Now, let's discuss this passage in light of our common-sense principles and see if we can all come to the same understanding. In light of our discussion of truth, let's remember from the outset that regardless of how we interpret this passage, it will not in any way change what God is saying here. What we believe will in no way alter what God requires. Our first principle of interpretation is to begin with a blank slate, but we can't do that until we first acknowledge what preconceived understandings we may have.
Depending on what church you belong to, you may have any one of the following preconceived ideas about this text: (1) Paul is saying that men must not wear any veil or cloth covering on their heads when praying or prophesying, but women must wear a cloth or veil or other cloth covering when praying or prophesying. Or Paul is saying that women must not cut their hair, or their long hair serves as a covering when they are praying or prophesying.
Or Paul is directing the sisters to veil themselves so as not to be mistaken as prostitutes, since the prostitutes in Corinth did not veil themselves. Being a cultural thing, these instructions do not apply today. Or Paul is directing each sister to wear her hair long so as not to be mistaken as a pagan priestess, since it was customary for a pagan priestess to shave herself bald or to cut her hair short. Once again, these instructions do not apply today.
Or you may have some other preconceived understanding of this passage. But whatever your understandings of this passage are, I am now going to ask you to temporarily set them aside. I am not making this request because what you believe about this passage is necessarily wrong. I don't even know what you believe about it. But I do know that there are widely conflicting interpretations of this passage, and that they can't all be right.
Now, having temporarily set aside all of your views, the next step is to read through the passage again very slowly, verse by verse. Start at the beginning, and as you read each verse, ask yourself, "If I didn't know any better, what would I probably think this verse was saying?" It's very important that at this stage you do not attempt to harmonize any single verse with any other verses, either in this passage or elsewhere. That will come later.
At this point, the important thing is to really listen to what each individual verse or statement of Scripture is saying. We're after the literal meaning of each verse, if that verse stood alone. The whole is the sum of the parts, and we can't arrive at the whole picture if we ignore any of the parts. If there were another portion of the New Testament that discussed the same matter, we would next want to go to it and repeat the same procedure.
However, this is the only place in the New Testament that discusses the head covering. So the final step is to now put the literal meanings of all of these individual verses together. I encourage you to take a moment to do this. So now go back and reread to yourself 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, attempting to apply these principles of interpretation, and see what you come up with. Next subheading: "Does this system work? What conclusions have you ended up with?" My guess is the same thing you started with. Why?
Because the four principles we have considered are not sufficient by themselves to tackle a difficult passage such as this. This passage contains several ambiguous statements. That is, those statements can be interpreted in one or more ways. When it comes time to harmonize our literal readings of each verse, we simply run back to our preconceptions. After all, our minds are not like blackboards. Most of us cannot simply erase something from our minds once it's been embedded there.
Quite often, our preconceived views don't move until something else shoves them aside. Let's focus for a moment on some of the ambiguities in this passage. Verse 5 clearly states that a woman disgraces her head if she prays with her head uncovered. Yet verse 15 states that her hair is given to her for a covering. Does this mean that her hair serves as the covering referred to in verse 5? Some people say it does. Others say it does not. Other parts of this passage are equally unclear.
What did Paul mean when he said in verse 16, "But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God"? Was Paul saying that the churches of God had no custom other than for women to cover their heads? Or was he saying that they had no custom either way? Our four principles are inadequate because they don't tell us how to resolve conflicts and ambiguities such as we have here.
But it was important to go through this procedure so that you would appreciate the need for some additional principles of interpretation. Actually, the lack of clarity in this passage makes it ideal for our study. It forces us to deal squarely with one of the reasons why Bible-believing Christians are so disunited. Many passages in Scripture, perhaps most, can be interpreted in more than one way. I am not saying that all the diverse interpretations are correct or even plausible.
I am simply saying that humans always find a variety of ways to interpret a large number of biblical passages, yet only one of those interpretations is normally correct. That Scripture is often ambiguous may seem like a fairly obvious common-sense observation, which it is, but failure to recognize this fact is one of the main reasons why Bible-believing Christians have such a theological logjam.
Our refusal to admit that much of Scripture is capable of being interpreted in more than one way is one of the biggest obstacles to Christian unity. And it is only after we acknowledge this that we can begin to make some real progress toward accurately understanding Scripture. Let me explain.