LOLOL my bad!! I donāt know how my eyes pulled the wool over- wait, that metaphor doesnāt workā¦
I did read Roberts instead of Robertson. And I didnāt even realize the I versus A in your first names.
So youāre saying the Actual Alastair Roberts thinks headcovering is no longer necessary?
Yes, though he is a bit more involved than that.
He recently posted a video on the image of God in women which I believe stemmed originally from 1 Corinthians 11:8-9. I think itās quite insightful.
9 posts were split to a new topic: Is our beloved Alistair Robertson the same man as Alastair Roberts?
To confirm: Your original reasoning was this:
Yes?
Oh, in case it was in doubt, Iām a 4.
Yes, Alistair.
I donāt see what is feminist about a view that head covering may no longer serve the same symbolic function at our present time but another symbol might.
Edited to add: or in a different culture.
You know, I agree here, though not in the way you might suppose, and certainly not to the point youād draw from it. I refer you to The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament under the article for the veil: ĪŗĪ¬Ī»Ļ Ī¼Ī± kaluma. To summarize what you find there:
We have evidence for the practice of women wearing veils that are textual and graphic, the latter in the form of statuary, coins, medallions, and frescos.
These sources are non-Christian, rather Greco-Roman. For this reason, they are especially useful for evaluating a common and mistaken notion about the deployment of headcovering in Corinth in the First Century.
In non-religious contexts, women are routinely portrayed with and without headcoverings. There are no contexts where covering of women is either mandatory or prohibited.
In religious contexts (portrayals of female deities, female worshipers of any sort of deity), females (goddesses or worshipers) exhibit the same diversity in practice - sometimes with veils, sometimes with none. No pattern related to context is provable.
Things change dramatically, however, when we move to eastward. There lived a Roman statesman and historian named Dio Cassius (c. 155 ā c. 235), many of whose works, including speeches, have survived. One of these speeches, referenced in the TDNT article above, was delivered in Tarsus, Paulās home town (!). In its introduction, Dio Cassius comments favorably on the Eastern practice of the women being veiled in public, evidently viewing a number of these in the crowd gathered in a public square to whom he addressed himself from a balcony.
Two implications may be drawn from this. First, that what Dio Cassius was commenting on was not an ordinary custom by women in the Greco-Roman West. Second, it validates in summary fashion what the article on the Veil in TDNT also reports - in the Greco-Roman west, there was no pan-cultural practice regarding the veiling of women.
Add to this, Tertullianās aplogia for the veiling of virgins notes that Jewesses in North Africa were recognizeable because they (like the women Dio Cassius noticed) veiled themselves in public.
How does this bear upon Paulās 16 verses devoted to this topic in the First Corinthian Epistle?
First, it shows how utterly erroneous the notion that Paul was taking the Corinthian Christian women to task because they were flaunting a common custom. In Corinth there was no common custom regarding the covering of women.
Second, in a culture where there was no common custom regarding the veiling of women, Paul is imposing an Eastern and Jewish cultural custom upon the Christians who inhabited a Greco-Roman culture!
Fast forward 2,000 years, two millennia in which Christians followed the Apostolic teaching of Paul (until the middle of the 20th Century, that is), and ask yourself - what becomes of those rationales bandied about for dismissing Paulās teaching? If those rationales āworkā today, they should have worked just as well in Paulās day, wouldnāt you think?
Once again, misunderstood 
I was communicating Alastair Robertsā view, not my own.
I agree with you, and have done my own fairly extensive reading of (translated) original sources and secondary sources. My conclusion is that there is very little support for understanding headcovering as cultural. The writings of present day non-Christian historians rarely support the cultural view, though the changes to their conclusions about veiling over time donāt speak well to the reliability of their conclusions for our purposes :).
As much as I like Bruce Ware, after tracking down the sources he cites, I could not see how they support his arguments at all (if you are aware of them). His writings recieved virtually no attention outside of Christian circles last time I looked. But again, does that matter one way or the other?
My understanding is that headcovering, even though it is misunderstood, should still be practiced, even as the Lordās Supper was still practiced in light of accusations of cannibalism.
My wife has corrected my memory on her wearing of a headcovering. It came up when we were reading through 1 Cor. 11 in our family devotion, and I wondered out loud whether that still applied, but I never suggested to my wife that she should do so. While I was researching the question and consulting with my fellow elders on Session, my wife started trying out wearing a head covering and doing her own research. After several months had gone by, I decided that wearing a head covering was no longer applicable for the reasons I give above, and I told my wife that, and she immediately decided to no longer wear a head covering.
So sheās firmly in the category I describe. 
Resurrecting an old thread. Weāre a 4 as well, maybe 5.
Weāve gone perma-covering Like the Puritan women of old. This way the wife is covered whenever praying, along with the all of the other ānicetiesā of honoring the creation order. It just so happens to give feminism the bird and thatās nice too.
She gets asked about it a lot. She wears the Israeli tichel style, as seen in this link. to make it obvious that this is not just a fashion item, but a religious statement.
Are you Muslim? No, but she made a Muslim friend at the park and has now shared the gospel with her.
Are you Israeli? No. But the lady who asked it engaged in a long conversation about 1 Cor 11.
Perhaps the biggest issue that has come up has been the issue of authority in the family. Many women in our church view submission to their husbands as āhe has to do his part or Iām not budging, and then only maybeā. To see a wife lovingly don the headgear when asked and to wear it with pride (in the good sense) has caused a bit of a stir.
Not just āis this biblicalā - hello bonnet-wearing puritans; but perhaps the biggest question of them all in our day ā if the wife is convinced 1 Cor 11 is cultural but the husband not ā what happens when the husband asks to don the funny hat, so to speak, and all the time. A real test of the health of the man-woman dynamic in your church. Can help to root out some underlying problems. Highly recommended - 100%.
How could anyone tell you didnāt need your wifeās permission to instruct her to wear a head covering? I assume it was the wifeās idea, when I see oneā¦
Assume no longer!
Youād have to get to know the couple obviously, but it should become apparent then.
This has come up in our church. The Session believes that 1 Cor 11 is cultural, but if a husband thinks otherwise, the wife should submit to her husband and wear a headcovering.
Would retaining head coverings have prevented feminism?
In a word, no. I know from my associations with fundamentalists of various hues that it is too easy to insist on āoutward conformity to the lawā as a substitute for true obedience. My guess is that if the ādamā had not given way at this point, it would still have given way at many other points, and indeed did so.
On an unrelated note, I really donāt like seeing men in church who are wearing hats, but I imagine Iām showing my age.
Agree. I like to think of it as an indicator, but not a guarantee. You can certainly have the one-off Mennonite church that covers and agrees to women pastors. But if large numbers of churches go from not covering, either in church or permanently, to covering, thereās most likely something else going on, something good.
Age? Perhaps - I donāt know you well enough to assess how your age affects your preferennces here and there. But, Paulās exposition in those 16 verses of a single epistle says just as much about the men being uncovered as it does about women being covered. The whole point of the section is that Godās glory should be unveiled during worship while the manās glory (i.e. the woman) and the womanās glory (i.e. her hair) should be covered.
One Sunday a few years ago, the curate and I walked over to the chapel after weād vested ourselves, and in the narthex we were met by the parish deacon. I could tell by his face that something had alarmed him.
āFather Bill, youād better be prepared for trouble this morning.ā He gestured toward the interior of the chapel on the other side of a pair of swinging doors. āTheyāre on the epistle side. The gay coupleās on the right.ā
I pressed one of the doors slightly so I could peer in. On the right side, about halfway down the aisle, in one pew sat three persons. The one next to the aisle wore a ski cap. Next to him sat another fellow with a newsboy style cap on his head. His arm was draped around the shoulders of the person next to him - no head covering, but the hair was a stylish masculine cut that sported a two-toned dye job of neon fuchsia and commode-water blue. āThat must be the gay guys,ā I thought.
Pondering what, if anything, to do at that point, I saw the agitated deacon slip through the doors and move quickly down the aisle. Peering again through the doors, I saw him in conversation with the three. The two with caps took them off. The deacon returned.
āIāll sit where I can keep an eye on them,ā he said. The service continued without interruption from any quarter.
It turned out that the two-toned neon colored hair person was a woman, and the man whose arm had been draped across her shoulders was her husband. Very millennial in their habits of fashion and deportment in church, I suppose.
ā¦ It turned out that the two-toned neon colored hair person was a woman, and the man whose arm had been draped across her shoulders was her husband. Very millennial in their habits of fashion and deportment in church, I suppose.
Droll. But as John Wimber used to say, ācatch the fish, then clean themā.
On a sorta-related note, does anyone make an issue of women wearing trousers, especially in church? I know some fundamentalists still do, and while I understand how Scripture enjoins women to dress modestly, I was (seriously) wondering if women wearing trousers would be included in this.
@tesseract
ā¦I like to think of it as an indicator, but not a guarantee.
So, a necessary indicator, if not a sufficient one?
I never had to deal with this as a pastor. On the other hand, as a parishioner in the pew I sometimes had a point of view (literally, that is) which no pastor would ever get, viz. the hinder parts of the woman in front of me, particularly as we were all kneeling.
In that posture, I was necessarily presented with a panoramic view of the personās back, including his or her hinder parts. This viewpoint quickly showed me that whether or not the person is wearing trousers is beside the point. Rather, it is the nature of the trousers and how they are worn which made all the difference.
I have, for example, been presented with a generous butt crack when we were all in that position. The sex of that butt was pretty much irrelevant to its impact on us in the pew behind the behind. A couple of times, it was a woman in yoga pants, which are virtually a thin coat of fabric sprayed onto the skin, almost a way to be naked without exposing any actual skin.
How one wears oneās pants makes a difference too. In one horrid Sunday service, during the offertory the daughter of a family in the parish stood at the nead of the center aisle, signing the lyrics of a well-known hymn. The idea is that we onlookers would know the lyrics by heart and that they would be in our mind as the lassie communicated them via sign language.
But, no one was watching her signing. She wore a clingy sort of top that ended just below her mid torso.And, she wore tight trousers which rose no higher than needed to avoid a violation of the statutory definition of indecent exposure. Between these two boundaries of fabric was a slightly rounded tummy with a large and deep navel at its center. The navel would āwinkā at us as the girl moved her arms about in her signing activities.
I sat at the back and could see a lot of the congregation. Some turned their heads. Others looked at their laps the entire time. One could hear quiet sounds of suppressed stangling noises, which I guessed were coming from those wishing not to guffaw out loud.
To this day, it remains Number One on my list of most horrific times during a worship service.
Well, since Iām convinced that itās a mandate from scripture, then yes Iād say itās a necessary indicator. But not a guarantee.
