeing on something? You got to be like, I better have pretty good evidence to like say that this is an unbiblical tradition or this is just optional. Why do you think it's so offensive, particularly to women today, the idea of wearing head covering? Because the sign still works. Like this is my theory is that people say, well, we shouldn't women don't need to wear a head covering because it was a cultural, it was a cultural expression of a timeless principle that men and women are different and that male head ship is real. And so at that time, head covering represented that it no longer does. So women don't need to wear it. They should just look feminine or do something else. And people point to like wedding rings as if wedding rings say any of the same things head coverings do. They don't. But I think we see in some of the hesitation that actually the symbol still works. It's still people get it when you say, especially if you give even five minutes of instruction on the passage and you say, ladies, you should wear a head covering as a symbol of authority on your head. And that means that the covering is saying everything under this covering is under the authority of the husband of male head ship properly expressed in in the world as God made it. People get that. It doesn't take long for them to understand it and a huge number of women, including Christian women today go, absolutely not. And then they call it all sorts of names. It's legalistic, which it's not legalistic to obey a command God gave. It's actually what we're supposed to do. It's legalistic. That's a precious. That's Muslim. That's Muslims don't cover their head. And men's tail. Muslims. It's actually the limit horribly. Christians don't. It's actually almost identical response when we talk about modesty. Oh, yeah. Same thing. Exactly. And it just tells you that no, this matters because the rebellion that is deeply ingrained in our culture in both men and women. But there is a type of rebellion that has been inculturated into women against God's design, nature and law that they, you immediately see the hatred of it, the rebellion against it when you attempt to impose the standard again, all of the sudden, oh, we do get what this means and we hate it. So I think, I think you're right. I think that it does, I think that it does deeply relate to the feminist indoctrination, some of the rejection and the histrionics around it too. I've told women before like, okay, what's the worst that's going to happen? Let's say that you were right and it was a cultural thing. What is the worst thing that's going to happen from you wearing a head covering? You look slightly cute a couple hours a week. I don't understand. In the act, like they're being enslaved, like literally enslaved. You just wear a head covering for like, it's what I don't get it. It doesn't, were you telling me the Eastern Orthodox church, like, if you come into the church and you don't have one, they won't let you in. But they have them there. They'll have them. Yeah. They would not let a woman into the worship service without head covering. Interesting. Nor would the Roman Catholics until the 20th century. Yeah. You couldn't. You would not be permitted. In fact, in most churches and Protestant churches as well, it would have been highly irregular for a woman to come in without a head covering of some sort. Now, you see this morph in a different expressions like the hat. And even in some places like black churches, it's still common for women, like older black Christian women. They wear still head cover. They wear hats. It's kind of morphed into this, like, you've got a whole fruit basket on your head. It's probably like a little, probably not saying everything the Apostle intended. The whole point is not to have a derby hat. You shouldn't have something on your head that says, like, look at me. It's, that's not the point. Yeah. But there's a vestigial preservation of the tradition, even there. Yeah. As we jump into the text, there's a few resources that I think are pretty good. One is Jeremy Gardner's book. That's pretty easy to read. It's accessible. I'm sure you'd probably recommend that. Yeah. It's very straightforward. The head covering movement website has a lot of resources that you can just download for free, like PDFs. Yeah. Answer's a lot of questions. It has links to several books, Leslie McFalls book. There are several books in resources that you could read. Okay. So people can check that out. But I guess if you would just kind of give me the summary, walk me through the text. Yeah. Sure. So you could, you could go, listen, I did a full sermon. It's like almost, it was actually the longest sermon I've breached in a while. It was three hours. Yeah. It was about 56 minutes or something like that. And usually I preach for like 40 to 45. So it's a little bit longer. I go through the whole text, go through the objections. But the text runs from verse two to verse 16. And Paul begins by commanding them for remembering the maintaining the traditions or ordinances that he delivered to them. And these traditions, by the way, are not manmade. They're not just take it or leave it. That word can be translated as ordinances, which is like a ruling custom. And it is elsewhere in the New Testament. So he's not saying like these are just some traditions like you play football on Thursday on Thanksgiving with your family. If you want to play football on Thanksgiving, that's great. These are things that were handed down apostolically for the church to practice. They are preserved for us in the scriptures of the New Testament in the apostolic letters and writings. Paul then goes into a section from verse three onward where he explains this hierarchy of headship between from God to Christ and Christ submitting to God in terms of his incarnation. So not introducing submission and authority into the essence of the deity, but of male, I'm sorry, of his, Christ in his incarnation. Calvin has a great section in his commentary on that as well. But the head of a woman is the head of a wife, the SV translate is her husband and the head of Christ is God. So we have God Christ, the man, the woman. And then he goes into his application of this that a man who prays or prophesies with his head covered, dishonors his head. So he's dishonoring Christ his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, uncovered now dishonors her head, which is the man and also ultimately God by dishonoring her head. God gave her that head since it's the same as if her head were shaved for if a wife for six will not cover a wife or a woman. Remember, will not cover her head. Then she should cut her hair short. But since it's disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. So he's given the grounding in hierarchy, then in submission and headship. Then he talks about what does he mean? Man are uncovered, women are covered. Verse seven, he then gives an argument from glory that a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image in glory of God. But the woman is the glory of man. And then what do you mean? Well, he's this for man was not made from the woman, but woman from man. Sorry, from woman, but woman for man neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. So he goes, you know, he's now made several arguments in this passage just to briefly explain them. The symbol of authority because of the angels makes perfect sense. Typically, you look up commentaries from the early church through the Reformation and onward and you find that people note a that when we're in gathered worship, which is the context of everything from chapter 11 through chapter 14 and 1 Corinthians. It's mainly dealing with gathered worship, the Lord's table, charismatic guests, etc, etc. Well, when we come to worship, the angels of God are present with us. Like in Hebrews, we don't come to this mountain that can be touched Mount Sinai. We come to the heavenly Jerusalem with the first board enrolled in heaven and the angels. Well, when we see angels in worship, we what do we see? They're deeply concerned with the holiness of God and with the primacy of God's glory. So they cover themselves, Isaiah 6, you can see this, they cover themselves in God's presence. As an expression of hierarchy. Yeah, they're also very much, yeah, God and then understanding God is first. And the other thing we see about the angels again and again in scripture, even though we don't get this laid out fully because the Bible is actually not about angels, it's about men and their God primarily. Angels are very regimented in ranks and authorities over and over. They're called various ranks like powers and principalities. We see named archangels who are like, obviously, high up on the totem pole. So there's like a millets like because they're called a host, they're an army. So they have ranks. So they're very concerned. The angels are concerned both with the holiness and glory of God and with hierarchy and authority being properly followed. So it makes perfect sense why verse 10 would say that the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. Will you have enough to retire? Most people haven't mastered their strategies for retirement, tax efficiency or the next generation. 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That's armoredrepublic.com or text Join J-O-I-N to 880-27. Hey business owner. Be honest. Is your whole growth strategy just hoping? Some of you all are out here expecting glitter to fall from the ceiling like your front row at a battle concert. You're guessing, jumping from one tactic to the next, one agency to the next, no plan, no system, just blind hope that something finally sticks. Well, what's wrong with you people? Quit playing roulette with your revenue. If you want predictable growth, we'll show you how to build it step by step with Real Foundations and Zero Fairy Dust. Look your free strategy call at bonafacebusiness.com and start building something that lasts. The other thing Paul does in that section is he talks about glory. Now, I owe this insight to Bill Mauser, the late Bill Mauser. Non-tenant also has great great series of articles where he lays a lot of this out. You could just search for that's a B-N-O-N-N tenant. He has a lot of articles written about this form, part of the argument at least. It's that Paul is arguing from glory in the worship service. That we have present in the worship service a series of glories. We have God's glory, which is the man because the man is the glory of God in the passage. We have the man's glory, which is the woman, because the woman is the glory of man. And then we have the woman's glory, which is her hair. The hair is her glory later in the passage. So in covering, in the central thesis is that in the gathered worship of the church, only the glory of God ought to be on display. Every other glory should be veiled covered like the angels in front of the throne. And so we cover the woman's head because in covering her head, we cover both the woman's glory, her hair. And under that is the woman herself, which is the glory of man. And so now in worship, what is on display, the glory of God? And this is why men are not covered because they are the glory of God. It would be to cover the glory of God to cover the man. And so, okay, we proceed in the argument, going real fast. He has a section from 11 to 12 where he clarifies. But men and women are dependent on one another. I'm not saying that like the head should boast over his helper. So he that's the section where he says that woman is not independent of man or man of woman. He says that men are born from women. Muslims hate this doctrine, by the way. Like one of their objections to Christ being the son of God is that he was born from a woman and they cannot abide that. They say that's disgusting because women are women are inferior in every way to the Muslim, which is false. They're women are actually partly God's imagebearers. So it's like, no, they're not inferior in that way. Even though there's rank and hierarchy, they're not the Muslim view is wrong. So Paul corrects that. And then in verse 13, through the mainly the end of the pastor through verse 15, he makes this further argument because that was special revelation, the creation of the woman foreign from the man is from special revelation. It's Adam and Eve. And from glory, which is also special revelation. We know these things about God, his presence, worship, because God's revealed these things to us. Well, now he says there's another book where God reveals things to us, the book of nature. And in that section 13 to 15, he then says, judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? And here he uses a different word for covering than he's been using in any other part of the passage. This is the word that's like a mantle. It's a word used in Hebrews 1, 12 and nowhere else in the New Testament. They're referring to the heavens are like a mantle that would be rolled up on the last day. So this argument, some people mistake it and they say, Oh, that's it. The hair is the covering period. There's no other covering. But that's not what Paul's doing. He's saying that God gave the woman a natural covering in her hair that is different from the man. And if she removes that covering anywhere, just in nature generally, we know that that's a disgrace if a woman shaves her head. So how it's an off-four to your eye argument. So how much more shameful would it be for her to refuse to put on the covering that God appoints for her in worship? She's saying, nature teaches us in this way. So how much more shameful would it be for her to remove the covering that God appointed to her? And then verse 16, he concludes with this. Basically, people often read this to say, make Paul really, he says, if anyone is trying to be contentious, we have no such practice in order to the churches of God. People try to interpret that sometimes as saying like, but never mind, you don't have to cover your head if you don't want to. Like, don't argue about this. What Paul is really saying is, don't be, Paul knows that this doctrine is contentious among men and women, proper headship and hierarchy and authority, from the garden that's been contentious, from the fall. So he says, don't be content, don't argue with me. Basically, all the churches of God do this, which again, we see all the churches from this time forward, practiced this doctrine. So some people, people generally object to this for three reasons. One, they would say that this is just cultural, that Paul is just talking about a cultural practice and Corinth that women where their head coverings in Paul didn't want the Christians to throw it up, throw that off, but he wanted them to continue wearing it was actually it was a good cultural custom or some variation of that. Or that Paul is just giving them a cultural way of expressing a timeless principle, headship and hierarchy, that you can change at your whim. As soon as a culture comes up with a different way of expressing male headship, you don't have to wear the head covering anymore, whatever. The second objection is that the woman's long hair is her covering. And then, and she needs no other covering. And the third objection is that this was mainly related to the practice of the charismatic gifts, like tongues. And these have passed away. And so now we no longer need it. Yeah, that's one of that I've heard is people say, if you believe in head covering, then you have to allow a woman to lead in prayer from the front. Yeah, prayer and prophecy. And my answer to that objection is, a, Paul is not here permitting what he clearly elsewhere for bids, which is for women to speak in church. And when I say speak, I mean stand up by themselves and speak like praying and leading the congregation in prayer, giving a prophecy in the congregation, things like that, preaching, preaching. Paul, every single time he addresses women in church, he commands them to be silent and be in subjection. They're there to be silent. Even if they have a question, they're to wait until they get home and ask their husband at home. You made a point I think in the sermon, right, that prayer and prophecy, he's kind of alluding to the whole worship. Yeah, that would be my view. And this is a view not just original meaning, many people hold this view that what what Paul is doing there is he's not because here's what people are saying. Joel prophesied that in the last days, your sons and your daughters would all prophesy. And so there's this eschatological fulfillment aspect that in the New Testament church for this one period of time during the Apostolic age, God gave this strange thing. We're actually women would stand up and prophesy in the congregation as well as men. And so this only applies to that period. And I would argue that, A, yes, God did give the gift of prophecy to some women. We see that in scripture. We see the, you know, the man whose daughters were prophetesses. But we're never told anywhere in scripture that women did this in the assembly of the church, right? Not once. How, in fact, it's so clearly forbidden in throughout the scriptures for women to speak like this in church that we should interpret that less clear passage in light of the clear ones and say, this was not their practice. There were other places where prophecy was practiced, like homes and other private that in so, yeah, there were times when women in this time were given the gift of prophecy, I believe, but they were not to exercise it in the church. And then the second thing, the second problem with this argument is that even if that was the case, prayer certainly isn't an extraordinary gift of the spirit that has ceased with the apostolic age. So it would, women would still need to cover their heads. What I'm saying, though, and I think this actually helps us to understand all of Paul's statements about men and women in worship, this passage and everything else. It's that Paul is using prayer and prophecy as a synacty, where he's referring to the totality of a thing by reference to some of its parts. And you see this elsewhere with the reference to the law and the prophets. Correct. It means all of that. All the Bible. Yeah, like I've used the example of, hey, I'm going to let's go grab my wheels and let's drive over there. You don't mean take the wheels off your car. You mean you're the whole car. So when Paul starts prayer and prophecy, I think he's telling it as a synacty, everything that happens in the gathered worship. And the reality is that when we come together and gathered worship, there is a very real sense. And this is throughout Paul, like you'd have to be really familiar with first Corinthians generally to know how thorough going this theme is in the first 11 chapters. The unity of the body. One of the big problems in Corinth was that they had schisms. Like chapters one through four are all about divisions in the church. I'm of Paul. I'm of a Paul. I'm this. I'm that. And he goes over and over chapter 10. You're drinking of one, you have coin and the body and blood of Christ and communion fellowship participation. You're one body, you're one bread. Like he's keeps telling them you're one thing. When we come together in worship, we are one body all participating together in the activity of worship, the Lord's service. So when the body of Christ meets, the body of Christ prays and prophesies and proclaims the scriptures and all these different things. And they herald the Lord's death and is coming in the table of communion. They do all these things as a body. So yes, the body has a mouth, the elder, the pastor, who stands up and leads in these things. But when the pastor is praying, leading the congregation, when a man is praying and leading the congregation in prayer, the congregation is praying all together. It's why we don't go, oh, that guy's praying, whatever, let's do our own thing. We bow our heads. And what are we doing? We are praying. We are praying. So we are praying. We are prophesying. We are doing all these things. The body is. So who is participating in that? Men and women are participating as the body of Christ offering the Lord's service to the Lord in all these things. That's what Paul's talking about. People picture this weird idea of like what Paul is saying is that a woman comes in, they all have their heads uncovered. One of them is going to stand up and lead in prayer or do a prophecy. So she puts a covering on her head. She stands up and she does it. Then she takes it off. And then a man he's got a hat on. He stands up. He takes his hat off and he leads in prayer and prophecy. And then he puts it back on. And it only matters when you're doing that thing as an individual. No, no, no, no. The body of Christ gathered. All of the women would have had a head covering on till the 20th century, throughout the service. And the men would not throughout the service. Normatively, new ones and exceptions. I've spoken to some of those. So the charismatic gifts one, even though you know, the reform tradition, by the way, does not actually unilaterally say that prophecy has ceased for the record. There's like a hyper cessationism that is common today that doesn't really represent how the reformers and their descendants would talk about something like prophecy just for the record. So I'm not even saying I buy the hyper cessationist argument on that. The charismatic guest argument, I think, is bunk. The cultural argument, I think, is bunk. In the reason that, you know, I said it in sermon, the way that you can tell that Paul is not making a cultural argument in the text is by the way he doesn't make a cultural argument in the text. There is none. So like when people say this, well, in Corinth, there were these prostitutes and they would shave their head and that would show that they're a prostitute or, you know, in Corinth, they would do this or in this culture, they would do that. And that's what Paul was talking about. And this is one of the issues I've had with like the head covering. The way that like conservative, even reform people will handle, first hearing things 11, is not how they will handle what Paul says about women remaining silent. They will say, look, he's arguing from creation. You have to, this is the standard, this is what we're doing. And I think rightly, the egalitarian crowd has said, why don't you do that with first Corinthians 11? And I'm like, I do. Right. And when you say he don't, yeah. But we do because first to be too, Paul argues the same way about the woman not teaching or holding authority over man. He says, well, Adam was not to see even the woman was in the egalitarians will say, well, cultural. And blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's all cultural. But then we kind of reverse. But we say, no, he's arguing from creation. We're right there. But then we get to first Corinthians 11. And we're like, oh, it's a cultural expression of a transcultural principle. And you're like, but here's the thing that didn't arise from your reading or exegesis of the text that arose from you just saying that. So Paul doesn't say that. Nothing in his argument, would you conclude if you just took it at its merit, well, Paul's alluding to Corinthian prostitutes. That's what he's talking about. And the way you can know again, is that he doesn't talk about that. But he does talk about other things. I believe you actually said it's in the bones. You see this bone? You see the bones? See this, this made a bones. So we have to give the reference explanation. That's actually helpful because with this series of videos with like paleontology. And there's like this dinosaur had another dinosaur riding on his back at 40 miles an hour. And they're like, well, how do you know that? He's like, what's in the bones? It's just a point. It's a guy for he's making fun of paleontologists because like they make all these crazy claims about dinosaurs based on fossils. Like there's an artist rendition of it. It's got like purple skin. And they're like, how did you know it had purple skin? And he's like, now I'm glad you asked. We're here to educate you. You see this bone? See, we looked at the bones. And the bones just kind of had a purple vibe. So so now we say that a lot here in Arden. But it's like that's what I say about it. You can tell from the bones of first, green is 11. That he's like, this is what people sound like when they make the cultural argument. They're like, you can tell that Paul was talking about first meeting is 11. He's talking about prostitutes and corins. Cause it a bones like they just had a prostitute vibe. And you're like, but he doesn't say that. Yeah. He doesn't say any of that. The craziest interpretation award does go to Michael Heiser. And his reference of a scholarly monograph or something about like the hair being a sexual organ. Yeah. It's like a Hippocratic medicine view like a view of the human body at that time was that women's that hair was related to like virility. And it was almost like a sex organ. So the woman's hair was basically a semen sponge. And a man would lose his hair. The more emission that he had, we should have warned people to turn this off for kids. And so like men would have shorter hair than women. And so there's an argument that like one of the verses should be translated. So the woman should have this on her head are covering her hair was given her as a testicle. That's what it is. First of all, a lot of people ask me like, do you believe Heiser's view? And I'm like, no, no, because it actually makes it so that Paul's argument is all based on a false view of the human body. First of all, well, and he also Heiser, I think says that like because that sexual organ is on display, yeah, the women would tempt the angels to have sex with the women like in Genesis 6. Right. It's referring to it's in the bones. It's in the bones. It's right there in the bones. And I, you know, maybe there's a double entendre related to that passage, but but essentially I don't agree with Heiser. I think that it's straightforward what Paul's talking about. That's generally one of the, I have a few like exogetical instincts when you're preaching a text, but one of them is I get really uncomfortable when you have to do gymnastics, exogetical gymnastics to make it work. Yeah. You know, where you're like, you have to squint like and be like, uh, maybe at 50 yards. I suppose. I don't like that. And the other one that I don't like in, you know, I think in the Protestant tradition, we get leery of this because of the Roman Catholic, you know, what the church has said. But even the reformers stood by the principle of the theology of interpretation. So you should definitely still weigh what did people throughout history? How did they typically interpret a passage? Yeah. And what would make me nervous is if you got to like 1960, this is how I got into the masculinity stuff. Yeah. It's like you have these new interpretations. Even from guys like, you know, Piper and Grudem where it's like, this never existed before. Yeah. We didn't. People weren't complementarian. That makes me nervous. Yeah. They just don't want new interpretation. But I have heard like Bible scholars, like famous people. I heard one say this, uh, about first Corinthians 11, they said, well, the thing is we know more about the Corinthian context today than they did. I see. I was like, like, that sounds arrogant. Toolean was 150 years removed and he was like, everyone in Corinth, they'd be wearing head coverings, all the ladies. But he didn't understand the context. Toolean didn't understand the context. The other thing is, and really the context is, I don't want to do it. That's exactly. Per the cultural argument, like, there was no monolithic head covering tradition in the Roman Empire. In the western part of the Roman Empire, men and women both would often cover their hair in like the pagan rituals. In the, the, the, it's in the Middle Eastern Jewish part. Yeah, their women did tend to wear head coverings. And then in the Greek part, though, the, the more eastern part where, where Corinth is, people didn't wear head coverings nearly as often. So there's no like the Roman culture did this or this Corinthian culture did this with head coverings. We have lots of examples of paintings and freezes and things like that that show us that women with their head uncovered in all sorts of places where if Paul's arguing from a central custom, and then people say, like, well, no, it was the hair was up and then the hair was down. And when it's up, it's covered when it's down, it's not. And again, like, you can tell that that's not what Paul says. By the way, that he doesn't say that. But he says other stuff instead. Yeah, but it's in the bones. And it ends up being a kind of like Bible suggestus by theological urban legend. Do you remember that passage where Jesus is talking about it's easier for a rich man to it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Yeah, rich man enter heaven. I know where he gone. And people are like, well, there was this gate in the Jerusalem. It was called the eye gate. And it was small, but a camel could get through if it like crouch down to its knees and it did this little camel shuffle. It could get through the gate, you know. And so that's what Jesus was talking about. It turns out all of that work cited. I made it up. Like it's not what Jesus meant, but it becomes this urban legend that everybody says. You actually see this a lot. I think this was true of like, I think it was used to Gonzalez. He called Athanasius the black dwarf. Yes. And then later they were like, he literally works cited. He made it up. He wasn't black. So people do this with the head coverings where you'll even read commentaries where they I was reading a commentary. One of the ones I use regularly an Anglican guy. And he was like, he's a little bit more lib culturally. And he was like, oh yeah, and Corinth. And then he talked about prostitution and shave all the myths, all the urban legends. If you chase the footnotes down, eventually you'll find that all of they keep citing each other. And then like the first one will be, you know, maybe what if this was happening? What if like, I don't get this passage. Maybe Paul was maybe there was like this going on. And then it becomes an urban legend. But but even today largely scholars have debunked historians, have debunked this idea that there was this unilateral culture of like Paul saying this thing is totally related to Corinthian prostitutes with shaved heads. Well, this this would actually be for me like a practical application for pastors. One of the reasons I made a switch, some way through my ministry, especially when I was preaching every week, where I would always, I would go on Ligonier and they would have the top five commentaries and that I would order, you know, maybe two of those. Yeah. And I had an older pastor, older PCA pastor, tell me this. And he said, you need to start reading Matthew Henry and Calvin. Yeah. And the old dead guys. Yeah. And I said, why? And he said, well, they have mistakes, but they don't have ours. Exactly. And he said, you'll notice anything that is a commentary after 1960, it's just chock full of those kind of areas. Oh, yeah. I always have Calvin's commentary open. If there is a commentary from Calvin on a passage. Yeah. So throughout first Corinthians, not just now, there's really not an excuse like you can find all the commentaries online. Yep. You don't need to be like free. You don't have to purchase them. I don't even agree with Calvin on everything. No, even in this passage, he, I think Calvin's wrong about men wearing head covering some church and then it's totally okay. I think he's wrong about that. But he, they don't have the same errors as we do. Absolutely right. You need to be going back to the fathers, need to be going back to the reformers, you need to be, you know, just going back even, even to the early 20th century you get in the late 19th century, there's a lot of. Reads and abney. I mean, yeah, read you some dabbney gets. It's a hot. You know, some hot should be good. You know, I do want to address maybe some of the practical questions that I've heard. Anytime you bring up head coverings, the first one would be so Brian, obviously in your church, any woman who dares into worship service without a head covering, obviously gets blogged. We are just so strict on this. What's actually going on inside refuge church? No, I, we tell everybody in membership classes, like we've an eight week membership class, we're pro head covering, you're going to hear it from the pulpit. You're going to see lots of women head covering. You're not allowed to be divisive or like called them legalists because people do immediately. They're like, I see a woman wearing a head covering and I'm just like, her heart is full of pride. She just, I can see it in her eyes that she thinks she's better than me. And you're like, that's all you. That's not our women. They don't think that they're not like, oh, I put my head covering on as a symbol of arrogance. They're just trying to obey Paul. So they know all about it. Like this sermon on Sunday, I said, ladies, you should wear a head covering. Men, please don't cover your head in church. We don't discipline over this issue. We do, they're, we recognize that some people like people have legitimate views. I think they're bad exegesis or the passage. But people who say, no, I really do believe in my conscience. I'm persuaded that this passage teaches this that the covering is required, but the covering is the hair or some variation of that. And so my wife's not going to wear a fabric head covering in church. And we're not going to put someone under church discipline and excommunicate them for that part of the reason for that is because I believe that in this on an issue like this, where again, it's not a first sort of issue. We're like pretty far down the wrong. But it does touch on important things like sex, piety and sex, the doctrine of men and women and anthropology hierarchy hierarchy. I think the best way to convince people over time is like with this just statement of the argument, they see it displayed in a huge number of our women. And then over time, they go, yeah, you know what? I think you're right about that. And the head coverings tend to go on over time. And that's what we've seen in a, it's basically looking at culture and saying, we're so far to take care of. It would be to me also similar to like, pants on women was genuinely at one point in history. It was like a huge controversy. And I believe generally speaking that women ought to wear dresses, not pants. My wife and I even had this conversation many times. She's like, yeah, I wear generally dresses in public, not not even feminine pants. But and you could even point to passages like women shouldn't wear the garb of men. And that does have overtones of military apparel and things like that. But generally, Christians in history, like it was a big deal when women started wearing pants. It was like initially seen as great rebellion against their sex against the creational norms. She wears pants. Yeah. Like an expression. Right. So it, but the way that I that I think we're going to convince women and men, the men and the women over time to embody the totality and the fullness of these things, isn't by disciplining for every single possible deviation from the Christian tradition and like, okay, let's, but by complete patience and teaching, exhorting, giving example, showing the beauty of it. And then lo and behold, what happens? Women start wearing dresses and head covering start coming on and men start wearing jacket like a nice suit to church. I noticed that, yeah, even with the men, that's kind of a good example. Once the pastors, we went, when I got here, it was kind of a mix. And then somewhere along the line, it was like somebody bought a parakell boy boots, dress boots. And then we kind of all started buying that. And then we all started wearing like blazers. And then before you knew it, it was like, everybody kind of dressed a certain way. Yeah. That's kind of how culture works. One other question I've heard is, so if I'm a lady, do I have to cover my head when I'm praying at home? My view is that this passage is primarily concerned with gathered worship. Yeah. When the church comes together. And I believe that's the context of chapter 11 through chapter 14, largely. And in the verse 10 is key there for me, that he's talking about the something the angels are concerned in, particularly, and the angels are present with us, particularly in gathered worship. I'm not saying angels aren't present other times. And we don't even have angels like we should pray for God to watch over spies angels. This is like Psalm 91. Read those kind of passages. Psalm 104. Great. But I think Paul's primarily concerned with the gathered worship. And that I'm okay with some people believe that it should be all the time. Some people believe it's anytime a woman is like, praying at the dinner. So it becomes almost all the time because like through the day, how many times do you pray? Hopefully a lot, even if just like before meal, are you constantly putting a head covering on and off? So I understand culturally where the head covering all the time thing came from. But my conviction in terms of what the command is, I believe it's related to gathered worship. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. I agree. And that's our practice. There are other times too, like in that things that start to border on it, like Psalm saying, we're all singing prayers. Kind of gather. My wife comes to that. I, you know, so she, and we're in the sanctuary. So even there, it just doesn't matter of like, propriety. My wife would head cover. Yeah. Okay. So we have women in our church who cover all the time. And I commend it. I think it's great. Yeah. Here's another one I think that is gets down into the practical because a lot of ladies are thinking through this. I had one of these questions recently because of, I think Breitard, somebody was listening to Breitard. But they said, "If my husband has not worked through this issue and is not convinced of head coverings, but I am convinced, should I head cover any way, potentially, I'm assuming that's disagreement." Yeah. And I'll go ahead. My advice was, well, you should give him time to work through it and obey him and not nag him about it. And do not nag him about it. Like you said, I think it's helpful knowing it's not a first-order issue. But I just think that particularly after the sermon or people listen to that or maybe some, they do reading, the woman will become convinced and then she feels like, "Well, I'm in my sinning." Right. So how would you help the ladies think through that? Okay. Let me speak to husband's first and ladies. For the husband's, I think, if your wife in her conscience is persuaded of that, you need to understand that she's persuaded that she has an apostolic command to do it, and that she is actually in her conscience sinning not to. So you should care a lot about that. And you should, as ahead, you have a responsibility not to provoke your people to sin. Like a father should not provoke his children to wrath. There's a principle of infuriars and superiors there in every, a boss should not provoke his employees to sin by being a miser who demands bricks without straw. I think a husband ought not to provoke his wife to sin against her conscience. In an area where clearly like she has good biblical warrant to have this conviction. And so in that, I would say, in a, let's say the husband is like, I've done the reading. I'm actually convinced that it's a cultural thing or something. I think Brian's wrong. My wife is convinced in her conscience. Now she's she's willing to say, I will submit to you and not. I would say to that husband, you should think pretty carefully before you get that command because again, what is the worst thing that's going to happen with this? Your wife is going to look slightly cute for a couple of hours of the Sunday. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's not I would make a distinction here with that in a husband who says something like, honey, you may not buy organic meat for every meal. We can't afford it. I know you think it's better for us. And you've made this argument that it's almost like I'm sinning by feeding my children poison of conventional meat. He's like, no, buy the normal ground beef at Costco. We're going to thank the Lord for it. He's going to nourish us by it. We can't afford it. Wives you should submit and that should be the last time you bring it up. You shouldn't bring it up again. Why? Because your husband has genuine authority. This is different in the sense that Paul has a positive command that apostle Paul does to your wife. And he genuinely does. That's what he's aiming to do is give a command to the man and the women. And in the context that we're talking about, Paul outranks you. He's an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ giving instruction for gathered worship. So just like a husband shouldn't say, we're not taking communion. I've had husbands come in in the church, one family where the husband said, we don't believe in water baptism. They were hyper-dispensationalists. And we instructed the family, you should get water baptized. You should not obey your husband on this because he is commanding you to sin. The Lord Jesus commanded this. And in this fear, the elders outrank your husband and the Lord Jesus obviously outranks everybody. So you should get back. It would be like a husband commanding his wife not to convert. Yes, you should convert or not to, you know, many other examples of a husband commanding his wife to sin. So in this, in this area, I would say a wife should submit to her husband if he says, absolutely not not in my house because it's not an issue that rises to that level. Where I would potentially just kind of push husbands a little bit. What I've seen on some issues like this is a woman will read, read a book or whatever she reads it, she's convicted. Or here's a sermon. And then the husband actually doesn't have a position. And she's like, I'm really convicted on this. And he's like, well, I haven't read about it. And she's like, well, are you going to read about it? And he's like, no, to me, it's like, come on, you're just being dumb. Yeah, you're not, you're not treating your wife with understanding. You're not taking charges of sage in your home in leading in matters of family religion. This isn't, this isn't whether you think it's silly or not. You should take it seriously because it's an apostolic command. So I do think one of the things we need to stop doing is making fun of head coverings. There's so many jokes that people make that they're like, you know, Doug Wilson has a thing about like, you know, oh, I noticed your wife wears a head covering in the husband replies, yeah, she insists. And he's, he's, he's like making fun of something real where wives are like way more interested in the Bible and doctrine and things than their husbands. And that's, that's a genuine problem. But what, what sometimes it that lets us do is kind of go, oh, yeah, wives who care about head coverings, they're such dorks. They're such rebellious, proudful arrogant women. Oh, and husbands whose wives cover, they must be really like just pushovers. They don't get the real. Well, no, this is like an apostolic command that was practiced variously in most corners of the church for most of Christian history. It's not silly. Like God doesn't give us silly commands in the scriptures. And I do some, you know, people make jokes about, well, because of the angels refused to elaborate, you know, because we act like this is such an opaque passage. What an hurt did Paul mean by the angels? We have no idea. And you're like, pick up a commentary. Christian theologians have dealt with this passage for centuries and they haven't considered it impossible to understand. In many, there are many, there are many, stray, formerly biblical arguments so I we could understand what Paul means in verse 10. The Holy Spirit wasn't like trying to confuse us. Yeah, I also think for men in particular like taking the leadership, we've talked about this before, but many years ago my wife, we were, we were going to a church and she had come across one of the resources on the church desk, which was post millennialism. And she read it and she said, hey, I think you should look into this, you know, this seems to be pretty important. And it was something that I was like, okay, well, yeah, I'm going to look into this. So I read it like that week or the next. We talked about it. We started reading more stuff. I think it can be one of those things of just a failure of leadership. If your wife is like, Hey, I think this is really important. It was a church resource. They say it's important for a husband then to just drag his feet for years. It goes back to what you're saying. You're being a bad leader and you're exasperating your wife. It's and I think it can go all sorts of wrong ways where they're like, Oh, you know, your wife was leading you and I'm like, no, you just need to do your job. No, like, and do it quickly. Yeah, do it quickly. Like sometimes when you marry a respectable woman, like when you marry a great godly woman, like I did, like you did, there are times when my wife asks me questions, obeying Paul, hey, if you have a question, ask your husband at home and you're like, I have to go look into that. And I have to say, you know what? Let me, let me, that's a great question. Let me go read about that and figure it out. And I've forgotten before and she's asked me again, then I'm like, kind of embarrassed because I'm supposed to be the guy who can answer a question. So husbands, we need to take that seriously. Why does need to not be nagged? It's a symbol of authority. So don't be like naggy, nitpicky. And yeah, you know, if your husband makes a ruling for your family religion and on this matter, like submit to your husband, cheerfully, don't nag him about it. Don't, you know, don't do that. But I do, I say that we have a lot, mostly men listening to King's Hall. Just be careful that you won't have to give an account before God when he says, this woman that I gave you and told her to submit to you, she brought this to your attention, my command on this point. And you treated it as a light thing and told her not to. And she submitted to you. And so the, and it was, and she shouldn't like she, she submitted to you in something that actually she should have done. So, like you'll be held accountable. So what's your answer for that? And there's God's grace is behind her finding out, like God's mercy covers even these things. So let's keep the gospel central. But it's an apostol command. Like I just, I come back to that over and over. Like, what other apostol commands are we like, you know, this is a really big deal. And the answer is actually unfortunately many, but none of them are okay for us to treat that way. Yeah, I would view it likewise when we talk about like tithing, right? Where if a wife is like, hey, honey, I noticed we're not tithing. Like I heard the sermon. What are you thinking? And he's like, uh, mind your business woman. And you're like, actually, again, you're failing to lead. She's doing a righteous thing, an Abigail thing by saying, hey, remember that command, man? Because it's her how she's in the household too. So you're not doing that is her not doing it. Yes. And so it's actually legitimate that she would inquire and ask that we can go so far, I think, into the desiring to throw off the feminism and egalitarianism of our age. We can make it, we can actually get into the, the ditch where we're like, oh, um, a wife can never bring a wise appeal to her husband about anything. And I don't, I don't believe that at all. We've given, we've done bright heart episodes on this. Like how and how and in what context and how can my wife bring a wise appeal to me and say, have you thought about this or I've noticed this about whatever it is. Can we think about this thing? You know, whether it's family worship or some other thing. And I've been helped by my wife in that. Well, a lot of times if I get, especially young guys, they're like really exuberant about the patriarchy thing. Yeah. And they're kind of like hand waving at their wife a bit much. Yeah. And a lot of times what I'll bring them back to is, is the Puritan teaching on companionship or companionable marriage. Yeah. Where like the Puritan's would teach, she came from your rib, meaning she's supposed to be near to your heart. Like this is someone with whom you share intimate counsel. Yeah. Like you're talking through the issues, you should, is it bad leadership to be like, we're doing all this and she says, well, why? And you're like, 'cause I said so. Don't question me. Well, actually she just wants to know so she can do it knowledgeably. Yeah, it's just what I actually encourage husbands to do. Is give your wife avert clear instructions that you are allowed to come to me respectfully and appropriately with any issue that's on your mind. I think a boss should do this at work. I think the general should do this to a colonel. I think a colonel should do this to a captain. A good leader should, like, and then he learns that he might have to correct the subordinate and say, you keep bringing me these silly things. And they're actually, you're really just pushing back on my leadership. You're not asking genuine questions. Then you deal with that. But I encourage men to not just without speaking, but tell your wife, you have standing permission to bring to me any concern that you have about me, about the children, about the home, about anything. I want to know about it because I'm your head and I want to lead you well. And what's the worst that's going to happen? You're going to have to maybe correct a wife who's too forward and say, hey, you've brought me a different thing every day this week. That's your, you're being naggy. You're being anxious. But even then you just learn something to correct and lead on. I guarantee you that if you do that well and you lead well, I'd not guarantee, wives can sin, but it will help. It will genuinely help and you'll be doing, you'll be leading right just like, my wife knows this. I could count on one hand, like I could count on two or three fingers, the number of times in the last several years that my wife has come to me and said, could you consider this in every case it was good? It was good feedback. I genuinely in several of the cases considered it and said, no, that's good. That's good. That was a good insight that she had about the home. I'm going to, I'm going to listen to that. And our home is stronger because of it. That would be a good point too. I think for the wives is if, if you're constantly bringing every complaint all the time and it's a dripping faucet, then when you have a real one, you're kind of like the boy who cried wolf. So it's like, yes, that would be, and I know Lexi has counseled young ladies in that way too. If you brought more than five complaints in the last two months, it's probably a bit much. And then when you have a real one and you're so like, hey, this issue is really important to me. But on the other hand, if you have a righteous woman, I would say the same about my wife. It's like you just don't hear many of the major issues because there aren't any. Yeah. She's not fussing. No. But if she comes in, she says, "Hamm, really interested in this theological topic, what do you think?" I take that seriously. I'm like, absolutely. Okay. I need to, we'll look into that. Yeah. We'll address it. Yeah. Well, I think it's been a good conversation. I know you guys have also dealt with it on bright, Arth. A long time ago we did. We'll probably do another episode on a head covering. It's an answer, listen or questions about it. Probably sometime in January or February, we'll have that episode come out. We're pretty far ahead recorded in BrightHearth. I would also say, go listen to the sermon. I didn't really talk about the long hair argument today. I addressed it in the sermon. Verse six is a real important key to understanding why the long hair cannot be the only covering Paul is talking about in the passage. But yeah, there are plenty of resources out there. Do your homework. I would say to people too, if you have questions, you can send those through the podcast feed. And not respond to you directly. No. But we can do Q&A episode. It won't be it's not in the YouTube description, but it's in the podcast descriptions. So you should be able to go in any podcast. Out of Spotify. Out of Spotify. And there should be like a button that says send us a text of something like that. And it will open a window where you can say, hey, I'm from here. Here's my question. And we do look at those. So we'll do Q&A episodes from time to time. And we do the same thing on BrightHearth. So that we can kind of keep up with what you guys are wondering about, what you'd like us to talk about more. We love it when people send feedback through that. And you know, probably the best way to ask a question though is just to leave us a five-star review wherever you're listening. Just to be safe. Just to be safe. Or if you hate us one star because after the either one after the black culture clip, we'd lost a 10. We went to 4.7. Some boys get us back to four point. We need some five star reviews. I don't know, 4.6. We got to get back. That's awesome. Well, we definitely appreciate you guys. Thanks especially to our Patreon supporters. Really Brian couldn't do the show without them. Couldn't. No, definitely. So we appreciate that support. And then by the way, there's a lot of content on Patreon. Yeah. We've had a lot of good after hours. Yeah. We're talking about all this spicy stuff. Always have fun on after hours. Yeah. So join us there. We'll be going there now. So you can join us again. Thanks for your patronage. [MUSIC]